Misinformation

Netflix’s recent documentary The Social Dilemma has become a topic of conversation on television, radio and podcasts lately, and many teachers and parents are using it to teach digital or media literacy. The definition of digital or media literacy – according to the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) – is “the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, and ACT using all forms of communication” and there couldn’t be a timelier topic. Take a look at this article  from the MiddleWeb site for some ideas on places to start with your kids at looking at this topic, and as a guide to the documentary.

The advertising boycott of Facebook that took place in the summer of 2020, joined by at least 1,000 brands, forced the social media platform to reflect on its operations and take steps to thwart hate speech and misinformation, said global advertising chief Carolyn Everson during the Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing conference. She called the summer the most challenging time of her career, and noted, "It forced us to take all the work we were doing for the past several years, get it in an organized fashion and add some accountability."

Adults aren’t the only ones trying to keep up with the latest on Covid, but most adults younger than 40 get news from social media platforms, not midday press conferences, says palliative care physician Naheed Dosani. Early in 2020 he took to TikTok, Instagram and similar platforms to share information about palliative care with a young audience, but has since begun sharing information about COVID-19. He's joined by On COVID-19 Project (Canada) founder Samanta Krishnapillai and science communicator Samantha Yammine in harnessing the reach of social media to educate the public on COVID-19. If you are trying to reach your teen on the continuing seriousness of Covid, you may want to view and share some of their videos on TikTok.

An investigative report by New York regulators revealed that several high-profile Twitter accounts were hijacked this summer using only basic social engineering techniques because Twitter has poor internal security controls. The regulators recommended creating an oversight council with a qualified regulator to monitor and supervise popular social media platforms' security practices. This report may foreshadow more government scrutiny of social media, but also is a reminder to everyone that social media accounts are easy to hijack for nefarious purposes.

About 54% of Americans don't think any political ads should be allowed by social platforms, and 77% say it's unacceptable for their personal information to be used by social platforms to serve them political ads, says the Pew Research Center. Their recent study breaks down the findings by age, race/ethnicity and political leaning, with those ages 65 and older most likely to favor not allowing political ads on social media. Some 64% of those 65 and older say these sites should not allow any political ads on their platforms, compared with slightly over half of those ages 30 to 64 and 45% of those 18 to 29. By contrast, those in the youngest age group are more likely to favor allowing only some ads on the site, with 30% holding this view, compared with about one-in-five or fewer of those in older age groups.

As if you needed any more reasons to wish 2020 was over, the cybersecurity folks have even more for you to worry about. Tens of thousands of web domains related to the coronavirus pandemic are being created daily, reports ZDNet's David Gewirtz, who gathered several more unsettling statistics. Nine in 10 of those new domains are related to scams, including the intention to distribute malware, sell fake cures for COVID-19, and pass on more misinformation about the disease and other issues in the world.

Twitter plans to label or remove misleading tweets that undermine confidence in the US election, starting in mid-September. Tweets with false or misleading information about alleged election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying or premature election results all fall under the new rule.

Many parents are pressing social media companies to clamp down on cyberbullying and misinformation and most social media sites give lots of lips service to the fact that they are doing more about it or stepping up enforcement. But what does that actually look like? Take a look at Twitter’s new Transparency Report with sections dedicated to various elements of enforcement. Over the most recent six months, Twitter has been working to enforce various elements of concern, including discussion around the #BlackLivesMatter movement, misinformation around COVID-19, and controversial, divisive political content - including commentary from the US President. 

Public health officials and health care professionals say their advice is being undermined and their jobs are complicated by rampant misinformation on social media about the novel coronavirus. A study estimates that at least 800 people worldwide died in the first quarter of this year after following advice on social media to drink highly concentrated alcohol to kill the virus, and physicians say patients are demanding unproven treatments and accusing them of lying. Keep talking to your kids about misinformation online and how to vet and evaluate sources.

TikTok, the video sharing app, takes a lot of heat for falsehoods and propaganda that often shows up in user-created content. To help rehabilitate its image, TikTok has partnered with the National Association for Media Literacy Education to launch a "Be Informed" campaign that features top influencers in humorous infomercial-style videos educating users about how to identify misinformation. The five videos cover topics including "Fact vs. Opinion," "Question the Source" and "When to Share vs. When to Report."