Can anything be done about fake news?

I am afraid fake news is here to stay and no one, not even the most powerful governments of the world can stop it.

The generators of fake news are more powerful than the political leaders. Actually, they have more control than the ruthless dictators, both in the past and present, ever had. They have their own seats of power and fear no one.

I am not exaggerating that fake news is the biggest challenge we face today. But on closer scrutiny, false news spreaders were always around. They started in the villages spreading rumours then integrate in the cities by using the words of mouth.

But with the social media, they now reign supreme and a few clicks on their mobile phones can unseat a cold-blooded tyrant in a matter of months. Is it a good thing? I am not sure but facts now get hidden behind a curtain of falsehood.

The frightening thing is that hoaxes literally spread in a speed of lightening. The fake news spreaders justify it as “alternative facts” but we know that it is not. We are having trouble knowing what reliable information is and what is fake.

It has spread into politics, religion, academic and right into our homes. Is it changing our lives? There is no question about it. It is causing confusion about the basic facts of life and how we live in it. The real winners, it seems, are the spreaders of the fake news.

The worst thing is that they get rewarded by spreading them. They get large followers in their social media accounts. Large companies like that and they advertise through them so they can reach to millions of customers.

So who benefit from false news? Advertising companies or customers who respond to their products? When you come to think about it, let us look at the dictators or the so-called democracies of the world and where they fit in the fake news.

How do they benefit from it? They certainly jump into the fake news bandwagon. They use them for their benefit to promote themselves for leadership through the social media.

It is about misleading information and who can get in the top office. The celebrities are also now jumping into this arena of misinformation to get contracts, ranging from models, actors to footballers.

The trouble of the social media are those electronic postings that are from the truth. They get disseminated and sometimes through the wrong channels. The channels of bombs and missiles where thousands of lives are wasted.

Many people don’t have time to check the misinformation that lands on the screens of their mobile phones. There are also those who use fake news as entertainment. They just simply forward and spread them not caring about the truth behind them.