Filtrado de Noticias Falsas en Facebook/en
Contenido
Motivation
In the 2016 presidential elections in the US there was controversy around fake news being spread via Facebook.It was said that these news could have influenced the result of the elections. Many of these hoaxes attacked Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate, while others backed Donald Trump, the Republican Party candidate and eventual winner of the election. The sensationalist nature of many of these news caused them to spread like wildfire and reach a lot of voters. These were the 5 most popular hoaxes:
Pope Francis Endorses Donald Trump for President
FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide
Wikileaks Confirms Hillary Sold Weapons To ISIS
Just Read the Law: Hillary Is Disqualified From Holding Any Federal Office
Hillary Admits in Leaked Email That She Created ISIS
These amounted to 37771000 reactions, shares and comments on Facebook, to 2573000 of the top 5 popular news from traditional media.
There have been similar cases around the world, like the hoax of a mob of refugees burning a church in Germany. This lead Angela Merkel to threatening Facebook with 500k Euro fines for spreading fake news.
Launch of the filtering system
On January 15th 2017, at the DLD conference in Munich, Facebook announces that they will be setting up a hoax filtering system in Germany. No date is confirmed. The system will allow users to tag news as suspicious for an independent organization to investigate its veracity. In Germany this agency was said to be Correctiv, a research agency. News that are tagged more often will be given priority. News found to be fake will not be removed, but they will be marked as fake and users that share them will be notified. Facebook plans to spread the use of this system to the rest of the world, in the US the responsibility of checking the news will be of the Poynter Institute. There are no news about who will do it in Spain.
System Flaws
There are news of whose factual nature means that they can be easily verified. A terrorist attack, or a statement released by a personality, are soon found to be untrue. However, other news are not so easily refuted, for example news like "Sources close to the president say...", or "Rumors about X keep spreading".
There are also topics where the truth si debatable. For example, there are studies that prove the efficiency of Homeopathic remedies, and also studies that disprove them. Does if fall upon the verifying agency to check the scientific rigor of a report? Should they position themselves and refute anything that says the opposite? AS much as the organization tries not to have an agenda, people work there and they have opinions.
A concern about this system is that it leads the user to think that anything not tagged as fake is true, which could give news like the ones mentioned to get more credibility and repercussion.
Precauciones del usuario
El sistema que plantea Facebook funcionará si y solo sí los usuarios están atentos y marcan las noticias como sospechosas. La mayor parte de noticias falsas provienen o de sitios falsos que buscan generar una gran cantidad de tráfico en poco tiempo antes de cerrar y reaparecer con otro nombre, o de grupos con ideologías extremas que buscan decirle a sus afines lo que quieren oír, e influir en lo posible al resto de la población. Por tanto, antes de compartir una noticia, es recomendable leerla enter, no solo el titular, y fijarse la página de la que procede la noticia. La sección "Acerca de nosotros" puede dar pistas de la credibilidad de la página. Aparte de eso, una noticia chocante y verdadera generalmente tendrá repercusión en multitud de medios, si no es así deberíamos sospechar. Por último, será de vital importancia que el usuario no se dedique a marcar como falso todo con lo que personalmente no está de acuerdo o no le gusta.
Dilemas éticos
Está claro que las redes sociales tienen una gran influencia en la opinión de la gente. Por lo tanto, el poder controlar qué información se comparte y cuál se desacredita es algo que no se debe tomar a la ligera. ¿Quién garantiza que el órgano independiente seguirá siendo independiente? ¿Qué sabe Facebook de España como para juzgar si un grupo puede ser válido para esta tarea o no?
Más allá de eso, se está tratando a Facebook como si fuera una agencia que publica noticias. En la mayoría de periódicos online, se deja claro que no se hacen responsables de las opiniones de los usuarios en la sección de comentarios, ¿Porqué Facebook sí que debería hacerlo?
Se abre también el debate de si Facebook debería intervenir y no exponer a sus usuarios a noticias falsas, o sí Facebook debería ser un lienzo en blanco donde cada uno se expresa libremente, y actúa como un adulto para no creer todo lo que se lee.
