NDM 6

Facebook and Google promote politicized fake news about Las Vegas shooter- The Guardian

Facebook and Google have been found to have created false information of the Las Vegas shooter who killed more than 50 people as a anti-Trump liberal. This false information was spread across the internet like wildfire just moments after the shooting took place. The ability for this much 'False news' to spread across the internet showed showed just how bad the problem with the increase in viral online propaganda when mass shooting in the US happen. 

An example made by the article was the false identification of the mass shooter of the tragedy as 'Geary Danley'.  The anonymous message board 4chan, whcih is know as a  'alt-right' platform had many stating Danley was a registered Democrat. Then a 'consiprocy-laden blog' named Gateway Pandit, published an evdience free article named  

• “Las Vegas Shooter Reportedly a Democrat Who Liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and Associated with Anti-Trump Army”. 
•  The piece was based on a review of Facebook “likes”.

Tought the claims were both false as they came from non-credible sources, Facebook's 'Saftey Check' page (used to help people get to those during crisis) shortly ended up promoting a story stating the shooter had 'Trump-hating' view "along with links to a number of other hoaxes and scams, according to screenshots." 

Google users who searched for the falsely named shooter 'Geary Danley' at a certain point re-directed to the 4chan thread with multiple false claims. 

Celebrities were also found to post false information. Singer Sia tweeted 20 people were dead when there wasn't a certified police statement made and also added that there were "multiple shooters". The Police found there only to be one shooter. 

• “It’s getting more polarized. There’s this mad scramble to paint the guy as a Democrat or a Republican, so they can cheer,A lot of this is pushed by trolls deliberately to muddy the conversation.”  - (Interview) Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of fact-checking website Snopes.com

• A YouTube user also pushed an unsubstantiated rumor that the suspect was a Hillary Clinton supporter.
• Some conservatives on Twitter have theorized that left wing social media users have attempted to falsely paint Paddock as a right wing individual. Some have speculated that liberals are posing as white nationalists and Trump supporters and following a Twitter account that has the same name as the suspect, in hopes of proving he is a conservative.

This truly shows the problem of anonymity on the internet, but also the problem of companies such a Facebook and Google being easily led to even promote and lead searches to sites of false information.

Google, Twitter and Facebook have actually been accused for allowing propaganda and 'Fake News' to be spread and reach larger audiences on the web. This ability for propaganda sites such as 4chan to manipulate information to be spread and even falsely name the shooter shows how much power a small message board can have on larger audiences, even institutions- 'trusted' such as Google, to even allow search to reach those who search it.  

Twitter was able to downplay their role of the promoting of the false information- “Our Global Security Operations Centre spotted these posts this morning and we have removed them. However, their removal was delayed, allowing them to be screen captured and circulated online", showing that they were unable to state their own wrong in the situation, if they found the problem they still should not have allowed it to spread. While, Google made a statement to "make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future”. 

For me, I think that the situation of false news sparking wide to large audiences won't cease, as long as sites such as 4-chan or dark-web boards are able to continue. Sites like Twitter have been known to have fake account following Trump or to have fake account created made to prove certain ideologies. This shows the power of audiences to make and prove their own point in undefeated, in terms of their Institutions. If  many of the websites state it is because of unseen algorithms it is the fault of theirs and there inability to change the spread of 'False News'