Fake news to persist despite efforts to stop it, US study says

1

The advent of technology, particularly social media, has certainly opened a lot of doors for people in terms of communicating with the rest of the world.

However, the innovation has also caused the spread of mass misinformation, popularly known as “fake news” in today’s modern world.

Despite efforts by the government and social media platforms to eradicate fake information, the onslaught of false news will continue to torment the public in the years to come, according to a study by American research firm Gartner.

The shocking findings, which was relayed Fox News, revealed that the masses will most likely consume  more false information than true information by 2020.

The study’s lead authors, Magnus Revang and Whit Andrews, claimed that an impending confirmation bias “will lead all people to seek out, select and value information that parallels what they believe and expect to be proven true.”

“False information will consequently outpace true information where there is economic or political interest to purvey it,” the pair wrote.

Furthermore, the study also predicted that even improved artificial intelligence (AI) by tech companies won’t be able to stop the spread of malicious content online.

“Counterfeit reality or fake content will outpace AI’s ability to detect it,” Andrews added.

Meanwhile, the rise of fake news stories from questionable sources continue to be a bane for countries all over the world. The content usually varies per nation, but often focuses on political issues aimed to misinform the public.  Khristian Ibarrola /ra

RELATED STORY:

Facebook partners with fact-checkers to eradicate fake news

Read more...