Fake news has become endemic in today’s hyper-connected digital age. Such news ranges from the bizarre to that with likely real-world repercussions. Crime news items such as ‘Morgue Worker Arrested After Giving Birth To A Dead Man’s Baby’, and ‘Police Find 19 White Female Bodies In Freezers With ‘Black Lives Matter’ Carved Into Skin’, each racked up thousands of engagements on Facebook. Such stories were found to be false, and fortunately, did not lead to anyone being harmed. However, one fake news story that suggested that a Democratic Party pedophile ring was being run out of a pizza joint spread far and wide. It ultimately reached a point where a man barged into the restaurant with a firearm intending to rescue the kids and then surrendered when he saw no children at all.

Someone has rightly said that fake news has existed for as long as people have told stories. What makes the situation particularly alarming is the speed at which a news item or sound byte can be disseminated as a result of the internet and social media.

Major Stake holders Doing Their Bit

The BBC, known for its accurate, independent and impartial news reporting, has set up a permanent Reality Check team, which will target false stories or facts being shared on various social media channels. The team will work closely with Facebook in particular to counter stories masquerading as news.

Technology giants have already begun to take a firm stand against fake news. Google Inc. and Facebook have launched CrossCheck, in partnership with several news organizations in France.

As part of the initiative, Facebook will encourage its users to flag articles that they suspect are inaccurate or blatantly false. These articles will then be fact-checked by the partner organizations, and if the article is deemed false by at least two news outfits, are then flagged as contested in users' feeds. Users will see a warning notification before they choose to share the story.

Facebook has also implemented a series of protocols that block ad sales to disputed sites and has even brought in third-party verification processes to label articles as false or disputed.

Leveraging Technology to Fight Fake News Epidemic

When it comes to fighting fake news, everyone must do their part, especially platforms that facilitate instant information sharing. In the enterprise collaboration space, team messaging platforms are increasingly being utilized and recognized as credible information-sharing platforms. This is why it is important that fake news is detected and flagged before it reaches the masses. Even team messaging platforms can provide the tools needed to flag fake news.

For instance, Flock, the team messenger has introduced the Flock Fake News Detector (FND), which identifies and flags content from sources deemed misleading, unverified or false when shared on Flock. It cross-references the URLs of links shared on Flock against a database of over 600 verified fake news sources. If the news is found to be from an unreliable news source, the FND immediately flags it with a highly visible icon and red bar alongside the preview of the URL.

Audience Awareness is the Need of the Hour

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with us to be more critical about what is disseminated online. We need to be more proactive when it comes to consuming and controlling the false news. One way to impress this sense of responsibility is to start educating people – starting from schools and colleges – to limit the spread of fake news.

As users, there are many ways in which we can check the veracity of news. The first thing is to examine headlines carefully. Fake stories tend to have a sensational element as we saw in the examples mentioned earlier. Secondly, a reader should go through the story and identify people, organizations and reports that are mentioned and cross-check those on different sites. Thirdly, if a URL looks odd, then check the about us section and author. And finally, look at comments and reviews.

In an age where information is disseminated on multiple platforms and can spread like wildfire, we need to approach information from a critical perspective. This is how we can ensure that fake news perishes as quickly as it rises.