part0031

The UK, May 2016. With the upcoming referendum on membership of the European Union, the country is in the grips of the great ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ debate. These were the early days of the blanket Brexit coverage and it would be the main issue on the country’s agenda for the next four years and beyond as it very quickly became apparent that the subsequent leaders of the country struggled to actually put a plan in place.

Scrolling through social media at this time in the run up to the referendum, there was a lot of information being posted about why we should either leave or remain and it was difficult for many to know who and what to trust. Maybe misinformation influenced the result, maybe it didn’t, I have my views and politics, but I’m not going to reveal them here as it’s a divisive subject. However, whatever your politics, it’s very difficult to argue that online platforms and social media do not play a massive role in modern day elections – despite Mark Zuckerberg’s initial claim that it was “pretty crazy” to say that Facebook influenced the result of the 2016 Presidential Election (a statement which was quickly rolled back on as the evidence seemed quite overwhelming). It's at this point that we must of course discuss the issue of fake news.

Fake news is a term recently popularised by President Trump to describe mainly media outlets that disagree with him, but the threat of fake news is not to be underestimated. Social media sites have taken action over recent months to try to promote credible news sources, but it is important for us to not just take what we read online as gospel without further verification. Particularly as, with the platforms we all have now, anyone can write anything about anyone – you could be the subject of fake news on a blog or social network.

It’s not just around elections that fake news becomes an issue however. Advances in technology to allow the rapid publishing and sharing of all types of information has created much good in society, but it has also enabled the rapid spread of misinformation and the easy creation of groups around ideas that have been proven and agreed by experts to be inherently wrong. This stretches from the slightly strange such as the flat earther movement (those who enjoy the medieval belief that the earth is actually flat and not spherical) to the extremely dangerous, such as the growing anti-vaccination trend.

For many years, doctors and other scientific experts have advocated the use of vaccinations to suppress or even completely eradicate some dangerous diseases from society, but now a growing movement is putting people in jeopardy as some parents refuse to vaccinate their children, believing it will cause them harm in other ways, often based on less than credible information shared widely via online channels. This prompted the World Health Organization to label a lack of trust in vaccinations a global health crisis in 2019. 47

The scale of this issue was also emphasized by Facebook’s response which was to take the step of banning anti-vaccine information from the platform. However, reports in January 2020 have stated that Facebook is still running anti-vaccine adverts if they do not include misinformation, as they do not violate its policies, according to a comment provided to Buzzfeed 48 .

This issue perhaps became even more serious in early 2020 as COVID-19 swept across the world in a global pandemic. With everyone at risk from the virus, the potential for misinformation online became an even bigger issue, since if people followed the wrong advice it could put them at even greater risk. Of course, false posts on social media had become a major issue by April 2020, leading to Facebook taking unprecedented action amid claims that it was not clamping down on COVID-19 misinformation effectively. According to a BBC News article in April 2020, Facebook would ensure that “users who have read, watched or shared false coronavirus content will receive a pop-up alert urging them to go to the World Health Organization’s website.” 49 One would assume that if this information is verified as false it could then be removed from the platform.

Not only this, but an associated rumour that started to spread online around the same time, was that the development of 5G was responsible for the spread of COVID-19 – leading to reports of mobile masts being vandalised and engineers being threatened. As we go on you can see the very real threat from fake news and why it’s important to ensure that what you’re believing is not misinformation. If however, you vehemently believe in any of these theories I expect that you’ve now stopped reading and I’ll probably be getting a poor review or some abuse on social media.

Moving back to politics for a minute, there is a big focus currently on the actions that social media platforms are taking in the run up to the 2020 US Presidential Election. By the time you’re reading this we may know whether President Trump has won a second term or Biden, the Democrat candidate, has managed to defeat him in the election, but one hot topic will likely remain: the use of political advertising. In October 2019, Twitter announced a ban on all political advertising on the platform. 50 Now you can debate the merits of this all you want, but it is in stark contrast to the approach of Facebook which made it clear in January 2020 that not only would it not restrict micro-targeting of political ads, but it would not fact-check them either. 51 Therefore you may well continue to see political adverts online with untruthful information in them (Facebook subsequently announced that it would freeze political ads during the week running up to the 2020 US Presidential Election).

It’s not just politics and health that are greatly impacted by misinformation online, online rumours can harm companies and individuals as well. In March and April 2020 as most of the world went into lockdown, video chat services and apps surged in user numbers as people used any method they could to keep close to friends and loved ones. One such app that exploded in popularity was Houseparty. In late March though, users of social media sites started posting that the Houseparty app had hacked their phones and other online accounts such as Spotify, Facebook, PayPal and email accounts. In response to this, Houseparty claimed that there was no hack and put it down to a smear campaign to harm the company, offering a $1 million dollar bounty for proof of this. I’ll admit that I had only used Houseparty once and hadn’t planned to again so I deleted my account to be on the safe side, but suggested to friends if they wanted to keep their accounts to change their password to something unique and do so for any linked accounts.

So what is the truth? The consensus in the security community is firstly that Houseparty itself is not hacking anyone’s phone as some social media posts had suggested. Why? Because it is owned by EPIC Games (creators of Fortnite), which is not an unknown publisher looking to create dangerous malware and disguise it as an app. Instead, the likely issues (whether Houseparty was responsible or not) are likely to be down to users’ using the same password across multiple accounts – if one is compromised, then hackers will try the same password and email address across other accounts to get access. The Naked Security Blog by security firm Sophos has a more in-depth guide on these issues. 52

With all this in mind, the issue of misinformation and fake news online is perhaps a bigger problem than many of us maybe thought it was. So how can you be sure that the information that influences you and your decisions is not potentially dangerous misinformation? A change in attitude towards what you find online, questioning it rather than automatically believing it, will help. The main thing to do though is to be selective about where you get your news from. Ensure you only get your serious news from outlets and sites you know are reputable (although I know this is potentially subjective depending on your world view) and, if in doubt, check the other news sites and websites of specialist organizations such as the World Health Organization (in the case of health issues) or well-known security companies (in the case of hacking incidents). You could also consult independent fact checking organisations like Full Fact .

In the case of information on social media, you should always think before you share it, check the source of the information and see what the experts say about it. While social media is responsible for a lot of good, it’s also a vehicle for dangerous misinformation and the sheer volume of it means it’s very difficult to police. I’m all for free speech, but I would suggest we all have a responsibility to ensure we’re not aiding the spreading of harmful falsehoods.