when rayun performed at the Olympic Games her unique approach to break dancing was pretty divisive some loved it some hated it it felt like everyone was talking about it there were claims that rean had manipulated the selection process that she only got to the Olympics because her husband was a judge and that she got zero points in the competition on purpose this led some upset fans to create a petition on change.org but within days it was Tak down for breaking change.org guidelines against harassment bullying or spreading false information because well none of these accusations were
true but it can get more serious than that in the UK the spread of false information led to violence when people on social media started making false claims about the identity of someone behind a horrific stabbing rioter took to the streets blocking roads destroying buildings and targeting community they thought were to blame but again this outrage wasn't based on facts it was fueled by misinformation and experts say misinformation is a growing problem and I think the reason for that is the technology that makes it very easy for any of us to be a publisher Barbara
mcade is interested in the ways that misinformation threatens democracy and National Security that you never before in history has been possible for one person to send a message a false message that can reach millions of people in an instant misinformation is playing a big role in US politics particularly in the leadup to another big election I think it's going to be politics in the news every day until the election I'm sure there will be disinformation in the uh in the news disinformation is similar to misinformation both terms refer to false information but the difference is
in the intention of the person sharing it see misinformation is information that is wrong but the person sharing it doesn't know that disinformation is false information that is deliberately shared to trick or manipulate people a figure often linked to disinformation is Donald Trump they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets you know he didn't invent it certainly disinformation propaganda Sops all these things have been around for centuries but Donald Trump has demonstrated that he's willing to lie um really about anything to suit his purposes
and he also is someone who takes advantage of what is called the Liar's dividend the Liar's dividend is something that becomes possible in a world with lots of misinformation and disinformation see when we all know that politicians can tell lies and that audio and images and even video can be faked it becomes possible to point at real news and real facts and call them fake in other words if lots of people lie it becomes easy to call everyone a liar and nobody lies like her she's a liar she makes up crap because of the existence
of false information he is able to capitalize on this Liar's dividend and accuse people of fake news or using falsehoods when in fact things are true this makes it even harder for all of us to separate the fact from the fiction and with us politics overflowing with misinformation from conspiracy theories about the shooting at Trump's rally to questioning carela Harris's claims of having worked at McDonald it's a busy time for fact Checkers AI has definitely made sort of verifying images videos audio and even who you're speaking to online a lot more difficult Matt Martino tracks
and investigates misinformation and attempts to expose and debunk fake media which is becoming more challenging as technology evolves in the past you wouldn't really need to think am I interacting with a machine here now you actually do need to keep that sort of presence of mine but AI isn't perfect and Matt knows what inconsistencies to look out for can you see this guy you're like yeah that looks like a real guy not wearing anything here in his like his bare chested but he's got sleeves this looks like Coca-Cola but the text is all garbled you
don't often see people drink chips or a straw once AI figures out how to do all that stuff you know that's the that's the scary part will it ever get there who knows AI is a factor politicians are thinking about when it comes to elections here in Australia my government will be introducing legislation into the parliament this video was generated with AI by Senator David poo who wants the government to ban the use of this technology when it comes to elections you have someone saying something that they have never said it should absolutely not be
allowed once something proven to be false spread it can be hard to stop it I don't want to spread misinformation in an interview about misinformation so I'm like checking my sources I've written down here Kate Fitzgerald studies how false information is created and spreads online so I will often see misinformation and conspiracy theories around the covid-19 vaccines for example and there was a fair bit of disinformation around the voice referendum in 20123 for example we saw some conspiracy theories emerging that the Australian Electric commission was giving out pencils because then it made it easier for
results to be rubbed out and changed even though obviously there are a lot of guard rails in place to make sure that nothing like that happens so there's two ways that I observe in my research that misinformation can be born and spread so some sometimes what happens is that we see these sort of Fringe beliefs from just one or two um small sort of uh users who then get get Amplified by other users and then eventually are picked up by celebrities and politicians and that's when narratives are really Amplified and boosted but sometimes those phases
are sort of skipped and there are political actors that will post Miss and disinformation on their own um profile Pages Kate says social media platforms should take some responsibility too I think it depends on the platform how seriously they take misinformation Twitter used to be a great space um X is is not really taking this information seriously at all and Elon Musk since he took over Twitter has relied on crowd sourcing to correct false information he is a free speech absolutist and he thinks the best way to respond to speeches with more speech and if
there's a false claim there then let other people correct it there are other platforms that work a little more proactively to remove false information because you know they have a commitment to Public Safety and honest discourse the federal government is trying to get tech companies to do more to crack down on misinformation and disinformation on their platforms and plans to give akma Australia's media Watchdog greater powers to hold platforms to account we know that disinformation in particular when spread by Rogue States or foreign actors has the potential to undermine our democracy platforms that breach these
laws would have to pay significant fines and some people are against the idea so saying that stricter laws could have a negative impact on Free Speech but for now how can we sort the truth from the lies well experts agree that we should think more about the sources behind what we see online sometimes what purports to be a News website is not a News website at all for example there's one called the Chicago Chronicle there is no such thing generally you should be looking for credible well established sources when you're looking for your news so
the ABC is is a great one for example just to like my own organization I think it's really important for young people to have a variety of sources when they are reading the news if something is huge you know has that kind of huge if true quality you should be immediately skeptical about it if it is newsworthy then all of the major news outlets will be reporting something and so if there's some outlier reporting it and it's significant news chances are if it hasn't been repeated elsewhere where it's not something that you ought to rely
upon if we can't all agree on a certain set of facts then it's difficult to make decisions on mass as to how we should deal with the issues that face us as a society [Music]
