It's the scourge of late: fake news. Now Thailand also seems to be dealing with this phenomenon. For example, the Facebook safety check was triggered by fake news on Tuesday. A series of reports about an explosion in Bangkok caused the feature to go on.

The fake news spread was an old report about the 2015 Erawan shrine attack, which killed 20 people. The message was automatically taken over by a news bot from MSN.news. After an hour, Facebook disabled the security check, reports The Verge.

With Facebook's safety check, users can let others know if they are safe in the event of natural disasters or attacks. Initially, the function was turned on manually by the tech company, but last month the social network announced that the function would now be controlled by an algorithm. That went wrong on Tuesday due to the fake news picked up by Facebook's news algorithm.

Source: Various media, among others. Bangkok Post and NU.nl

2 thoughts on “Fake news about Bangkok bombing: Facebook sent security check”

  1. Leo says up

    Artificial intelligence, completely detached from reality. An extrapolation of known facts and associated value judgments.
    Modal, statistical, true, but in fact always wrong.

    • Dennis says up

      It is precisely the human intelligence that allows itself to be misled, extrapolates and makes value judgments.

      Facebook is the most used website/app for many people. A lot of the information they receive, they get through FB. No newspapers are read here in the village. All information comes via TV, internet and smartphone. And via via, but that ultimately also comes via the aforementioned media.

      Facebook itself does not publish any news. It's the users and you can count on a smart (or cunning) PR team to highlight those points that properly convey the news they want to bring out.

      For fun, check out Russia Today and CNN to see the huge difference in interpretation they have about Syria, for example. Same war, but if you watch RT and CNN you would think they are talking about 2 completely different conflicts. Who's lying then? I myself think that the respective channels highlight precisely that news that puts the regime they support in a good light, and that is of course Russia for RT and the US for CNN.

      I don't know which smart guy, villain or philosopher said it, but there's a quote "you only know what you think you know"


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