Facebook's Loophole

-
 

Fake news is a serious issue that has been crippling America for years. As seen in the 2016 election, the element of fake news being posted on social media and other misleading links is tricking people into believing extremely false news articles. One fake news article that I vividly remember causing a massive issue during the 2016 election was the fake story that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring at the bottom of a pizza place in Washington, DC (known as "Pizzagate"). The "headline" spread all over Facebook, and ultimately caused disaster. A man saw this face news article and stormed into the pizza place where it was claimed that Clinton had established the sex ring, and fired an assault rifle. Luckily nobody was killed or injured, but it goes to show that the spread of fake news is much more serious than people assume.
An area where fake news tends to thrive and feed off of is Facebook, a popular social media platform where millions of people scroll through everyday. Facebook executives are aware of this issue, as they have been taking many diligent steps to combat the spread of such false information towards its users. They have updated their policies and terms, and even terminated some accounts on its platform who have been posting fake news headlines and articles. Even though all of these new updates have been working, there is now a new issue of a loophole. 

Links have been able to be posted onto user’s facebook posts for a while now, with a photo and headline being shown once uploaded. This is known as a link preview, so the viewer can get a glimpse of what the link is discussing. Facebook (in their new policies) blocked users being able to edit their link previews to prevent the posting of fake news, or so they thought. The loophole that Facebook is currently dealing with is that people are still able to do so through a glitch in the system. This is a significant issue, as most people just see the link preview headline and immediately assume it's real--even if they do not read the actual article. My step mom, for example, is one of those people. She always assumes everything she sees is real, even if it is plastered on a known to be fake tabloid magazine. The presence of fake link previews, therefore, make it her gullible character even worse. I’m sure many other Americans deal with this uncertainty as well, which adds on to the spreading of these false news headlines. People see the headline and immediately share the post, which then lets thier friends on Facebook see it. Their friends can then also share the original post, leading to it spreading like wildfire. The cycle then continuously repeats, despite others pointing out that it is, indeed, fake. This loophole on Facebook needs to be fixed immediately, as it is only making the fake news problem worse for society.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dead or Alive?

-
Image
One of the most prominent and infamous political figures in today’s world is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He is widely known to be a dictator, and has a quite ominous reputation. Un was back again in the news recently, but not for any usual political reasons. Instead, it was reported that he was “gravely ill,” leading to his “death” after undergoing cardiovascular surgery. This was a shock to people everywhere, as nobody would have thought Kim Jong Un, a powerful figure having been credited with killing several people, is now on his own death bed. This left all who heard the news wondering, is he dead or alive? The headline that Un was seriously ill first emerged a couple weeks ago, and stated that he was not doing well after having heart surgery in months prior. Normally, reporters fact check this by investigating the claims--but North Korea is different. North Korea is largely shut off to the outside world, with no negative press regarding the country being broadcasted t
Read more

The Invention of the Printing Press

-
Image
The Printing Press was an invention that catapulted the world into the communication field, as it was the first of its kind to ever print words onto paper. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, it was truly a technological innovation. Gutenberg’s design was so important due to his development of replacing wood with metal to print each letter on paper. The first book ever printed on the device was the Bible, which makes sense to me since it was so universally known to those across Europe and the world. It is estimated that he printed around 180 copies of the Bible, each with 1300 pages. After researching this, i was left wondering how long that would have taken for the device to print so many pages. Since the device was new in the olden days, i'm assuming it must have taken a while. Now with the printers in the 21st century, printing that many pages would only take an hour or so, but i'm sure it took much longer with Gutenberg’s invention.   The news of th
Read more

Protecting the Right to Dissent

-
Image
  Public opinion has always been something people have, whether they proclaim it or not. Back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s, the government made it a crime to criticize the government (sedition & espionage act). This was later eradicated in the future, as one can freely comment on the government and disagree with its process however they wish under the first amendment. These acts were passed to prevent the rapid spread of dissent aimed at the government during the time when the Acts were passed (war time). Many Americans were extremely against the government and executive office at the time, causing them to comment on their actions in a harsh manner. This upset the government, thus making them pass the acts to make such dissent illegal. In today’s world, this would definitely not be okay--as people are extremely vocal on their opinions of the government today.  More specifically, the government is currently dealing with the global pandemic due to the Co
Read more