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Τα μοντέλα για την υπερθέρμανση του πλανήτη είναι λάθος Είναι λίγοι μόνο βαθμοί. EU to ban coloured pens and crayons! European tanks in Paris. Fake news. Some people use disinformation (fake news) as a weapon to obscure our access to truthful information. Disinformation is the deliberate use of misleading information for political or financial gain. Disinformation distorts, distracts and dismisses the truth. Technology has accelerated the spread of disinformation. I think it is a major threat because democracy is based on the idea that people make informed choices between political options. How can we recognise disinformation? The first step should be that they are aware that this threat exists and there are actually people out there trying to fool us, trying to lie to us, trying to affect our opinions on different matters. Being aware of these techniques is a very good start. The first thing you have to worry about is whether a person who is sending you information is actually who they pretend to be. It turns out that very often, on Twitter at least, a lot of accounts are fake. They do not even exist. They are not real people. They are just out there for propaganda purposes. Fortunately they are actually fairly easy to identify because if somebody is tweeting 20,000 tweets a day, then chances are they are not a human being. Chances are that they are a remote-controlled device that is trying to disseminate propaganda. What do the people who spread disinformation want to achieve by it? One motive could be to sow division, to make it look like opposing views on an issue are very far apart. Of course, if these views are perceived as being very far apart, it is much harder for us to reach agreements, to move forward and solve these issues. It is aiming to drive us apart, to make society more polarised and less reasoned in its decision-making. What methods are used to disinform? Many of these things are designed to evoke emotions. So one basic rule could be if you see something online and that makes you furious for example, then all the more reason to check the source and check if this is actually true or not. So check yourself and see what your emotional response is and chances are that over the top of emotive information was probably not sent to you for good faith purposes. How do we tackle disinformation? Inoculation is just like an inoculation against the flu or measles or whatever else. You are exposed ahead of time to a small dose of the disinformation by someone pointing out to you how you are being disinformed. And then once you understand the strategies that people use to disinform you, then you can spot it and then you can resist. You have to be aware that there are people trying to deceive us on purpose. They have lots of resources and they are very creative. So if we are fooled once or twice, there is nothing strange about that. But what we can do is to warn others when we find out that something is fake or that something is disinformation. Do not spread it, do not click on it, do not engage with it. What role do the Internet platforms have to play? Democracy is based on the idea of a marketplace of ideas, that we are out there talking to each other in public and the debate sorts out the good ideas from the bad ideas. But if the ideas are sent to people in darkness, without scrutiny, without rebuttal, then you no longer have a marketplace of ideas. Then you have manipulation on a large scale. I do not know but I can tell that it is emotive. So if it is emotive, why do not we just make it a little harder to share it? How about it takes two seconds for the share button to become available and you have to look at a swirly thing on the screen for two seconds? You can cancel anytime and if you do want to share it, you just have to wait. What is the single piece of advice you would pass on? Do not share. Do not click “share”. Do not share stuff unless you know it is true. In December 2018, the EU introduced its Action Plan against Disinformation - a comprehensive package to tackle deliberately deceptive posts and articles online - over the short and long term.