FAKE NEWS has become a major problem worldwide, with some blaming tech media giant Facebook for its proliferation – citing Hong Kong’s violent anti-government protests, which have entered their fifth month.
The Japan Times reported that Hong Kongers are being inundated with online rumours, fake news and propaganda from all sides of the political divide.
A slew of allegations are spreading online – particularly on Facebook – on major incidents such as the cause of death of student Alex Chow, who fell off the edge of a parking garage last Friday.
Social media users allege that the 22-year-old was chased and maybe pushed by policemen who were clearing protesters with tear gas nearby.
Officers then blocked an ambulance from reaching him, the posts allege, delaying aid that could have saved him.
"Never mind that the claims were unsubstantiated – police denied chasing Chow and mainstream news outlets, including the South China Morning Post, described the circumstances of his fall as ‘unclear’.
"(Now) Hundreds of protesters are seizing on his Nov 8 death to engage in clashes with police that resulted in one person being shot on Monday,” said the portal.
Fake news is now in full flow and despite calls for people to check and confirm reports, more people are tuning in and are not turned off by it.
One engineering website recently highlighted 10 of the most viewed fake news stories of this year, with the number one story being about Donald Trump’s grandfather supposedly being a pimp and tax evader, and his father was a member of the KKK (Klu Klux Klan).
The number of people who viewed this is 29.2 million – and the stories led to 1,638,165 chats.
According to the portal, the story has been debunked.
The Washington Times quoted Avaaz, a non-profit organisation that monitors online disinformation, which warned that fake news stories continue to find mass audiences on Facebook in spite of measures taken by the platform to limit the dissemination of bogus articles.
News stories which are flagged as phony by Facebook’s independent fact-checkers still manage to be viewed by millions of the platform’s users.
"An examination of the top 100 viral fake news stories about US politics that remained on Facebook after being independently debunked found that they were posted a total of more than 2.3 million times by Facebook users," said Avaaz.
The 100 fake news reports were viewed more than 158 million times, which is significantly more than the 140 million Americans who voted in the 2016 US presidential election, it added.
Avaaz’s campaign director, Fadi Quran, wrote: “Every American who cares about free and fair elections in 2020, including the candidates and political parties, should be sounding the alarm about Facebook’s fake news problem.
"This is a company that can easily reach every voter in this country, and their tools are accelerating a wave of political lies that leaves us less informed and more polarised.”