Filipino journalists may have found one of the solutions to stop misinformation in social media by launching the fake news blocker, Fakeblok.
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The proliferation of fake news and unverified reports has grown online, so much so that even the government-run news agency Philippine News Agency (PNA) was caught up with the fake news scandal.
“Over the past months, unverified posts on social media have been intentionally spreading misinformation. Even state-run news agencies have come up with, shared, and legitimized fake news,” the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) said in a statement on June 5.
The Fakeblok is a Chrome plug-in that is designed to clean up your Facebook news feed of any fake news site.
The NUJP said, “Filipino journalists have been working together to come up with a list of sites that tend to share fake news – and a tool that would make this helpful to the public.”
The organization also urged netizens to join in the cause by submitting websites that they suspect to bear fake news. These sites will then be investigated by Filipino journalists. If they are confirmed to be fake news sites, they will be added to Fakeblok’s list of fake news sites to be banned from your FB newsfeed.
NUJP added that the plug-in may help us “reclaim the truth.”
“We cannot believe everything that we read. We need to constantly question. We need to reclaim the truth. We need to reclaim our newsfeeds,” the organization said.
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PNA was heavily criticized for reporting that 95 UN member states were convinced there were no extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and for using a photo of Vietnamese soldiers for a Marawi-related article. PNA’s fake news was even shared by government officials – Communications Asec. Mocha Uson and Social Welfare Asec. Lorraine Badoy.
Uson was also slammed for sharing a photo of the Honduras police while asking for prayers for the Philippine Army.
NUJP included the link to the Fakeblok plug-in in Chrome Web Store.
Sources: ( twitter.com , facebook.com , technology.inquirer.net )
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