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How We Can Protect Truth in The Age of Misinformation

The document discusses the spread of misinformation in society, particularly through bots programmed by individuals seeking to mislead others or disrupt society. While bots are effective at spreading fake news due to novelty and unusual content catching human attention, humans still have the choice to believe information or not. To protect truth, the author argues for social media regulation and policies to curb the intentional spread of false information that can harm individuals or society. Failure to comply with restrictions on misinformation could result in consequences.

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Rae Michael
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2K views2 pages

How We Can Protect Truth in The Age of Misinformation

The document discusses the spread of misinformation in society, particularly through bots programmed by individuals seeking to mislead others or disrupt society. While bots are effective at spreading fake news due to novelty and unusual content catching human attention, humans still have the choice to believe information or not. To protect truth, the author argues for social media regulation and policies to curb the intentional spread of false information that can harm individuals or society. Failure to comply with restrictions on misinformation could result in consequences.

Uploaded by

Rae Michael
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How we can Protect Truth in the Age of Misinformation

The spread of misinformation in our society has been a hindrance in attaining the growth

that we have always longed for. But who causes the widespread of misinformation? One of the

most known causes for the spread of false information is a bot. Bots are actually made and

programmed by individuals who have certain objectives that they want to fulfill. News and

information that are being programmed to be shared by bots are often false and has the ability to

mislead those who will view and read it and make them believe in something that is untrue.

These types of fake information that are being published by bots has the tendency to attract huge

number of audiences because as stated by Sinan Aral from the talk that I have just watched,

“human attention is more drawn to novelty, things that are new in the environment” or simply

something that is unusual. Bots accelerate the spread of fake news over true news because those

who developed such bots are those who seek to disrupt society and mislead people. The role of

bots in spreading fake news are to hook the attention of the audiences and make the false

information look more engaging and interesting whereas, the contribution of man in the spread

of fake news is when they decide to share these information and this can increase the possibility

of the content to gain and deceive larger scale of viewers and cause the fake news to trend more.

Humans have the right to choose what they want to believe in. As mentioned by Sinan

Aral, “we are teetering on the brink of reality and what we need is to be vigilant in defending the

truth against misinformation.” Despite of seeing and encountering fake news especially in

cyberspace, if we, humans have a sense of responsibility upon filtering the information that we

decide to believe in, therefore we will have the ability to distinguish what is authentic and what

is fake. At the end of the day, it is us who gets to decide whether the news is true or fake.
If I were to choose from the five given paths in the video that I could follow to protect

truth in the age of misinformation, I would pick social media regulation. Regulation is often

linked to the word control and those who imposed regulations are mostly authorities and the

government. Despite of the fear that this might suppress opinions of people, from my

perspective, it will be an effective way in fighting the spread of misinformation. Those who

create fake news are those who seek to cause harm and chaos in our society. One example of

fake news that spread lately was the news about Julia Barreto being pregnant. This false

information rapidly got the attention of people. You might be wondering how this news inflicts

harm on her? We all know that she is a public figure, specifically a celebrity. This one false

information about her might cause her to lose her career and job as a celebrity because it has

ruined her image and this will cause people to judge, bash, and negatively criticize her. I believe

that there should be a regulation or policy that needs to be followed regarding posting or

publishing different kinds of information. If one has disobeyed and fails to comply with the

restrictions and continues to spread misinformation that disrupts society, overly harmful, and can

cause warfare they should face the consequences that they deserve.

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