A NAME by any name is a lie. Binutig. Kasinungalingan. Bum steer. Misinformed. Fake news.
Archbishop Oscar Cruz said, “when a given information is actually but a lie; when a disseminated fact is but an invention or merely an imagination—such is something fake.”
We see lies—or fake news everywhere. In India, we see WhatsApp, it is the most popular messaging platform that became a vehicle for misinformation. The Facebook-owned app has announced new measures to fight fake news but experts say the scale of the problem is overwhelming.
India was in the grip of patriotic fervor in early March when WhatsApp groups were flooded with photographs claiming to show proof that unprecedented Indian air strikes in Pakistani territory had been successful.
BBC fact-checkers found that the Indian photos—purportedly of dead militants and a destroyed training camp—were old images that were being shared with false captions.
Recently, Facebook took down 67 Facebook pages, 68 Facebook accounts, 40 groups and 25 Instagram for “misleading others about who they were and what they were doing.”
Nathaniel Gleicher says that Facebook's investigation found that the activity was linked to a network organized by Nic Gabunada, a social media practitioner who was involved in the previous elections.
Among the pages taken down were Trending News Portal and Filipino Channel Online which had millions of followers, carried false information, including fake news against known opposition figures.
Now fake news has invaded the City of Smiles. Recently, Governor Alfredo Marañón Jr. denied criticizing Bacolod City Representative Greg Gasataya over a P10 million rest house.
Fake news, Marañon said of the report. The social media post with the username Sun Tzu alleged that the Governor criticized Gasataya for owning a multi-million vacation home.
I find that hard to believe, not only because of the alias. Using a false name is always a red flag.
It’s also because the governor is computer literacy-challenged. By his own admission, his grandchild can run rings around him on the use of a computer.
In this age of social media, I know people who can be exasperating. I suspect these computer users have dyslexia. Not to disparage the governor—I can only shake my head—but I suspect he would find Facebook too baffling for him.
Well, this is election season. Expect plenty of smokes and mirrors. So be warned for falling for the untruth.