Fear Speech: The Problem No One Talks About
Nothing will change until social media companies stop monetizing attention.
Last month, a picture that appeared to show a large cloud of black smoke near the Pentagon — the US headquarters of the Department of Defence — went viral on Twitter.
And although experts quickly identified it as an AI-generated image, it continued to be reposted by people — including several fake accounts pretending to be news outlets with paid-for blue ticks.
It even briefly caused the stock market to tumble.
But this is hardly the first time that happened.
And it’s not just Twitter that feels increasingly chaotic and rife with fake news, misinformation rabbit holes and doctored images and videos, which add more fuel to the dumpster fire of today’s polarised society. It’s social media platforms in general.
You’d think that in light of all of this — and especially seeing how the use of generative AI to spread mistruths is only becoming more common — tech companies would do more about today’s misinformation ecosystem they’re unquestionably a massive part of.
Or that social media…