BS on FB - Why it's Dangerous

              
Next Wednesday is Facebook “No Swearing Day” in which any user will be banned from Facebook if they curse. Oh no, wait a minute, sorry, it’s “No Religion Day” , discussing religion gets you banned. I know that because my mate Frank warned me. He also warned me about some guy called Jason that adds you as a friend just to hack your account and put your kids’ pictures on a Facebook group that is secretly run by paedophiles.

I’m so grateful to Frank for all these warnings that I felt I should give something back. I shared the picture of that kid in hospital who was put there for stopping his sister being raped by his stepfather. By sharing this, some money is donated to his charity and I’m showing I’m a good person that raises awareness of child abuse. I’m also tagging my friends in a picture that should get me some free bottles of beer from a local brewery. Hey it might not be true but it’s worth a try! I like beer after all.

By now you’ve probably worked out that I’m not being serious: heck, I don’t even have a friend named Frank. Then again, neither are any of the above hoaxes I referred to, and yet thousands upon thousands of people share them on Facebook every day. How can people who are otherwise sensible and smart - or even less smart people like myself - so readily spread annoying, sometimes even dangerous or distressing bullshit? I'm just as guilty as the next person, by the way.

In the early days of the internet, we could at least plead ignorance. The hoaxes such as hotmail being shut down were relatively new at the time, yet many of the original hoaxes - modern equivalents and sometimes simple remakes of urban myths - now appear on a regular cycle, somehow sucking-in new victims in each time.

Why do people feel compelled to believe, comment and most often share any of the influx of nonsense claims and warnings that infect social media? The most obvious and tempting answer is that they believe it and want to protect their friends. Yet there is rarely a hoax that does not scream out obvious signs of prattle. Let’s think back over some of the frauds I mentioned earlier and run over just a few of the obvious questions that spring to mind....

• The “No Swearing” warning was circulated with a spelling error in its headline. Would Mark Zuckerberg - one of America’s youngest billionaires - be that inefficient?
• Why would Facebook choose to spread a warning by having its users “share” an image rather than placing a big fat notice on its homepage or above every user’s newsfeed?
• Who is Colin? What are the chances of him adding me - one of over a billion users - on Facebook ?
• If he is so dangerous and the word is clearly out, why hasn’t Facebook shut down his account already?
• What is the secret group run by paedophiles? Show it to me so I can report it! Wait, doesn’t that look like any other group of proud mums showing off their kids? That must be part of the scam! But wait, how does a paedophile get any twisted pleasure from this?
• How was the picture of the hurt child taken? Either by a news agency or a hospital, we can presume, so where is the link?
• Why is there not one single, specific verifiable fact in the report?
• In what way does sharing a distressing image of a hurt child raise awareness of child abuse? Wouldn’t it be far more beneficial to link to a site like the NSPCC?
• How would a brewery be able to control the number of people who received their free beer? Too many “likes” and they would clearly go bust.
• How does the brewery check who shared their promotion anyway?  How would they verify the identity of anyone who walked in and claimed their free crate?

We could go on, of course. Almost any hoax flashes up warning signs. But let’s be fair and acknowledge that some don’t, or at least appear with some tiny element of verisimilitude. The common verdict for many users is that if in doubt, we should play safe and spread the alert. That seems a reasonable attitude at first but as Sophos have pointed out, it is not helpful because it reduces genuine alerts to the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. True cases of potential danger for your child, a chance to do good or a safety warning that may actually save a life one day get lost in the tidal wave of lies.

Consider Hampshire Police Force who take time to issue genuine requests for public help but also have to devote scarce resources to quelling false rumours. Ponder the  point raised to me by my friend of an apparent case of genuine paedophilia on youtube which has received far less attention than hoax cases. The “play it safe” tactic just doesn’t make anyone safer.

There is another way to solve the "Should I share this?" conundrum, an incredibly easy and effective way which none of us can really excuse ourselves from: check the facts. Go to snopes.com ,  hoax-slayer.com or any of these sites and look up any of the hoaxes we’ve already discussed. It usually takes fewer than ten seconds to verify any case. These hoax-checking sites are up to date, simple and interesting. In rare cases where none of them have the answers we seek, let’s use common sense and search other reliable sources. Has Facebook made an official announcement on religion? Does the brewery’s website make any mention of free wine? Has Reuters, CNN or 'The Times' run an article on the boy who saved his sister? (Admittedly hard to check without a single specific fact in the memo itself but that tells its own story). If nothing comes up from a quick search on google, we can either dig deeper still or accept the overwhelmingly likely conclusion: it’s a total lie.

Yet somehow with all the tools of nonsense-detection and our own aptitude for common sense, online hoaxes and lies still flourish, often sweeping networks like cyber-wildfire. They reveal a side to human nature that we might not always want to admit. We all like the idea of something for nothing or very little (that’s how 419 email scammers continue to profit), we all like to believe that we are defending our kids and some people, apparently, like to think that even a movie star would be so messed up and sick as to try and insert a gerbil up his backside.

OK, maybe that last one is ridiculous enough to be funny, but most hoaxes are not. The image of a sick child was not spread to raise awareness of child abuse, it was concocted by someone who abused the image of that poor boy to spread a lie and see how many “shares” it would get. The brewery promotion did not come from a manager or the sales executive, it almost certainly came from someone who wanted to see how many people he could fool. And the warning of secret paedophile groups is 99.99% most likely to be from an asshole who cares for your kids so little that he wants to prey upon your fears and feed you misinformation that makes genuine threats to your children harder to detect.
In spreading these messages, we may tell ourselves that we’re doing good and saving others. Sorry guys, this is called slacktivism: the idea that we can earn good karma with the simple click of a button. Real good deeds require a little more effort than that.

Out there somewhere is a list of helpful tips for recognising signs and first aid for cases of stroke. Wouldn’t it be nice if that memo could replace every single lie and hoax out there in cyberspace today? If just one percent of users who share nonsense could take time to check and send out only truly helpful memos, lives could actually be saved. Something to think about before any of us hit “share” next time.