Every single day, me and millions of others wake up and start our day off on social media. No matter if it is Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, etc. At some point in the morning I am always reaching for my phone. Most of it is done subconsciously, but at this point it is out of habit. I was once told that starting your morning off with watching too much news can have a huge impact on your day and how you view things. Yeah, I never questioned the impact social media has on one’s mind and day after so much consumption.
My top two apps with the TikTok and Instagram.
Wow, most times I am just seeing funny videos or pictures of people that I know personally, occasionally, I am met with either random facts for news or scientific information or claims that people are making.
Both Instagram and TikTok have taken measures towards ending the spread of misinformation. According to the article TikTok to warn users about sharing misleading content. Starting in 2021 TikTok started to label and add banners to videos with unverified information. This is to give the viewers a forewarning that the information they are about to view could be misleading. Their plan is to spread media literacy and to have overall safety Ava policies in place.
So many times while scrolling TikTok, I have seen videos that made me question what was properly taught versus what the Internet scholars are saying. It has become very hard to distinguish what is fabricated versus what is true.
But like most things, when one becomes aware, becomes easier to fix the problem before it starts. Combating misinformation and election interference on TikTok states that they have taken steps to combat all forms of misinformation and disinformation. But will it be enough to stop how much is put out on a daily basis?
Misinformation comes in all forms, but they are popular ones such as political and medical. I feel like that is where I receive the most inaccurate information. So it is good to see that TikTok is taking the steps to label things as not valid or to have a team working towards removing posts that are misguiding.
I feel as if besides politics, one of the biggest events that started the crackdown of misinformation was Covid. Early on, it being an unknown and new virus and so much information was going around. Regular people like myself , high political figures, and influencers were posting about the virus. We as a society did not know what to believe as we were getting conflicting and contradicting information.
The articleInstagram is targeting fake coronavirus news and finally taking disinformation and hoaxes seriously, “We’re making several changes to reduce the spread of misinformation,” the post said. “We’ll remove COVID-19 accounts from account recommendations, and we are working to remove some COVID-19 related content from Explore, unless posted by a credible health organization. We will also start to downrank content in feed and Stories that has been rated false by third-party fact checkers.” Many people and political leaders on all platforms have always targeted people in an emotional sense, as that is the easiest way to gain one’s attention. With Covid, many of us were uneducated, and we were gullible to believing what everyone was posting… especially if it related to our lives and what we were going through in anyway. If they said that people were having extreme symptoms and getting hospitalized, and the news also told us that and we knew people who were also being hospitalized, why would we not believe what we are reading online. That’s where Instagram fact check came in and which they had to start identifying that what personal people were posting could be false information versus an accredited organization, such as the world health organization.
I think that it will be very hard to completely get rid of misinformation and disinformation. While all platforms are taking action and creating boundaries and warnings, they will not be able to operate at a speed that is faster than what the public can operate at. I think constant education on how to avoid being misinformed and avoid the biases out There would do more help than a warning label on a video.
The real question is, how do we outsmart the bots and how do we outsmart the fake profiles. They are constantly prying on our emotional and personal biases that gets us intrigued to what they are posting.
