Today I am writing about Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of wikipedia, and his new site that he hopes will help fight against fake news. In theguardian article entitled Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site, it talks about what exactly Wikitribune is going to be and why Wales believes it will help to stop the spread of false information. In essence Wikitribune will be for news what Wikipedia is for general information. The articles presented on the site will be written by professional journalists with the aid of “an army of volunteer community contributors.” (Hern, Alex) The idea being that with so many people, both paid and unpaid, fact checking the information presented the resulting articles will be more factually sound and contain less bias and opinions on the content. In my opinion this seems like a great idea. So far in my research of fake news, along with the ethical issues that surround it, the most ethical solution to the problem is simply fact checking everything. The primary issue of censoring fake news is how doing so would violate freedom of speech as well as open up the possibility of abuse in what content is censored. By having a large forum open to the public to help filter out the falsehoods present in ongoing stories, it helps people who are not willing or not capable of fact checking for themselves a large pool of allegedly unbiased and factual information. The issues I see with Wikitribunel are the same issues many have with Wikipedia. The article made it seem that not everyone is free to edit the sites content but that has yet to be seen. The issue with Wikipedia and potentially Wikitribunel is that since it is so easy to edit or vandalize a page some stories might be changed to contain fake news and a lot of people might read and buy into the false story before it get corrected. Though I feel Wikitribunel may become an excellent tool, I still feel it is necessary for everyone to take it upon themselves to fact check information before believing in it.
Hern, Alex. "Wikipedia Founder to Fight Fake News with New Wikitribune Site." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 Apr. 2017. Web. 29 Apr. 2017.
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Talking more about censorship, Facebook is currently creating a tool that would allow governments to prevent certain posts to appear. They are doing so in hopes of getting China to allow their company to do business in China. Though the software is in development it may not ever see the light of day as Facebook has a history of announcing new features that never see the light of day. The reason I find this particular software to be so interesting is the potential it has to be abused. The very nature of the software is anti free speech and goes against what we as American believe. Though the software is intended to be used by China, there is no guarantee it would not be used here in the US as well. I personally feel that the software’s potential to be misused makes it dangerous. On the other hand however, Facebook is a company and they are entitled to try to expand their business. What I feel this all boils down to is that people need to get their news from other sources besides what pops up on their Facebook feed. Having too much faith in any one source is problematic and it is always best to fact check information for yourself.
Isaac, Mike. "Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China." The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2016. Web. 21 Apr. 2017. Earlier this month, Germany approved a bill that will impose a fine to social network sites that fail to remove “criminal content” as defined by German law within 24 hours of it being posted. The bill also states that other illegal content must be removed with seven day. Though the bill still needs parliamentary approval before going into effect, it is likely to pass. With this being said, I am unsure where I stand on this bill. Looking at it in one light, it will undoubtedly reduce the amount of hate speech posted online. The downside however it will likely cause many posts, that do not contain “illegal content”, to be removed. This will happen because social network sites will likely not want to risk being fined and therefore err on the side of caution in regard to removing posts. This raises the prime ethical concern of monitoring fake news. Though readers do not want to be deceived by false information, posters want to be able to post opinion pieces. With this bill in place, those opinion based posts would be subject to removal if they contain opinions that could be seen as “illegal content.” Personally, though I agree that something needs to be done about fake news, I do not believe this is the way to handle the issue.
Cnbc. "Germany Could Start Fining Social Media Giants $53 Million for Not Tackling Fake News, Hate Crime." CNBC. CNBC, 06 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017. This week I chose to write about a facebook post created by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, and contains his thoughts on how Facebook should handle fake news and explains the issues of doing so. The post is a little old but still gets across some points about my essay topic. Though normally a facebook post would not be a very good source of information I feel that using a post made by the company CEO is a reliably enough source of information regarding the company. Though many of the specifics only relate to what facebook is doing about fake news the more broad topics addressed in the post address the underlying ethical issues about fake news and why it is difficult to police.
Zuckerberg’s post does an outstanding job addressing the my paper’s core topic, expressing how people both want the stories they read to be accurate and relate to them but also do not want to be limited on what they post. I especially liked this quote: “The problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically. We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible. We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties” (Zuckerberg, Mark). This quote in particular essentially explains the entire ethical problem fake news creates. Nobody wants to be deceived but when limits are placed on what people are allowed to say or post where does it end. The post also list what facebook is currently working on to help stop the spread of fake news including: Stronger detection, Easy reporting, Third party verification, Warnings, Related articles quality, Disrupting fake news economics, and user feedback. Most of these countermeasures are work in progress or updated versions of systems already in place and Zuckerberg himself is aware that many of these systems may not work in detecting and deterring fake news stories. Zuckerberg, Mark. “A lot of you have asked what we're doing about misinformation..." Facebook. N.p., 18 Nov. 2016. Web. 05 Apr. 2017. |
AuthorIan Kindall a CD major emphasizing in Game Design Archives
May 2017
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