Are all online news are true? How to fix the problem?
Fake news are all everywhere. According to some studies, people mostly believe on the content of the online media and internet. Would fake online news be a great problem? The answer is yes.
We cannot blame Facebook and google, since social media reflect the people opinions. So, fake news and fake opinion can be spread very fast across the net.
What we read and share online having a massive effect at the actual world news, what can web designers do to solve the problem of online fake news? So, here is the opinion of five web experts to solve the problem.
Support Actual News
According to the Bruce Lawson, self-proclaimed web standards lovegod, "The social media bubbles in which we live, whereby platforms amplify the stories they determine algorithmically that we’ll like, so our preconceptions are reinforced”.
Furthermore he stated that “many of the fake news sites were set up by people making money through advertising on them. Ads were meant to help site owners pay for content production; now they’re a web parasite that is in danger of killing the hosts. We need to value – and be prepared to pay for – real journalism again."
And lastly “we need an easy way to pay for things on the web hopefully the Payment Request API going through the W3C will fill that gap” stated Bruce Lawson.
Educate People about online news
As Patrick Lauke, reasons senior accessibility consultant, said “Twitter and Facebook are a convenient scapegoat”. The reason is that “the social media personalize user’s experience based on user’s friends and interests. Social media never claimed to be non-partisan, and it has no duty to be fair and balanced.”
Moreover, according to Patrick Lauke "People getting their biased news from social networks is no different from people who watch Fox News or read Murdoch’s tabloids. There’s no technological quick fix. The solution is difficult: we need to educate people on how to critically evaluate news sources, and seek out different viewpoints."
Focus on Dependable writers
“Social media companies need to be forced to show the person posting the article or news more noticeably, thus the readers can recognize the source of article better,” says Caroline Sinders, the Eyebeam Open Lab Fellow with BuzzFeed News.
Caroline Sinders continued that "Where we fall into greater problems is vetting the sources. Should we rely on Facebook to vet spaces like RT (Russian Times), Occupy Democrats, and so on? Google highlights potential spamming and phishing websites. Should Facebook block fake news sites? No. But should Facebook highlight ‘Hey, this is not a vetted or ‘real’ news site?’ Maybe. Should we trust Facebook to decide what is factual, what is a legitimate opinion and what is designed to be fake news to confuse people? That’s a much harder question to answer."
Provide tools to guide people
According to Carl Alviani, observer’s designer writer "Anyone who has watched the evolution of interaction design over the past decade has seen how effective it can be at nudging human behavior. Handling the fake news is not difficult – it only needs us to create the right tools. Legitimate journalists and conscious readers are more than capable of spotting the culprits, all we need to do is make it easier for them to raise their voices than the propagandists."
Personalize the Problem
As product designer and developer Faruk Ateş suggested "We could reward people for spreading truthful news, or for debunking falsehoods effectively. We need a cultural shift to make believing in fake news a shameful act, something that costs a person more than an ill-informed world view. Solving this through technology alone, without tackling the psychological side, won’t suffice."
So as Faruk Ateş opinion it is better to discourage people to spread the false news which is better solution rather than technological solution. If people wants to do certain activities they will find the way to do that. Thus, if it is stopped and discouraged from people, the fake news rate will dramatically decreased.
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