Since a strong earthquake last month, billionaires have been plagiarized on social media by using fake news and fictitious videos, according to modern activists. The profiteers have reportedly abused the chaos by using clickbait to rake in tens of thousands in ad revenues.
The schemes prey on the increased fears and taste for reports that come with any hazard or outbreak of war, whether it be spectacular images that go viral or false save stories.
” People just have to believe that there is a lot of false information out there.” According to Darrell West, a mature tech researcher at the Brookings Institution,” they should be aware there are folks making money off of false information.”
More than 3,600 people have died as a result of Myanmar’s March 28 earthquake, according to state media, with 5, 000 others being hurt and thousands also missing.
Following a 2021 revolution that brought back the military to strength and hampered its economy after a century of development and cautious democracy, the downtrodden South-East Asian nation of 53 million suffered the most recently from the earthquake.
Despite the fact that the videos were shot in Syria and Malaysia or created from scratch by artificial intelligence ( AI), the grass-roots group Digital Insight Lab, which runs Facebook pages to combat hate speech and misinformation in Myanmar, reported seeing viral posts claiming to show the devastation of the disaster.
Many of these reports use photos and videos from related earlier incidents, while others use artificial intelligence to create false narratives, according to research official Windy, who used a pseudonym for safety.
Digital experts claim that miscaptioned pictures, false videos, or false stories about rescue efforts are popular on social media following disasters.
” When you have mis- and propaganda, it can cause despair and delay your departure. It can erode the confidence you have in crisis service. It can also be very distracting, according to Jeanette Elsworth, the director of communications for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction ( UNDRR ).
Fake rumors about the government’s use of federal disaster resources to illegal immigrants spread after Hurricane Helene destroyed some parts of the country last year.
In order to claim that the movies of floods in Japan and Greenland were real-time images from the novel disaster area, fraudsters uploaded them after a huge earthquake struck Turkey and Syria in 2023, killing more than 51, 000 individuals.
” We now have a Wild West where almost anything can go. There are very few laws that affect website content, and the technology companies aren’t doing much to defend users, West, of the Brookings Institution, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Misinformation is costly.
According to the tech policy group What To Fix, more than US$ 20 billion ( RM 88.64 billion ) was generated in 2024 from advertising revenues split between social media platforms and content creators.
According to leader Victoire Rio, who has also worked in Myanmar reading propaganda, content developers use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok to make money off of the ads that appear alongside their content.
She claimed that the model encourages creators to create viral posts, even if they are artificially generated or false, because more views and shares they can generate result in more money.
Fraudsters have been able to make tens of thousands of dollars in the past, including the 2021 coup in Myanmar, Rio claimed.
According to a study conducted by fact-checking firm NewsGuard and analytics firm Comscore in 2021, misinformation websites generate US$ 2.6 % ( RM11.52 % ) from digital advertising annually.
More than 60 % of the social advertising market is owned by Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, according to What To Fix, which saw a 55 % increase in creator accounts in 2024.
A sizable portion of the disinformation you’re seeing circulate is financially motivated, according to Rio.
According to Meta,” so few people see it,” they remove posts that violate their policies, work with partners to disprove false claims, and move such content down the feed.
In January, Meta changed its strategy for managing political content and discontinued its US fact-checking programs.
After the earthquake in Myanmar, TikTok announced it prohibited misleading and false content on its platform and proactively removed inaccurate posts, directing users to trustworthy sources.
It claimed to have partners in 50 languages who have been trained as fact-checking partners.
Rio claimed misinformation was also being fueled by the lack of information coming out of Myanmar as a result of internet shutdowns.
You have a sizable community of people trying to find information on Facebook from outside of Myanmar. And those people are particularly vulnerable to misinformation because they are constantly looking for information, according to Rio.
The situation, according to Htaike Htaike Aung, director of the Myanmar Internet Project, which monitors the country’s internet blackouts, was putting lives in danger.
” Fake posts are frequently at the top of the newsfeed, which makes having access to quality information more challenging,” said Aung, “because of it’s clickbaity nature and how social media algorithms function.”
It’s putting a lot of strain on aid efforts. Access to information is a life or death circumstance at this time.
reducing uncertainties
Platforms should do more to stop misinformation, according to Eliska Pirkova, senior policy analyst at the digital rights organization Access Now, rather than relying on community groups to report false content after it has run.
” Access to information is always a lifeline, especially in times of crisis. So ( platforms ) have very strict due diligence requirements, she said.
” Local civil society organizations frequently have to step in and shoulder the burden of escalating and flagging cases. Because they are dealing with the crisis on the ground, these resources are already extremely scarce.
Additionally, governments have been urged to step up.
The United States has abandoned some protective guardrails to accede to its position on the global market, while the European Union aims to restrain tech companies.
According to UNDRR’s Elsworth, who urged religious leaders, civil society, and local media to play their part, there will be more than Big Tech and government to stop fake news.
Everyone must get involved, she said. It’s about giving people the tools they need to do at every level, according to Thomson Reuters Foundation.