Welcome to the age of fake-news

Why should we worry about fake news?

Fake news have been here for long time, whenever there is an election fake news and gossips run wild. With the last US election more and more information is coming to light about how fake news and Russians may have played a decisive role in the outcome of the election.

The recent Las Vegas shooting also had some crazy fake news appearing next to legitimate websites on Google Facebook and YouTube etc.

However fake news is starting to hit mainstream media as more and more people starting to share news online even without validating from the sources, distributing fake news has never been this easy.

The most recent incident is the news about a medical student leaving newborn baby in a jungle. Although the university student union denied such incident or neither confirming the news from the university the media was quick to post the news on their newspapers which was later found to be fake.

Distributing fake news has never been this easy.

Another incident is about the clash between two university student groups at university of Kelaniya, during a science exhibition. Which happened between science faculty and the arts faculty. However Facebook pages started distributing the news as if it has happened between medical faculty students and arts students.

Most of these articles were posted by pages supporting the private medical students.

Last week some websites started publishing a fabricated photo saying that the startup pickme is supporting a muslim university in the east, this was mainly shared by websites and facebook pages with extreamist and anti muslim ideas.

It won’t be long before fake news will swing the next elections in the country, social media has given unlimited power for people to post whatever they want whenever they want and things can go viral pretty quickly.

It’s also difficult for Facebook and other social media websites to ban such fake news because it’s difficult to differentiate fake from real news, and also difficult to control what people share.

Mainstream media also should do fact checks before they jump in when it comes to sharing stories specially online as news stations want to break the news before anyone else.

People welcome to the age of fake news. Think twice before sharing and don’t believe everything you see online.