LEE COUNTY, Fla. — If you’ve been on Facebook lately, your timeline is probably flooded with ads for the upcoming election.
It’s also likely covered with political memes - more times than not - with false information about candidates.
Facebook and Twitter now flag content that may have misleading information, but cybersecurity engineer Evan Lutz with Cigent Technology says they don’t catch everything. Users are bending the rules to post fake information on your timelines.
“My guess is that it’s through flooding the system,” said Lutz. “Perhaps with both legitimate, and illegitimate content, making it hard to decipher what’s considered good, and what’s considered bad.”
Content producers are getting around major platform’s algorithms or blockade processes that sift through the fake stuff for you. So, Lutz says it’s up to you to filter what you see.
“By simply unfollowing or hiding all of the activity coming from that account, you will no longer see the content coming from that account,” he said.
Misleading information also circulated in the 2016 election. Dr. Christine Wright-Isak, assistant marketing professor at Florida Gulf Coast University tells voters what she tells her students.
“Ask what the motivation is in the message being sent. Are they trying to make you afraid? Then, be skeptical,” she said. “Don’t trust everything you see on social media. Particularly conspiracy theories. The more weird they sound, the more weird they’re likely to be, and the less true they’re likely to be.”
During a roundtable in Fort Myers last week, Governor Ron DeSantis reassured Florida voters their ballots are safe despite threats from foreign countries.
“The FBI has provided counsel both to the state of Florida and to the locals, as well as to these vendors. It’s something we take very seriously,” he said.
You can also report misleading posts to Facebook and Twitter. It’s under the same menu to stop notifications from an individual user.
