Social Media: An Untrustworthy World of Falsehoods

Danny Westneat, in his Seattle Times article “UW Professor: The Information War is Real and We’re Losing it,” asserts to the general public that the world of social media has been infiltrated and perverted by fake information and auto-bots, and we are now faced with the difficult task to decipher the true from the fake. He described the intolerant and inappropriate reaction on twitter after mass shootings, clearly explained the problem the automated accounts pose and the magnitude of their mass tweets, which has brought a true “information war” and “we’re losing it.” Westneat seeks to warn the public of the increasing dangers of social media, in order that they do not succumb to the heaps of fake news. He establishes a firm and informative relationship with the general public as means to inform and to reform the wide spreading social media problem.

Westneat’s shocking piece on the rapid spreading twitter-bot and automated account problem exposes the problem and the inherent flaw in social media. Social media sprout up like a flower in spring in the mid 2000s. Since, it has seen a rapid growth with more and more users and an increasing number of practical applications to a world that has continued to rely on technology. Furthermore, social media has served as a location for millions of individuals - from rich and famous to poor and hopeless - to express their own personal opinions and ideas on anything and everything. Moreover, because of its popularity and wide usage across various groups, it has become a source of vital information for millions of people. From Facebook to twitter, we’ve all seen our crazy grandmother, uncle, or second cousin share or retweet fake news from a crazy third party site. Such is the inherent flaw in the world of social media. Each and every participant has the opportunity to spread their beliefs, whether true or false, and people will believe it. For some reason, there is validating factor for readers when something is online when in actuality the entire article could be fake. Furthermore, these false ideas spread and gain steam and despite the utter falsehood, people will believe it. Now, bring in fake accounts, twitter-bots, fake news gains more and more steam and spreads faster and faster, causing millions to believe lie after lie. The more you read something, the more inclined you are to believe it, and such has happened in the social media world. Take the story discussed in the article for example. After mass shootings, accounts on social media began to spread lies that the shootings were fake acts set up by the government. These claims are laughable, but numbers speak volumes to people, and when readers see the number of shares claims and articles like this receive, they begin to believe it. The fact is, despite the author’s plea to differentiate between the true and the false, social media has gotten so out of hand, it simply cannot be trusted. Whether or not one feels they can decipher the true from the fake without a mistake is irrelevant, it is merely too dangerous to play around with as falsehoods and lies are slowly but surely penetrating and infiltrating the minds of millions on social media every day. Social media cannot be used as a source of vital information, or any information for that matter, as nearly everyone has become vulnerable to the falsehoods of the internet. You never know, maybe this very blog post is fake news.