Fake news to spread like wild fire - 20th January 2025

Tech giants Meta and Apple are causing growing concern about the public's exposure to fake news stories.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has declared it will no longer collaborate with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Henceforth, it will integrate a system of 'community notes' similar to X, which permit interested parties to publicly comment on the reliability, or lack thereof, of the content.

The resolution has been met with considerable alarm from various countries, among them Australia and Brazil. The IFCN has declared that particular nations are "highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide."

Meta founder, Mark Zuckerberg, brought in fact-checking on the back of the 2016 presidential election, when accusations were widespread that Trump's success had been stoked by rampant disinformation and interference from abroad.

A one-time harsh critic of Trump, some regard Meta's latest move as a way of getting back into the President's good books. The step was taken, said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the IFCN, under "extreme political pressure". She acknowledged it "will hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information."

At the same time, there have been calls for the recently released Apple Intelligence to be scrapped. Apple Intelligence compiles summaries of news headlines from a mixture of media outlets, yet system defects have led to the creation of several incorrect or misleading headlines credited to other media outlets.

One post, falsely attributed to the BBC, detailed how Luigi Mangione, the individual arrested last year for gunning down an insurance executive in New York, was mistakenly described as having committed suicide. Meanwhile, a second summary erroneously reported that Rafael Nadal, the international tennis star, had come out as gay.

Reporters Without Frontiers stated "The automated production of false information attributed to a media outlet is a blow to the outlet's credibility and a danger to the public's right to reliable information."

Under mounting pressure, Apple has finally agreed to disable the system whilst it makes upgrades to improve its accuracy.