Tim Schüller

No ratings yet.

During the past presidential US election my entire Facebook wall was flooded with questionable stories about both candidates. As later investigation revealed some of these Facebook stories were funded by companies with ties to the Kremlin. That they spend around $100.000,- on Facebook ads during the campaign. This is nowhere near what both the DNC and GOP spend on Facebook ads, but it could count as foreign interference in an election nonetheless.
After the election Facebook announced that it would try to combat these fake stories and earmark them as such. So, what has Facebook done an was it effective in preventing unsubstantiated news from spreading?
One of the things Facebook did was establishing a partnership with media companies that could determine whether or not a story was factual on Facebook. If it is determined that the article is incorrect, Facebook will place a warning below the post. This is to inform people that the news article is incorrect in the hopes that people will stop believing the content.
However, a recent study from the Yale university showed that this method only has a very limited effect (Pennycook, 2017). Most people still believe the article even if such a banner is placed below the post, according to the study. In addition, there is also a reverse effect. Fake news that has not been checked by fact checkers is more often believed by Trump supporters because they believe it has been checked, according to the study. This is why the end result does not lead to a substantial improvement
Facebook disagrees with the study and states that their approach does get results (nu.nl, 2017). However, no statistics have been published to substantiate that claim. Maybe we will only be certain when the next presidential election comes along and the new methods are put to the test.

References
Pennycook, G. and Rand, D. (2017). Assessing the Effect of ‘Disputed’ Warnings and Source Salience on Perceptions of Fake News Accuracy. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Nu.nl. (2017). ‘Aanpak nepnieuws op Facebook heeft beperkt effect’ | NU – Het laatste nieuws het eerst op NU.nl. [online] Available at: https://www.nu.nl/internet/4918838/aanpak-nepnieuws-facebook-heeft-beperkt-effect.html [Accessed 22 Oct. 2017].

No ratings yet.

WIV
As you may have heard five students started a petition for a referendum about the so-called “sleepwet”. This is a new law of the Dutch government that will be implemented the 1st of January. This law will give the intelligence services of the Netherlands (AIVD and MIVD) numerous new powers to obtain information about terrorists and other potential criminals. The petition has now more than 300.000 signatures which is enough for a referendum. So, what is this law all about, and should you be in favour- or against it?
The new law is according to the AIVD and MIVD necessary because the current law from 2002 is outdated. Both intelligence services now have very limited capabilities to track someone’s internet traffic and the new law will fix that. It will allow the AIVD to tap enormous amounts of data and then filter the data to get the relevant information related to the search query. The AIVD says that it needs all this data to track and stop potential terrorists.
However, a side effect of acquiring data this way is that private information of innocent individuals will also end-up on the servers of the AIVD where it could be stored for up to three years. There is now way of preventing this. One could at the most encrypt the content of their messages to guarantee some privacy. Of course, it will not be possible for the intelligence services to place taps everywhere they see fit. They will need to permission from the minister before placing the tap and a special commission checks if the request is within the boundaries of the law. Unfortunately, this special commission says that it will have a hard time performing this task as the law in question is vaguely worded. They state that “to be effective in supervising one needs a clearly defined legal framework, this is currently not the case.”
In my opinion this is a problem that needs to be addressed and the reason why this referendum is so important. It will give lawmakers another chance to state explicitly what the boundaries of the law are which in turn will help with the oversight of the intelligence services.

the “WIV”

20

Please rate this