But Menczer said misinformation will continue to capitalize on social media’s capacity for echo chambers. And it will only get worse if people begin to choose their social media services based on their political identity, he said.
“The risk, if that happens, is further segregation into homogeneous echo chambers where alternative facts are unchallenged, conspiracies can fester, exposure to corrections is suppressed and a common reality becomes more elusive,” Menczer said.
Big tech, journalists under pressure
That said, the mainstream social media companies remain under significant pressure from both sides of the political aisle – from Republicans who have accused them of anti-conservative biases and from Democrats who have accused them of enabling misinformation. Both sides have lambasted the tech giants for allegedly violating antitrust regulations. Trump’s Justice Department recently sued Google, accusing it of anti-competitive violations.
One thing the social media companies will have to address is how to deal with Trump’s posts once he’s out of office. On Twitter, the president has been especially prolific, reaching an audience of more than 88 million followers with constant posts and retweets, including some that Twitter has flagged or blocked from circulating because of false or misleading claims.
“That will continue to be his megaphone,” Menczer said.
The news media will also face a question of how much attention they’ll pay to Trump’s tweets once he’s out of office. Journalists have come under scrutiny for giving Trump’s misleading or false tweets too much publicity.
“The problem certainly won’t go away, and the weaknesses that Trump has revealed in our political system are very much there,” Nyhan said.
Nyhan made the case that the media should refrain from magnifying Trump’s tweets once he has left Washington.
“Even now while he’s in office there are serious questions about whether the media should be amplifying Trump’s false statements,” Nyhan said. “I think that question becomes clearer when he is out of office. Absent compelling reasons to the contrary, Donald Trump making false statements on Twitter (after he’s left office) is not a news event, and the media should try to refrain from amplifying it whenever they can.”
New threats emerge
While Trump’s tweets may soon be a less influential source of misinformation, there are new threats on the horizon, such as the emergence of “deepfakes,” which are fabricated video or audio that purposely mislead people. Experts say deepfakes are on their way in the coming years, threatening to fool people into thinking that others said or did things they never said or did.
But “cheap fakes” are a bigger concern for now, said Katy Byron, manager of journalism nonprofit The Poynter Institute’s MediaWise, a fact-check training group.
“Cheap fakes” are videos or photos that are crudely edited to mislead and easier to generate with a simple set of skills and technology. Shortly before the election, for example, an edited video circulated on social media showing Biden appear to forget what state he was in. In reality, Biden had correctly referred to his location.
“Low-quality fakes produced at volume quickly seem to be more likely to propagate than high-quality deep fakes that require technical expertise,” Nyhan said. “Cheap fakes are perfectly sufficient for generating the kind of rumors that people are trying to spread.”
Recent actions by Facebook, Twitter and others to crack down on misinformation is a welcome development, said Tim Kendall, a former Pinterest and Facebook executive. But he is skeptical it will make a big difference.
Kendall, who is CEO of Moment, an app that helps users limit their phone usage, said misinformation will flourish because the fundamental business model of social media is predicated in grabbing people’s attention and pursuing aggressive growth. Without sensational content to keep users coming back, social media giants would not be able to satisfy their investors, he said.
“They’re starting to be aggressive, but it’s kind of like saying we’re going to fight a forest fire after it’s burned 100,000 acres,” Kendall said.
Read from source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/11/13/trump-administration-ending-misinformation-age-continues-after-election/6128246002/
