A lot has been made about the supposed proliferation of “fake news” and, regrettably, because discussion about it started around the time of Trump’s last ascendancy (and to quite a significant degree from the Trump camp), not everyone takes the concept entirely seriously. But it’s definitely something that happens, and it’s making the Web less and less useful.
Earlier today, a member of a Discord I’m in posted a link to the following tweet:
The screenshots are of Windows Defender supposedly finding a plain text file containing nothing but the text “This content is no longer available.” to be a piece of malware — specifically a Trojan called Casdet!rfn. Obviously a plain text file is not malware, so this is ridiculous, and thus Microsoft must have made a silly mistake and we can all laugh at them, ho ho ho.
I tried it.
Windows Defender did not find it to be malware.
I Googled it and found several outlets reporting on this “story”, including some that really should know better (looking at you, Tom’s Hardware) — and not one of them had seemingly put in the minimal amount of effort required to verify that this was actually a thing. In other words, none of them had done what I did above: recreate the situation by composing a blank text file, putting the words “This content is no longer available.” in it and then scanning it with Windows Defender. A two-minute job, tops.
No, instead the most rigour anyone put in was to look at the replies to the Twitter post, which are fairly slim in number, making me wonder exactly how this misinformation had spread in the first place. The tweet in question has nearly 700,000 views, though only 800 of whatever the Muskrat is calling “Retweets” this week, suggesting the majority of its minor virality has come about through situations exactly like the one I describe above: people sharing it via means other than Twitter.
Now, I don’t blame the chap on Discord. He was just sharing something he thought was funny. I don’t even blame the original Tweeter, because it’s entirely possible that this was true once and it was quietly fixed in a Windows update. But I do blame all these people, and Google.
Not only for reporting on this without doing the absolute bare minimum of fact-checking, but for not correcting these stories if indeed it was once true and now is no longer correct.
Either way, the result is the same: a lot of misinformation gets spread very easily, often by people who have no ill intent. It’s not the fault of the people who share this stuff — although I personally would check any sort of claim like this before resharing it myself — but it absolutely is the fault of outlets authoritatively sharing this as “news” without doing any sort of research beyond looking at a few Twitter posts.
Sadly, this is what “news” is these days. Get a good hook for a story that might be the slightest bit clickable and/or shareable, then write it up (with at least 600 words for SEO purposes, of course) and just make some shit up in the middle if you need to. Doesn’t matter if the story is true or not; by the time people have clicked or shared, the article has done its job, and it doesn’t matter if anyone twigs that it’s bollocks or not.
In some respects, I’m sad that I’m no longer working the games journalism beat. But in others, I know that if I was still a newshound, I’d likely be gently encouraged into this sort of odious practice in order to get the numbers up.
I had more integrity and rigour when I was covering stuff for GamePro and USgamer. I’d find stories, research them myself and report on them only when I was good and sure that there actually was a story there. And I didn’t have to make a big deal out of doing that at the time, because that was the expectation for someone working a News Editor position.
Now? Engagement above all. Who cares if something is true? Numbers go big, suits stay happy. Fuck the actual audience who might want the publications they read to be reliable and trustworthy; they are, after all, the least important part of the whole equation these days.
If you’re looking for the Web as it once was, then I’m sorry to inform you that This content is no longer available.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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