The Rise of Misinformation and Trolling on the Internet
The internet has become a useful tool for spreading information to millions of people, but it has become a space for bad actors to spread misinformation as well. Mike Caulfield, the director of Blended & Networked Learning, believes that almost none of us have had training in how to use the information that we get online. When people are using the internet to get some type of information, they tend to not check the credibility of the source where they are getting their information from. This can cause an issue when a non credible source is spreading misinformation as people may actually believe what they are reading to be true because they don’t actually know how credible the source is. While a simple Google search about the source could help people to evaluate the information they are reading, this step tends to get missed.
As more and more people turn to social media to get their news this is causing a plethora of issues in regard to the spread of misinformation. A May 2016 Pew Research Center report showed that 62% of Americans get their news from social media and I can only imagine this number has risen, especially this year as more people have turned to social media to connect with friends and family during the Covid-19 pandemic. The spread of misinformation has only intensified this year with the presidential election, the shift to more mail-in voting because of the pandemic has opened the floodgates for a new wave of misinformation. The current President has also amplified election misinformation in his effort to make the case that mail-in voting cannot be trusted. He has retweeted news articles from sources that are not credible on his large social media platform, this has enabled him to spread misinformation to millions of people.
Besides the spread of misinformation on the internet, there has also been a rise in trolling. Trolling is the deliberate act of making unsolicited or controversial comments on different internet platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. While I have never been a victim of trolling, I do know people who have and the way they have responded to it is by not responding at all. This can be difficult, especially if the troll is saying offensive, abusive, or hateful comments, but by reacting to the comment you are letting the troll win as that is all they want. The best course of action when dealing with internet trolls is to just delete their comment and move on.
As misinformation and trolling have become widespread on social media, many of these social media platforms are taking steps to address these issues. One example is Twitter who, according to The Washington Post, has suspended more than 1 million fake and suspicious accounts a day in recent months. This has been done to lessen the spread of misinformation on the platform. Twitter’s policies in regard to the spread of misinformation, incitement of violence, hate speech and targeted harassment mean they are able to remove any accounts that violate these policies, but there is an exemption to its rules for world leaders, candidates, and public officials. This has enabled the current president to avoid being removed from Twitter, but they have begun to moderate his tweets, and this has been apparent since the election as Trump has tweeted that mail-in ballots are fraudulent and even that he has won the presidential election. If you go to his account, you can see that a lot of tweets about the election have been marked as “this claim about election fraud is disputed” or “official sources called this election differently” in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation from the current president.
