Online misinformation: Curing harmful virality

One day 20 years ago millions of Catholic schoolers came home weeping from an SMS gone viral. Pope John Paul supposedly had died; please pray for his soul. It was false. Bishops went all over evening news to deny what was among the Philippines’ first taste of instant misinformation. Telcos made a pile that day from P1-text forwards.

Social media and online sharing have since gripped the globe. Tech giants have gotten better at keeping subscribers glued to screens – and ads – and inducing them to spread info and images. Not all are funny or inspiring. Countless numbers clearly are damaging. Three days before US Election 2016 a hot story was posted on the Facebook page of Denver Guardian: “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leak Found Dead.” The site later was adjudged anti-Clinton rightwing. The fictitious murder-suicide of the fictitious spy and wife was a last-minute black propaganda, as were 360,000 other false campaign posts read by more than 60 percent of American voters.

And for those who say all’s fair in war and electioneering anyway, here’s more potential harm from online virality. In India since the start of the year at least two-dozen adults have been lynched on bogus news of child abduction and rape. Instant messaging also has been used to stoke religious violence. Info-tech can be like nukes in the hands of madmen.

The Indian government found an instant solution. It ordered WhatsApp, via which most of the vicious texts circulated, to limit its forwards to no more than five recipients at a time. Elsewhere in the world, WhatsApp voluntarily made it slightly harder to forward by adding two more steps to the process. It also cut down the recipients to 20 at a time, from the former hundreds.

The idea is plain. Subscribers would be given more split seconds to hesitate and think things over before forwarding – and to less friends. Virality, that tool of marketing and measure of popularity, has become a weapon of malice and hate. There’s need to curb the misuse. It’s time perhaps to return to old virtues of thinking before acting, counting to ten before ranting, and sleeping over big decisions. (For Christians, praying over.) “Instant” has got to a point that, with a click of a finger, one spreads – universally and immortally through the “cloud” – his ignorance and rudeness. Not all sharers are pseudonymous trolls who circulate bigotry on purpose.

Ethicists and communicators hope other tech innovators would follow WhatsApp’s example. Otherwise regulators will apply the brakes for them. That would be painful, as the “FAANG” learned from European and American governments’ curbs on their privacy abuses and content laxity. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google have had to spend billions of dollars to redo their programs and marketing. And for Facebook, Twitter, and Google, billions more to hire hundreds of thousands of personnel worldwide to monitor and take down offensive posts and vile accounts. Tech firms must recast business models, from mindless sharing on the run to good old-fashioned personal interaction. The recent 29-percent drop in Facebook’s and 19 percent of Twitter’s stock prices resulted from shareholders’ doubts if the two swiftly can adapt to the redirection.

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Authorities need to examine and reexamine if Tuesday’s “suicide car bombing” in Lamitan, Basilan, is what they say it is. Otherwise, it can lead to official and public mis-conclusions and misdoings.

The terrorist Islamic State quickly has claimed responsibility for the ten deaths at the army road checkpoint. Then again, IS being what it is, a loose network of mujahedin and online propagandists, it lays claims to all explosions, even of recent electricity line overloads in Muslim Mindanao.

Car bombs are not a usual technique of terrorists in Mindanao. They prefer to plant bombs in inexpensive lead pipes or bags, like in the Davao City night market massacre of Sept. 2016.

Filipino terrorists are known to slay others, not themselves, in cold blood. Abu Sayyaf bandits find glee in pulling out fingernails, lopping off women’s breasts, and decapitating captives, mostly for food and ransom. It’s uncharacteristic to kill oneself for fun or religiosity. That generations-old racist joke of pushing the foreigner out the plane or ship then shouting “Mabuhay ang ...” is culturally ingrained.

That the suicide bomber is a foreigner is incredible. How could he have stayed undetected under Mindanao-wide martial law? Villagers and officials report and act on the presence of suspicious strangers, for community peace and other reasons. An alien terrorist would have targeted a more crowded site than a lonely road checkpoint. That is, if he eludes and survives the many bounty hunters.

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TALKBACK: From ex-Senator Rene Saguisag:

“I read with interest your Gotcha of 1 Aug. 2018 on publishing the SALNs of Chief Justice bets.

“SolGen Joe Calida, in his quo warranto petition, stressed as a measure of integrity, compliance with Sec. 7 of R.A. 3019, the Anti-Graft and -Corrupt Practices Act, requiring a public servant to report ‘amounts and sources of his income, the amounts of his personal and family expenses and the amount of income taxes paid in the preceding calendar year.’

“I doubt that any CJ aspirant has complied with said Sec. 7. Nor the members of the Judicial and Bar Council. The Prez and the SolGen haven’t, per the copies I have of their statements.

“Has anyone in government complied with Sec. 7? I doubt it, otherwise some student of mine would have produced one by now and passed on that basis alone.

“A Nation of Scofflaws we are.”

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459, or The STAR website https://www.philstar.com/columns/134276/gotcha