Trust but verify

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Hi ladies. For our first post we are going to focus on the troubling issue of fake news. Social media plays a huge role in shaping public opinion. More people are getting their news and information from Facebook and Twitter than legitimate news sources. And it's becoming increasingly dangerous:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/technology/whatsapp-india-killings.html
https://newrepublic.com/article/147486/facebook-genocide-problem

So let's take a quiz. Can you spot the fake? :

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/04/technology/facebook-influence-campaigns-quiz.html?login=google

For this post I want you to complete the following in a Google Doc first.

1) Knowledge: Tell us your results from spotting the fakes. There are 4 quizzes. How did you score on all 4.
2) Comprehension: Describe one of the challenges and the differences you see between the two posts.
3) Application: Research and give an example of a technology that can help people spot fake news.
4) Evaluate: Should Facebook and other social media apps remain free of regulation? Justify your position.


Comments

  1. Eileen KellySeptember 27, 2018 at 8:25 PM

    1. On the interactive quizzes I didn’t do as bad as expected. Only getting one or two wrong came as a shock to me.

    2. One of the challenges I see between the two posts is that they could be on the same social media platform but you really have to analyze the post before determining weather it is fake or not. And one of the differences you can see in the posts is the drastic number increase in likes and comments.

    3.One application that can help people spot “fake news” is “Bad News”. This is an application that lets you control a fake news publication. You ca learn how the process of making fake news is carried out and how it is manipulated for the public eye.

    4. No , I do not think Facebook and other social media apps should not remain free of regulation. These worldwide, multi-million dollar companies should have a trained team/task force to keep the fake news under control. I am not just talking about a fake ad for a sale at a store , but also mainstream media publications that look very believable to the public eye but would not get passed trained officials.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CrisSeptember 28, 2018 at 6:42 AM

    On the NY Times quiz I got a 3 of the 4 spot the fakes right. One of the big difference between the posts is the grammar; bad grammar is a sure-tell sign of a fake news source. Also the types of images they use is also an indication of fake or real source. The website, Politifact, is a great website that during live debates fact checks what the people debating are saying. This was especially popular during the Trump-Hillary debates during the election of 2016. The website fact-checked the two candidates live so the audience saw at once who lied and who was actually saying facts. Social media should be regulated, not monitored. The EU took a step towards this in lue of the Facebook scandal. By forcing social media companies to be more transparent in one section of the world, the company is forced to be more transparent everywhere else. The EU managed to do what a grid-locked US Congress couldn’t -- place regulations to curb the power of this large and frankly overpowered conglomerates. History has shown that if big companies run unregulated people are oppressed and taken advantage of. The 1% wins while the common man suffers. People are not farms of information to be cultivated and harvested from. Further regulations for companies like Facebook is needed before more people are killed by these unregulated companies such as in India and Myanmar.

    ReplyDelete
  3. lulu whitehallSeptember 28, 2018 at 10:59 AM

    1) Knowledge: Tell us your results from spotting the fakes. There are 4 quizzes. How did you score on all 4.

    I got 3 out of the 4 posts right. It wasn’t as hard to spot the because of the grammar use and the false information.
    2) Comprehension: Describe one of the challenges and the differences you see between the two posts.
    Both posts look real for every two choices. You have to look at the detail and ue your own knowledge to pick it out. For example, The first two images, you have to notice the broken english in the femminist post. This is automatically a red flag.
    3) Application: Research and give an example of a technology that can help people spot fake news.
    Google Chrome has something where you can install and see what news are fake or not.
    This Chrome extension is powered by the MediaBiasFactCheck database, and it not only alerts you when you are browsing a fake news site but will clue you into the political biases of legitimate sites as well. Accurate facts do not guarantee truth, after all; different presentations can leave you with very different ideas.
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/official-media-bias-fact/hdcpibgmmcnpjmmenengjgkkfohahegk?hl=en-US

    4) Evaluate: Should Facebook and other social media apps remain free of regulation? Justify your position.

    Yes and no, I believe that people have the right to post what they want but they also need to regulate it because it can reach an extent where things can get bad. People dont want to be believing fake news.

    ReplyDelete
  4. amanda aquino September 28, 2018 at 10:59 AM

    1. I got all 4 right
    2. It wasn't that hard. It was obvious which one was fake to me.
    3. I don't know but i guess just making people aware of the signs that it could be fake.
    4. No because some people really believe everything on the internet when its completely wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hope BaroneSeptember 28, 2018 at 11:00 AM

    I was not good at guessing fake pages in the new york times article. I didn’t know how to distinguish fake posts from real ones because they were so similar. I scored a ¼ on the quiz. I had an issue of differing weather the writer of the post was making the information up or if it was actually real. Looking at the language of the post can give away whether its fake or not. Broken English and typos are common in fake posts. We can educate ourselves by researching information we read and fact-checking everything we research. I personally think regulation rules need to be present on social media platforms. Other accounts stealing posts and not giving credit to the owner just for popularity. It is going to take a lot of time and a lot of money to regulate the platform, but its worth it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AriannaSeptember 30, 2018 at 7:09 PM

    Knowledge: Out of the four questions in the quiz, I got two correct. I got the first and last wrong.
    Comprehension: The challenge is figuring out if it’s from a real page or not. For example, in the self care posts, both gave great advice and looked legit. However, upon inspecting the fake page further, you find that they give invalid information and advice.
    Application: An example of technology that can help with detecting fake news is an extension such as b.s. Detector, it’s a chrome extension that warns you if something can possibly be fake: http://bsdetector.tech/
    Evaluate: Facebook and other social media platforms should remain free of regulation, however, people should be informed about fake news and it’s danger. It should be free of regulation, so that people can still post whatever they want, but more people should be educated that sometimes, things are fake.

    ReplyDelete

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