For the first time, this week Twitter labeled a post by US President Trump with a fact-check label, linking to an article stating that the content was “unsubstantiated". This transparency of Twitter fact-checking has been on the roll-out for a few months. 

Transparency is good. Thanks for the warning label Twitter. 

But surely I’m not the only online user who is thinking this label is appropriate for quite a lot of social media content?

For me, this recent fake news warning points to the notion that with freedom of speech comes personal responsibility. 

Unfortunately, we can’t trust that others are always responsible with their words, thoughts or actions. But we can try to be mindful of our own personal responsibility. And with that responsibility comes a big scoop of healthy skepticism and fact-checking. 

No doubt we'll see more ‘how-to fact check’ guides online (like this ‘How to fact check guide’ below ).

Authenticity and censorship

The thing is, if we don’t use our own discretion to:

• Research and weigh up a comment, post or article’s authenticity and trustworthiness

or

• Recognise when opinion is represented as fact,

then we are at a great risk of resting far too heavily on our authorities; law, big business, government, to dictate to us on what is real, normal and acceptable. 

Labels are helpful, but responsibility is essential. If we can’t trust that others are always responsible, then we have to take more responsibility into our own hands.

Consider this... We know Facebook continues to remove posts and other content that may “harm" users. Growing evidence tells us that “harmful” content to you and me, is not the only content we are censored from. 

Just this morning a Facebook post was removed from the account of a trusted source of mine. This person had shared a friend's post containing their pictures taken of police violence and human right violation in Hong Kong. 

Also, after being found out, apparently YouTube has been “accidentally” deleting comments that criticise the Communist Party of China. 

Why was this content censored? Who is this censorship protecting? And why?

Censorship is supposed to protect us, the people, right?

But as Noam Chomsky says “You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. ... You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority?” If the great Noam is correct, then the answer to these questions are eye-widening and disconcerting.

I’ve recently also noticed that my online search results are really bad, wrong even. 

Today, unlike this time last year, it’s harder to find reputable information sources from universities and independent organisations (even when including .edu or .org in keyword search terms and using other search tips). 

At time of writing this, my search results are more commonly media websites and social platforms. 

So it seems that annoyingly, online search algorithms are click-baiting and time-wasting me into their websites, for me only to find no substantial content related to the actual keyword search term. 

Seems I'm not alone; SEO roundtable reported yesterday that 3,000 people commented/complained about Google on a popular forum (see ‘Google's May 2020 Core Update Mess Up Google's Search Results?) Hopefully search platforms will listen to it’s ‘customers’ and remedy this. Alternatively, in the future, will people gravitate more towards the ‘dark web’?

Oh, and ‘deep fakes’ are on the rise. This month Forbes reported ‘at the beginning of 2019 there were 7,964 deep fake videos online’, and we are at risk of ‘“reality apathy”: It’s too much effort to figure out what’s real and what’s not, so you’re more willing to just go with whatever your previous affiliations are’.

What does it all mean?

So what does all this mean to you and me? 

We must not take authenticity for granted. Nor our freedom of speech. 

We are all responsible for seeking out ‘truths’, sharing trustworthy tools and information with each other, so we can have trusted information from people we trust. 

Responsibility is synonymous with adulthood. We are all responsible for speaking up for ourselves, each other and the future generations.

The big social media platforms are not twenty years old yet. As they move through their teenage years, it appears they are still figuring out who they are, and the rules they want to play by. Remember, we are all on social media because ‘everyone’ else is on these platforms. Without our presence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc these platforms wouldn't exist. Business follows the customer. You really have more power that you realise, online and elsewhere.

On a final note, as digital literacy educator, Michael Caulfield says “the web is both the largest propaganda machine ever created and the most amazing fact-checking tool ever invented”.

How to fact check

See these top tips for fact-checking (courtesy of Caulfield):

• Check for previous work: Look around to see if someone else has already fact-checked the claim or provided a synthesis of research.

• Go “upstream” to the source of the claim. Most web content is not original. Get to the original source to understand the trustworthiness of the information. 

• Read laterally: Once you get to the source of a claim, read what other people say about the source (publication, author, etc.). The truth is in the network.

• Circle back: If you get lost, hit dead ends, or find yourself going down an increasingly confusing rabbit hole, back up and start over knowing what you know now. You’re likely to take a more informed path with different search terms and better decisions. 

In your search engine results (on Google, Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla, Duck Duck Go etc), scan the results and focus on the URLs and the blurbs to find the best result to click in the returned result set. 

You can read Caulfeild’s full book on web literacy here (the material is available under Public License).

Fact checking websites

• https://fullfact.org/

• https://theconversation.com/au/factcheck

• https://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/factchecks/

• https://www.factcheck.org/

• https://www.snopes.com/

• https://truthbetold.news/category/fact-checks/

• https://www.hoax-slayer.com/

• https://www.theguardian.com/news/reality-check

Sources:

Clark, B., 2018. Fact Or Fiction? Using The Web To Quickly Fact-Check Social Media Feeds | Washington State Magazine | Washington State University. [online] Magazine.wsu.edu. Available at: <https://magazine.wsu.edu/web-extra/fact-or-fiction-using-the-web-to-quickly-fact-check-social-media-feeds/> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Caulfeild, M., 2019. Web Literacy For Student Fact Checkers. [online] Mikecaulfield.files.wordpress.com. Available at: <https://mikecaulfield.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/web-literacy-for-student-fact-checkers-1567184081.pdf> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Michael A. Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. 

Clark, B., 2020. Fact Or Fiction? Using The Web To Quickly Fact-Check Social Media Feeds | Washington State Magazine | Washington State University. [online] Magazine.wsu.edu. Available at: <https://magazine.wsu.edu/web-extra/fact-or-fiction-using-the-web-to-quickly-fact-check-social-media-feeds/> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Chomsky, N., 1997. What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream. [online] Chomsky.info. Available at: <https://chomsky.info/199710__/> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Schwartz, B., 2020 26 May. Google's May 2020 Core Update Mess Up Google's Search Results?. [online] seroundtable.com. Available at: <https://www.seroundtable.com/google-may-2020-core-update-mess-up-29508.html> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Toews, R., 2020 25 May. Deepfakes Are Going To Wreak Havoc On Society. We Are Not Prepared.. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/05/25/deepfakes-are-going-to-wreak-havoc-on-society-we-are-not-prepared/?fbclid=IwAR1QAqVX9fdMoblMeBW9hJVfP89nAZnhQjxTObgx8SqSYVCDv6ItVPMq_sg#4c66178c7494> [Accessed 28 May 2020].

Vincent, J., 2020. 26 May. Youtube Is Deleting Comments With Two Phrases That Insult China’S Communist Party. [online] The Verge. Available at: <https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting-comments-censorship-chinese-communist-party-ccp> [Accessed 28 May 2020].