Social Media Misinformation Policy Solutions

The article The Future of Free Speech, Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online, describes the growing influence of social media and its impact on the perceptions and beliefs of society at large. Due to the massive power of social media, the ability of institutions and organizations to influence the discourse on these platforms has become very impactful. According to the article 62% of Americans get their news from social media. Likewise the article illustrates how voting was swayed by Russians during the 2016 presidential election. Social media has also been linked to extremism as other terrorist groups looking to exploit a younger and much more vulnerable audience. Misinformation for example, can create a false narrative the feeds on itself and can be unsustainable at times. Society realized this with Donald Trump and his “alternative facts” which in reality where simply lies to the American public. The lies where recited so many times that society began to believe them and accept them as truth. In addition, his republican counterparts simply regurgitated these lies to further provide credibility to them. This misinformation campaign ultimately confused society and caused a large amount of contention internally (Rainie, 2017). This campaign of misinformation was in large part attributable to social media where misleading discourse was not properly filtered on the program.

Develop a policy to address the issues raised by your selected theme.

The first policy consideration is to adopt a governmental agency designed specifically to oversee any misinformation on social media platforms and determine if they are the result of purposeful attempts to undermine civilization. Another policy would be to establish the “Critical Election Incident Public Protocol” that will monitor and notify other agencies and the public about disinformation attempts. The task force and agency should be led by non-political officials. Research conducted by Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral (2018) revised false information spread on Twitter over the span of a decade (Vosoughi, 2018). They found information spread much faster than the corresponding true information, which created adverse circumstances for the platform to properly correct. They also found that individual accounts rather than bots or other automated profiles, spread this misinformation. As a result, networks will need to institute fact check programming to further validate and substantiate the claims made by users. This can occur through the use of misinformation detection algorithms, hiring experienced fact checkers, and instituting proper reporting features for self-policing by platform users

Discuss steps that individuals, online communities can take to address the issue

The first step that individuals must take is to hold communities accountable for misinformation. Although this is very unlikely to occur, consumers of media information should conduct their own due diligence before accepting what they hear or read on social media platforms. This is a critical element as many consumers of social media information typically are relegated to their own silos within the internet. They are often unwilling to accept evidence that runs counter to their prevailing wisdom or attributes. Likewise, they do not want to appear disloyal to their base of followers or friends. As a result, these individuals tend to stay entrenched within their own positions. Ultimately this undermines the critical thinking capacity of society.

To counteract this, platforms should leverage algorithms that can properly detect misinformation and inform users of the new process. Likewise all posts should have a “fact-check” feature to help further substantiate the claims made by users. Finally, the community should hold those that use misinformation accountable by reporting false claims or narratives that are not supported by research.

Support your analysis with one or more ethical frameworks (Utilitarianism)

To counteract this, a utilitarian approach should be administered that does that greatest good for the largest amount of people. Social networking websites such as Facebook and Google are already administering corrective actions on their networks related to misinformation. Twitter is also implementing fact check features to ensure that information provided on the internet and on their platforms is accurate. These checks ultimately are still not enough as disinformation can still be published through various means. Here, it is important for individuals to exercise their own due diligence to ensure that the information provided is from a reputable source. If not, the information should be discarded or in certain instances denigrated publicly as to help avoid the occurrence from happening again. Self-policing in collaboration with government and business intervention is the best utilitarian approach to mitigating misinformation. From a business perspective, those who provide misinformation should be punished or banned from using the platform, as was the case with Donald Trump and his lies. Likewise government should make sure all social media platforms irrespective of size, commit to creating a culture of truth as oppose to sensationalism. Finally, consumers must ensure that other users of the platform adhere to these standards through self-policing mechanisms and oversight. Altogether, each of these elements can help improve overall information flow in a efficient manner. The use of truther information will therefore allow consumers to make better informed decisions that can ultimately impact society overall.