Rajasthan Police has come up with a unique initiative to help Twitter users identify and ignore fake news.
In these digital times, social media has become a prime mover of fake news. But how do we separate the wheat from the chaff?
Rajasthan Police has come up with a unique initiative to help Twitter users identify and ignore fake news. For this, task the state police has chosen to spread awareness by highlighting exposes by SM Hoax Slayer, a fact-checker portal, which runs a drive on Twitter exposing fake news.
Launched on its Twitter handle recently, the police said that a series on fake news would be launched aiming to help Twitter users to differentiate between a fake news and a genuine one.
“Starting a series on fake news. Please follow these tiny yet significant tips. What’s fake news? It is news, a story or hoax which misleads you into believing the facts which are not true. Often social media becomes easy carrier for spreading falsehood and distortion,” said the Rajasthan police in a video advising users to check reliable source, read beyond headline and check author and date before making an opinion about news or sharing it.
The state police on Wednesday shared a post under its ‘exposing fake news series’ and coincidentally it was a false government notification which was shared by a Rajasthan cadre IAS officer. The bureaucrat, as per news reports, inadvertently shared a fake post which mentioned that West Bengal government has declared a long holiday on Eid. The fake notification on the holidays was shared by Rajasthan police along with screenshot of news which quoted Kolkata police denying any such reports.
Kolkata police is already probing the fake post.
In the drive the state police has tagged SM Hoax Slayer which reflects that it has sought support from portal in exposing and fighting fake news. Though, it has been denied by the police. Replying to a user’s query the Rajasthan police said that it has not collaborated with the portal and it just valued wonderful job that SMHoaxSlayer is doing and all of us should come together to address this menace,” reads a tweet.
The Rajasthan police, in another tweet, advised users to check news from multiple sources and not to make judgement in haste on a post which may be satire. “Fake news is an online epidemic that poses threat to people! DoYouKnow-Satire is a type of fake news where a piece of content which is intended to amuse readers is misinterpreted as fact. Thus, it’s essential to check news via multiple sources for its credibility.”
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