The dark side of digital revolution

In the digital economy, producing and distributing content in form of blogs, music, pictures, videos and lists, has become quick, easy and cheap. People are writing millions of blogs and uploading videos on YouTube. Moreover companies like Google, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter act as catalysts that aggregate information from millions of sources to distribute it to billions of people. Day by day, smartphones and data is getting cheaper, enabling people to consume and distribute information as and when they find time. Digital revolution has made people more informed. With more information, they can make better decisions.

But what if, this information becomes misinformation? False information can change the way people look at the world, can create doubts in their minds and mislead them to make the wrong choices. This is the negative side of the digital revolution, which is popularly now known as “fake news”. Fake news is fabricated news, which has no factual basis, but is packaged and presented as being factually accurate. Interestingly, technologies such as Photoshop, lip syncing, virtual reality and video editors can help create baseless facts. Once ready, social bots can help ensure fake news goes viral.
There are several reasons fake news gets traction as real news. The fake news websites look exactly like trusted news sources. Facebook and Twitter's algorithm-driven newsfeed blurs the line between personal status updates, news articles and ads.
User-created videos on Facebook and YouTube are not vetted before they reach a wide audience. Sometimes, evidence-free stories appear on Google News since the feed is basically created on the shear number of people reading it.