Episode 46: Hooked on Hoaxes (Repeat)

We don’t have a new episode this week as Swedian is busy traveling back to the States, so we have a repeat of our 21st episode, Hooked on Hoaxes, where we talked about the problem of fake news — a problem which, unfortunately, has come back to haunt us with recent revelations regarding data mining & analysis firm Cambridge Analytica‘s misuse and abuse of Facebook data, in order to influence elections. It seems as good a time as any to revisit the topic of fake news and how it taps into our worst psychological instincts! We’ll be back in two weeks’ time with a brand new episode, so stay tuned! ----------------------- In this episode, we dive straight into the deep and dark world of fake news & hoaxes. 2016 has been such a wake-up call in making us realize that the problem of fake news & hoaxes has really serious real world implications. From Donald Trump and #PizzaGate in the U.S., to President Jokowi’s battles with fake allegations of 10 million Chinese workers in Indonesia and, of course, Ahok’s battle against allegations of blasphemy due to an edited speech of his; suffice to say that no one individual nor one country is immune from this problem. We look into how Indonesia has taken on this issue of fake news & hoaxes quite seriously, with President Jokowi declaring a war against hoaxes and the government updating its cyber laws (UU ITE) and setting up cybersecurity divisions in the police force. We unpack what these cyber laws are and talk through the potential implications to our freedom of speech given their recent revisions and changes. We also dig deeper into the financial incentives of fake news & hoaxes (including recognizing the cottage industry nature of its business) as well as the underlying psychological appeal of fake news, namely the concepts of confirmation bias and conjunction fallacy. We discuss the private sector alternatives to countering fake news, including the significant roles companies like Facebook have to fight this permanent problem. Finally, we urge our listeners to think before you click, and remember that if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably not 🙂 Thanks for listening!