{"id":70687,"date":"2024-10-01T18:20:09","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T18:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/why-the-fake-news-confidence-trap-could-be-your-downfall"},"modified":"2024-10-01T18:50:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T18:50:50","slug":"why-the-fake-news-confidence-trap-could-be-your-downfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/why-the-fake-news-confidence-trap-could-be-your-downfall","title":{"rendered":"Why the Fake News Confidence Trap could be your Downfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Angola. <\/strong><\/span>It\u2019s a wild world out there online, with dis- and misinformation flying about at pace. I\u2019m part-way through writing a book about the history of fake news, so I\u2019m well aware that people making stuff up is not new. But what is new is the reach that troublemakers have, whether their actions are deliberate or accidental.<\/b><\/p>\n

Social media and the wider web changed the game for mischief-makers, and made it easier for the rest of us to be inadvertently hoodwinked online (see: the odd \u201cGoodbye Meta AI\u201d trend that I wrote about this week for the Guardian). The rise of generative AI since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has also supercharged the risks. While early research suggests our biggest fears about the impact of AI-generated deepfakes on elections are unfounded, the overall information environment is a puzzling one.<\/p>\n

Seeing is believing?<\/p>\n

That much is evident in information gathered by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) \u2013 a social-purpose organisation spun out of the UK government \u2013 and shared exclusively with me for TechScape. The survey of 2,000 UK adults highlights just how confusing the wild west web is at present.<\/p>\n

While 59% of those surveyed by BIT think they can spot false information online, BIT researchers found that only 36% of people were confident that others could spot fake news.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a problem for two reasons. One is our low confidence in other people\u2019s ability to identify false stories. The other is the gulf in perception between our own abilities and those of the public at large. I suspect that if we actually measured how well people discern disinformation from the truth, it\u2019d be closer to the lower number than the higher one. In short, we tend to think we\u2019re smarter than we are.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe me? For my first book, YouTubers, I commissioned a survey by YouGov to see how well the public recognised major figures on the platform. The team at YouGov recommended that, among the real names, I should add someone who didn\u2019t exist as a kind of sense check to identify the proportion of people who were bluffing. A worrying number of respondents confidently said they knew the person the pollsters had invented \u2013 and knew them well.<\/p>\n

A morass of misinformation<\/p>\n

All of this matters because of the scale of the false info problem that\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n

Three-quarters of respondents to the BIT survey said they\u2019d seen fake news in the last week, with X (which pared back its content moderation teams to the bone in favour of Elon Musk\u2019s free speech absolutism) and TikTok considered the worst offenders. LinkedIn was seen as the least worst (but it\u2019s not entirely clear if that\u2019s because many avoid platform because it has a reputation as being boring).<\/p>\n

Regardless, the findings sit uneasily with those who conducted it. \u201cOur latest research has added to the growing evidence that social media users are overconfident in their ability to spot false information,\u201d says Eva Kolker, head of consumer and business markets at BIT. \u201cParadoxically, this might actually be making people more susceptible to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short: if you think you\u2019re better than others at spotting fake news, you\u2019re actually more likely to have lower defences \u2013 and fall foul of it when you (inevitably) encounter it online.<\/p>\n

What should be done?Well, a start would be empowering users to be more aware of the risks of fake news and the impact it can have when shared with their social circles. Things snowball quickly thanks to the mob mentality mediated by social media algorithms, such as that Goodbye Meta AI post. So thinking twice and clicking once is important. (I outlined better ways to combat threats to our data in this piece.)<\/p>\n

But Kolker isn\u2019t convinced that\u2019s enough. \u201cMany of our attempts to improve online safety have focused on improving the knowledge and capability of individual users\u201d, she says.\u201cWhile important, our research shows there are inherent limits to the effectiveness of this approach\u201d.We can\u2019t just rely on individuals changing their behaviour. To really combat misinformation we also need social media platforms to take action and regulators and government to intervene to level the playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it time for an intervention?<\/p>\n

The BIT came up with a slate of recommendations they\u2019d put to governments and social media platforms to try to combat mis- and disinformation. First among them is to flag posts that contain false information as soon as they\u2019re spotted, to try and make the public aware before they share. To Meta\u2019s credit, that\u2019s something it did with the Goodbye Meta AI trend, adding labels to posts pointing out that the information was not correct.<\/p>\n

The BIT also recommends that platforms become more stringent in how much legal but harmful content they show. Conspiracy theories fester in a putrid information environment, and the BIT seem to be suggesting that the standard Silicon Valley approach \u2013 that sunlight is the best disinfectant \u2013 doesn\u2019t cut it.<\/p>\n

Except in one instance. Their third recommendation is regular public rankings of how much false or harmful content is on each platform.<\/p>\n

Whether any of this will work is tough to say. I\u2019ve been looking at the science alongside studies and surveys like BIT\u2019s lately for a number of reasons, and every positive intervention also appears to have its drawbacks. But if the Goodbye Meta AI trend going viral shows us anything, it\u2019s that we can\u2019t just assume people are able to distinguish what\u2019s real from what\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Angola Follow Africa-Press<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Angola. It\u2019s a wild world out there online, with dis- and misinformation flying about at pace. I\u2019m part-way through writing a book about the history of fake news, so I\u2019m well aware that people making stuff up is not new. But what is new is the reach that troublemakers have, whether their actions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":70686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[329],"class_list":["post-70687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-angola"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Fake News Confidence Trap could be your Downfall - Angola<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s a wild world out there online, with dis- and misinformation flying about at pace. 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