Why We Should Be Worried Of Google And Facebook’s Plans To Label Fake News For Us

As if gate-keeping was not bad enough, the big boys are planning to be our referees now

Remember that ‘breaking news’ when we woke up to Edward Snowden claiming Osama Bin Laden Is “Alive And Well In The Bahamas”? Well, that was fake news. So is Donald Trump, President of The United States of America claiming “72% of refugees admitted into U.S. (2/3 -2/11) during COURT BREAKDOWN are from 7 countries: SYRIA, IRAQ, SOMALIA, IRAN, SUDAN, LIBYA & YEMEN.” Then there’s news about Russia sending Snowden to US as “gift” to Trump which Moscow has recently denied. These examples are but recent and sort of tip-of-the-iceberg of what is now a behemoth empire of fake and clickbait ‘news’ business. It’s everywhere. From Facebook which can be called the mine of it all to Google to any other service you use. This is not just confined to news about Snowden or Trump’s lies but there are massacres ‘happening’ where there are none to people getting elected for NASA when there’s no provision of such recruitment at all! And this bug of fake news has spread widely. Journalists and reputed news sources have all fallen prey to this at one point or the other. Sometimes it is just facts in a larger story while most other times, it’s the main story itself. Like Glenn Greenwald pointed out in this piece on New York Times where their editor passed the buck of fact-checking to their readers. Glenn wrote,

Like most people, I’ve long known that factual falsehoods are routinely published in major media outlets. But as I’ve pointed out before, nothing makes you internalize just how often it really happens, how completely their editorial standards so often fail, like being personally involved in a story that receives substantial media coverage.

So how to fight this menace and advent of fake news, and who will fight this for us?

Enter Google and Facebook — The ‘good’ guys.

Facebook has announced it will introduce warning labels on stories they deem to be “fake news,” with the help of partisan “fact checking” organisations such as Snopes and PolitiFact. Stories deemed to be false will now be “flagged” by Facebook, with an accompanying red label claiming the story is “disputed by 3rd Party Fact-Checkers.”

Sounds nice. Doesn’t it? But then that’s the whole problem with any such move where a big guy extends his help to clear the mess we are in. Facebook and Google has long been creating a bubble around us, boundaries which are totally decided by their algorithms. What we browsed yesterday decides what we are presented today. Everything else is blacked out from our eyes. It is present there but we are not served that information, that alternate view because these ‘gatekeepers’ think we don’t want to see it. Did they ask us if we do? Well, they don’t care. They have long started to make decisions for us.

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Former MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

Most of us do not realize the impact of this. As Pariser explains in his TED talk, the more and more you start clicking on particular set of links and ‘likes’ updates, the more and more deeper the bubble gets around you. But we never realize it. It gives us a sense of universe far from reality, one where everything is happening as we ‘like’ it. The other view, alternate point, contrasting ideas, all have for some reason gone for toss. And that reason is their algorithms.

Coming back to fake news and how these tech giants are planning to deal this menace. You guessed it right. Another set of algorithms which will supersede human judgment and decide for all of us what is right, wrong, biased, fake, right and more. Is that the right solution? In an ideal world that might seem helpful as it takes away the burden of another choice-making from our heads, but hey! Who said we are living in ideal world? The solution isn’t letting any one company decide for ourselves but for all of us, the consumers to be critical, we need to stop consuming news and information from one single source. We should start browsing competitive pages, read more diverse content and stop using that which continuously publishes fake news.

Ever wondered why some publishers publish clickbait, fake and provocative articles? Because they sell. People buy that stuff making publishers think we like it. We need to stop just that. We need to own the internet back like we used to do. We have to get the control back into our hands before it’s too late. The gatekeepers need to understand that in a free and open internet, they have no place to be. So are the referees who now aim to whistle and flag the right and wrong content for us. The gatekeepers and referees may seem like blessing in disguise for the lazy souls but they are not.

“The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee but rather because we as participants, we as citizens, we as users of these services help each other, The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting very popular.”

— Edward Snowden

We need to be cautious in this game of allowing someone the powers to screen and label content for us. Initially this may seem to be a lazy men’s dream of getting his tedious work done but eventually when things settle it’ll be too late to get things back in our control. Already the algorithms that decide what we like and what we like to read on our time-line which when first started where applauded for flushing out unnecessary content and cleaning our time-line have started to make decisions for us. They are now blacking out news from certain regions, hiding content that’s critical of our last liked news item or last updated status update, they have taken control of our data.

“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”
 — Mark Zuckerberg explaining his staff the utility of Facebook’s “News Feed”

Does that ring any bells? Have you noticed how a news item, view critical of what you read and like on facebook has disappeared suddenly from your time-line? Or that you no more see news your friend is able to see in his Google search results? Eli Pariser said at the annual TED conference that he has always made an effort to befriend both liberals and conservatives on Facebook so he could keep track of the issues each group was discussing. Over time, however, something strange happened, Pariser said: his conservative Facebook friends disappeared from his news feed. He realized that Facebook’s algorithm had “edited them out” because Pariser was clicking more on links from liberal friends than conservative ones. (Courtesy: HuffingtonPost)

The new suggested refereeing is no different. The whole issue is of some Big Brother deciding for us, taking from us the very task of critical thinking, the basic requirement that sets humans apart from other living beings. Critical thinking is important. We need to harness it more. What we need is not a referee but for all of us to come together and help each other in weeding out false content and, discourage those who share and publish it in first place. Giving our power to think critically in the hands of some referee is no solution, none at all. Fake news is bad, no doubt about it, but censoring it is the bad remedy; we need more good speech to counter it. Also, the more and more we give control of our lives into hands of one entity, the more and more worrying our future gets. Google is no more the simple search engine it used to be nor is facebook anymore the cute network-for-friends-to-stay-connected. They have grown way larger for any competitive to grow and challenge them. In fact recently there were reports of Google suppressing links to its competitor’s email service from its search results.

“There seems to be no alternative to the larger services. Because of this network effect, because the first mover advantage. When you get a Google or a Facebook or Twitter in place, they never seem to leave. To have one company that has enough power to reshape the way we think, I don’t think I need to describe how dangerous that is.”
 — Edward Snowden

Think about all this. And next time when you are looking for some news, also try searching from DuckDuckGo (they don’t track you like Big Brother!) or from any other search engine and not just from Google. And when you read any piece of news which is provocative or raises extreme emotions, get off from the page you are on and read the same news piece from other service as well. Get facts and opinions about the same from diverse content providers. Consume your news from different providers and not just one. In short, get hold of what you read, how you frame your thoughts; let your biases come from your critical thought and not out of some referee whistling or gatekeeper closing down certain content because they think you may not need or dislike it. Our forefathers and most of us fought for this freedom (and open internet) to get back the control in our hands and not to let someone else filter it for us.

“Freedom of speech is unnecessary if the people to whom it is granted do not think for themselves.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana