Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Dealing with false facts: How to correct online misinformation

Side-by-side images, one with a computer overlay

A comparison of an original and deepfake video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Sanfilippo is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and book series editor for Cambridge Studies on Governing Knowledge Commons. She is a public voices fellow of The OpEd Project.

Deepfakes of celebrities and misinformation about public figures might not be new in 2024, but they are more common and many people seem to grow ever more resigned that they are inevitable.

The problems posed by false online content extend far beyond public figures, impacting everyone, including youth.


New York Mayor Eric Adams in a recent press conference emphasized that many depend on platforms to fix these problems, but that parents, voters and policymakers need to take action. “These companies are well aware that negative, frightening and outrageous content generates continued engagement and greater revenue,” Adams said.

Recent efforts by Taylor Swift’s fans, coordinated via #ProtectTaylorSwift, to take down, bury, and correct fake and obscene content about her are a welcome and hopeful story about the ability to do something about false and problematic content online.

Still, deepfakes (videos, photos and audio manipulated by artificial intelligence to make something look or sound real) and misinformation have drastically changed social media over the past decade, highlighting the challenges of content moderation and serious implications for consumers, politics and public health.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

At the same time, generative AI — with ChatGPT at the forefront — changes the scale of these problems and even challenges digital literacy skills recommended to scrutinize online content, as well as radically reshaping content on social media.

The transition from Twitter to X — which has 1.3 billion users — and the rise of TikTok — with 232 million downloads in 2023 — highlight how social media experiences have evolved as a result.

From colleagues at conferences discussing why they’ve left LinkedIn and students asking if they really need to use it, people recognize the decrease in quality of content on that platform (and others) due to bots, AI and the incentives to produce more content.

LinkedIn has established itself as key to career development, yet some say it is not preserving expectations of trustworthiness and legitimacy associated with professional networks or protecting contributors.

In some ways, the reverse is true: User data is being used to train LinkedIn Learning’s AI coaching with an expert lens that is already being monetized as a “professional development” opportunity for paid LinkedIn Premium users.

Regulation of AI is needed as well as enhanced consumer protection around technology. Users cannot meaningfully consent to use platforms and their ever changing terms of services without transparency about what will happen with an individual’s engagement data and content.

Not everything can be solved by users. Market-driven regulation is failing us.

There needs to be meaningful alternatives and the ability to opt out. It can be as simple as individuals reporting content for moderation. For example, when multiple people flag content for review, it is more likely to get to a human moderator, who research shows is key to effective content moderation, including removal and appropriate labeling.

Collective action is also needed. Communities can address problems of false information by working together to report concerns and collaboratively engineer recommendation systems via engagement to deprioritize false and damaging content.

Professionals must also build trust with the communities they serve, so that they can promote reliable sources and develop digital literacy around sources of misinformation and the ways AI promotes and generates it. Policymakers must also regulate social media more carefully.

Truth matters to an informed electorate in order to preserve safety of online spaces for children and professional networks, and to maintain mental health. We cannot leave it up to the companies who caused the problem to fix it.

Read More

Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis

Closeup of Software engineering team engaged in problem-solving and code analysis.

Getty Images, MTStock Studio

AI Is Here. Our Laws Are Stuck in the Past.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises a future once confined to science fiction: personalized medicine accounting for your specific condition, accelerated scientific discovery addressing the most difficult challenges, and reimagined public education designed around AI tutors suited to each student's learning style. We see glimpses of this potential on a daily basis. Yet, as AI capabilities surge forward at exponential speed, the laws and regulations meant to guide them remain anchored in the twentieth century (if not the nineteenth or eighteenth!). This isn't just inefficient; it's dangerously reckless.

For too long, our approach to governing new technologies, including AI, has been one of cautious incrementalism—trying to fit revolutionary tools into outdated frameworks. We debate how century-old privacy torts apply to vast AI training datasets, how liability rules designed for factory machines might cover autonomous systems, or how copyright law conceived for human authors handles AI-generated creations. We tinker around the edges, applying digital patches to analog laws.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists
man using MacBook Air

Nurturing the Next Generation of Journalists

“Student journalists are uniquely positioned to take on the challenges of complicating the narrative about how we see each other, putting forward new solutions to how we can work together and have dialogue across difference,” said Maxine Rich, the Program Manager with Common Ground USA. I had the chance to interview her earlier this year about Common Ground Journalism, a new initiative to support students reporting in contentious times.

A partnership with The Fulcrum and the Latino News Network (LNN), I joined Maxine and Nicole Donelan, Program Assistant with Common Ground USA, as co-instructor of the first Common Ground Journalism cohort, which ran for six weeks between January and March 2025.

Keep ReadingShow less
Project 2025’s Media Agenda: The Executive Order Threatens NPR and PBS
NPR headquarters | James Cridland | Flickr

Project 2025’s Media Agenda: The Executive Order Threatens NPR and PBS

President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Thursday evening to eliminate federal funding for NPR and PBS. The order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and other agencies to cease both direct and indirect public financing for these public broadcasters.

In a social media post, the administration defended the decision, asserting that NPR and PBS "receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.’" The executive order argues that government-funded media is outdated and unnecessary, claiming it compromises journalistic independence.

Keep ReadingShow less
Remote control in hand to change channels​.

Remote control in hand to change channels.

Getty Images, Stefano Madrigali

Late-Night Comedy: How Satire Became America’s Most Trusted News Source

A close friend of mine recently confessed to having stopped watching cable news altogether because it was causing him and his wife anxiety and dread. They began watching Jimmy Kimmel instead, saying the nightly news felt like "psychological warfare" on their mental state. "We want to know what's going on but can't handle the relentless doom and gloom every night," he told me.

Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live, seems to understand this shift. "A year ago, I would've said I'm hoping to show people who aren't paying attention to the news what's actually going on," he told Rolling Stone last month in an interview. "Now I see myself more as a place to scream."

Keep ReadingShow less