Faking it with Google and Facebook

Fake news: The Denzel Washington Trump support story on Facebook

The only possible way to tackle the problem of fake news stories circulating around the world is for Google and Facebook to recognise finally what they are: media organisations

Sometimes the lexicographers at the Oxford Dictionary manage to say it all in a single hyphenated word or phrase.

Use of their just announced international term of the year, “post-truth politics”, has increased by more than 2,000 per cent. Naturally they provide a definition: political debate largely driven by opinion and emotion which are more influential than objective facts, making truth irrelevant.

The term, the Oxford Dictionary adds, gained increased currency during the EU referendum and the US Presidential election but is particularly associated with Trump supporters.

Although “post-truth” has been around since at least 1992 it could now, according to Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries, become one of the defining words of our time.

You could also add in post-fact politics or fake stories, once a new word has been coined to describe the faking it phenomenon.

If post-truth politics is the term of the year, then the phrase of the month has to be ‘fake stories’ as the great social media engines of Google and Facebook try to take on board the seriousness of the accusations against them.

As we are talking online media, naturally the faking it concept is best conveyed by a list.

International Business Times has produced its top five fake stories of the Presidential campaign. The Pope endorsing Trump, a posting that could have been seen by 1 million people was the runaway favourite, followed by the claim that the Clintons had an FBI agent assassinated and the death made to look like murder-suicide, an incident that happened in a non-existent town.

The story came from the Denver Guardian, which claimed to be one of Denver’s oldest news sources, even though it was set up earlier this year.

Then there was the claim that Trump won the popular vote by 700,000 when in fact Hillary Clinton did, and you can also stir in the late Kurt Cobain, and the not-so-late Denzel Washington, allegedly endorsing Trump.

Away from politics there was a story that a town in Texas had been quarantined because of an outbreak of ebola. The outbreak and the town were entirely fictional.

Google, and to a lesser extent Facebook, are now promising to do something about fake story syndrome whether done for profit, politics or mischief.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg initially played down the problem and said it was a “crazy idea” to suggest that fake stories could have influenced the outcome of the US election. His senior executives were not so sure.

It’s not seen as quite so crazy now, given that only one person in a hundred would have had to be influenced or changed their mind to potentially affect the outcome. The majority of the fake stories either emerged from, or pandered to right-wing views.

A former Facebook employee has alleged online – so it might not be true – that Facebook has a political team in Washington that tries to convince political advertisers that Facebook can persuade users to vote one way or the other.

In an interview this week Google chief executive Sundar Pichai insisted the company cared about freedom of expression, open systems and a connected world and wanted to root out news that wasn’t true.

One possible remedy is to give greater emphasis to trusted sources but as things stand the algorithms are designed to spread and magnify what people like and unfortunately people have a taste for the dramatic and conspiracy theories whether there is a shred of truth behind them or not.

It’s far from clear what could be done that would be effective rather than symbolic.

Sexual and violent material is taken down by the social websites often with ludicrous results such as removing breast-feeding pictures because nipples aren’t allowed or the iconic napalm girl picture.

The only possible way with fake stories is for Google and Facebook to recognise finally what they are: media organisations. They then must take responsibility for the quality of what goes out under their name and from which they profit so royally.

That must mean journalists and an editorial brain – and there is no shortage of out-of-work hacks made redundant from the mainstream media because its ad revenues have been hoovered up by social media and search – some of it on the back of fake stories or robot viewers.

They could also use some of the billions saved by tax minimisation schemes to help fund more sophisticated monitoring systems.

Encouraging the good, so that the dishonest is increasingly side-lined, may be the only practical way forward.

Yet even then difficulties abound. Because of the sheer speed and volume of the traffic the lies will have circumnavigated the globe multiple times before any human brain can intervene. And it would have to be a human brain, rather than an algorithm, to make some of the subtle judgements on matters that lie between opinion and fact that would be necessary.

There is nothing new here apart from scale, speed and global reach. In the UK at least you have always been able to choose a newspaper that best reflects your political and social views.

Even with Twitter it is only human to retweet views and opinions you instinctively agree with.

Actually, as more of a news stream than a chat show, which spreads the work of many trusted journalists, Twitter is probably better placed to cope with falsehood than the softer social media sites.

Conspiracy theories and inaccuracies are jumped on robustly from a great height in seconds – sometimes rather too robustly.

Twitter’s problem is cyberbullying and trolling and it has been slow to take effective measures. There is a “mute” button to prevent receipt of tweets from deplorables and now Twitter has added the power to block certain words or phrases and a new way of reporting “hateful conduct.”

As for the rest, Google and Facebook have created something entirely new and in many ways wonderful and a force for democratisation.

They also have to take greater responsibility for the unintended negative consequences – undermining mainstream media and lessening respect for established political and social institutions.

They are in danger of creating the ultimate paradox – the provision of limitless information leading to an irrational know-nothing culture.

The fear is that the president of Oxford Dictionaries is right and that post-truth will become the defining word of our age – if it hasn’t become so already.