With the commercialisation of the internet, the freedom of
information on the internet has led to an overwhelming catalogue of information
online, from personal opinion to academic papers. However, little regulations
in cyberspace has resulted in an increasing spread of misinformation and
disinformation, some with motives to humour, and others with malicious intent.
Regardless of the intent, many people often get fooled by the false content
online created by satirical websites. This problem is further exacerbated when
the disinformation presented is something which the public wants to believe.
Action needs to be taken such that one can accurately judge the content online.
Therefore, google should implement an online content rating system to caution
users of the websites that they are visiting, so that they can be warned of
what others had to say about that particular website.
Satirical websites result in many misleading articles and
social media posts, fooling many into believing these information are true and
factual when in fact they were completely made up. Very often such websites
indicate in fine print or do not indicate at all that they post satirical
articles, contributing to the deception. One example of how such “news” has
fooled many would be the article by National Report on how a 15 year old who
“swatted” another gamer, was convicted of domestic terrorism and sentenced to
25 years imprisonment. Upon the release of the article, it was widely
circulated by many online news websites and social media, all of which believed
the articles authenticity. According to Barker from The Daily Dot, the article
was shared 200, 000 times on Facebook, and received many comments applauding
the decision of the judge. Barkers’ opinion was that the article was more than
convincing to deceive the average reader, and would have fooled everyone except
for the fact that National Report was the only paper which covered the trial,
and this ultimately led to the hoax being unveiled. Scams like these are
common. According to Wikipedia, media outlets have reported National Report’s
satire as fact 13 times since the creation of the National Report website in
2013. Such satirical news are hard for the readers and even media outlets to
guard against, given the authentic appearance of the articles.
The current solution put forward by the Singapore government
to tackle this problem is the regulation of news websites. News websites,
satirical or not, have perceived reliability due to the term “news” being used,
and thus clamping down on websites that claim to be news but are instead
downright misleading is a good approach. In this approach, the government takes
the role of deciding if the news reported is newsworthy, and if necessary, takes
action to remove misleading websites. This is however a limited approach which takes
time to implement and identify errant websites, and is only applicable to
Singaporean news websites.
A better solution would be for Google to implement an online
content rating system which relies on public feedback to better warn users of
the content that they are exposed to. After an online user has visited a
website or read some news on social media, they can choose to write a user
review on their web browser which would then pick the majority review response
and display it for other users who are visiting the website or reading the
news. This method relies on user feedback and thus a vast number of websites can
be moderated. This is especially useful since websites with heavy traffic will
receive more feedback from a wider range of people, enhancing the credibility.
Examples of tags that websites could have by the Google browser could take the
form of: “this website is known for satirical content”, or “this website has been
flagged for extreme views”. Had National
Report been flagged as a satirical website, many people would have not been
fooled so easily by the article and such a spectacle could have been avoided
easily.
While the internet has stayed relatively free from
regulations since its inception, implementation of an internet content rating
system by web browsers are long overdue. In the implementation of such a
system, care has to be made that user’s privacies are not unnecessarily
intruded upon, or websites becoming able to be manipulated and abused to show
false ratings. In the end, the onus is on the user to verify if the content
they are viewing come from reliable sources. According to Montgomery, the
publisher of National Report, it is the readers fault for being deceived by
satirical news and spreading misinformation over social media as genuine news,
since they themselves did not cross reference the authenticity of the news
before spreading it. There is only so much measures taken by the government and
organisations such as Google can do to prevent the spreading of false
information. Ultimately, some discretion is needed before one shares “news”
over social media.
Barker, I. (2014, September
04). No, a teen wasn’t just sentenced to 25 years in prison for swatting. The Daily Dot. Retrieved from http://www.dailydot.com/esports/15-year-old-swatting-prison-sentence-hoax/
National Report. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 30,
2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Report
Peace, Chiu. (2013, May 28). 10 online news sites must
follow traditional media regulations: MDA. [Supplemental material]. Yahoo Newsroom.
Retrieved from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/10-online-news-sites-must-follow-traditional-media-regulations--mda-103906167.html
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