THE aftermath of Monday’s suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena overwhelmingly brought out the best in people, as strangers helped strangers find food, shelter and comfort.
Taxi drivers came from other cities to ferry home the distressed, queues formed to donate blood, a homeless man cradled a dying woman in his arms so she would not be alone. But sadly another facet of human nature was also on display. Or rather, online.
For reasons almost as unfathomable as those of the attacker, internet trolls and hoaxers flooded social media after the atrocity to spread fake news about “missing” children and relatives using random pictures taken from other corners of the internet.
There were also false updates about security operations and secondary threats. Experts believe some people are motivated by a desire to see these bogus messages spread online, generating retweets and Facebook likes from people who think they are real.
A natural urge to help locate the missing or keep others safe is exploited for a pathetic thrill. A generation ago, before the internet was an everyday utility, such people would not have had an outlet for their behaviour. Some may have called a newspaper or broadcaster, but their stories would have been checked and discarded. Now they can publish at will on platforms such as Facebook and their lies can go viral.
This week, a press investigation revealed the guidelines used by Facebook as it tries unsuccessfully to grapple with the huge amount of unverified content it hosts.
With almost two billion users, around 1.3billion of them daily ones, Facebook is clearly up against it. Fake news is endemic. The platform has made it easier for users to report fake stories for review by fact-checkers, but does not actually remove them from the site.
Instead, fake stories are merely marked as disputed and downgraded. Part of the reason is that false stories can still generate profit for social media companies. Algorithms aren’t squeamish about how websites generate traffic.
But if social media companies are to act like publishers, and profit like publishers, they have a duty to society to live up to the responsibilities of publishers.
In 1931, the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin famously faced down the press barons of the day by borrowing a line from his cousin Rudyard Kipling, accusing them of pursuing “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.
History is repeating itself. Social media platforms have the power and money – Facebook made a $3billion profit in the first three months of 2017 alone – but where is the responsibility?
Earlier this month the News Media Association, backed by Newsquest, the publisher of The Herald, launched a campaign to highlight fake news on social media and highlight the checks and balances integral to traditional newspaper reporting.
We recognise our responsibilities to our readers and to the truth. If social media companies do not, then the government must recognise its duty to make them meet a higher standard.
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