In times of social media, the gatekeeper roles of classical media are increasingly dissolving. It has never been easier to spread important news all over the world in the shortest possible time. However, this also applies to false information and hate speech. Especially on Facebook, the largest social network in the world, disinformation is a serious problem. As this tweet shows, lately more than one in four Americans seem to have decided to delete their Facebook account. Besides the privacy scandal one reason for this may also be the lack of regulation of content.

New Facebook survey from Pew

-74 percent of Americans who use Facebook have deleted it, taken a break, or changed privacy settings in the past year

-More than 1 in 4 Americans have deleted Facebook

-Young people are more likely to delete the apphttps://t.co/fmsCuNubLb pic.twitter.com/5qjVMqQlZt

— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) September 5, 2018

Unfortunately, no general solution has yet been found to regulate the authenticity of content. If you don’t want to become a victim of fake news yourself, you should follow those few easy steps:

1. Check The Author

First of all, you should check the author of the message. Who wrote the article? Was the news written by a well-known publisher or was the name maybe made up?

2. Compare The Information

In the next step, you should check the news on various reputable media. If the message appears in the similar wording on different media, it is probably authentic.

3. Check The Facts

Are the facts and figures in the report verifiable? Check which sources of information the article mentions. A serious writer will always state where he gets his information from.

4. Check Videos And/Or Pictures

Using Google Image Search, you can upload an image to see where it comes from. When it comes to fake news, the photos are often old and originate from a completely different context. There is also a YouTube Dataviewer from Amnesty International. It works in the same way and examines YouTube for identical content that has already been posted.

To put it in a nutshell, the issue of regulation of information on facebook has much potential to be controversial. One of many opinions can be seen in the tweet below. However, this would be a topic for another blogpost…

"Facebook needs to moderate its greed, clean up the toxic waste, and be accountable for its role as the new gatekeeper to information." — Maria Ressa, Rappler CEO pic.twitter.com/2CJLTjyQ0T

— Francis Baraan IV (@MrFrankBaraan) August 23, 2018

Read more here: https://www.summer.harvard.edu/inside-summer/4-tips-spotting-fake-news-story, https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article159915907/Mit-diesen-Tools-entlarven-Sie-Falschmeldungen-im-Internet.html