INTERVIEW
In the Covid-19 pandemic, false information or fake news spread vigorously on social networks. So much so that according to a recent Ifop poll, about a quarter of French people believe that the coronavirus was created by humans. An "absolutely terrifying" percentage for Thomas Huchon, journalist and fake news specialist at Spicee, an online documentary platform. Guest of Culture Media on Friday on Europe 1, he recalled some basic principles of information verification. Because according to him, "in a world where everyone claims to become a journalist on social networks, citizens cannot be exempt from a tiny bit of method, a tiny bit of ethics".
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Do not share information that you are not sure
The journalist's first recommendation: do not share information that you are not sure is true. "What we're seeing a lot right now, both on Facebook, WhatsApp and other private messaging, is that people are sharing a lot of things without even checking them out and saying, 'I’m saw it go by, I'm sending it to you. ' But it's terrible behavior, "regrets Thomas Huchon.
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Estimate the reliability of the source
Second advice: "ask yourself the question of 'who is talking to me?'", He continues. "Is the person talking to me a pharmacist, a doctor, a scientist? Or just a guy who opened his camera on Facebook and decided to talk to me?" For Thomas Huchon, it is therefore necessary "to estimate that the Institut Pasteur, and I think we can all say that, it is better [than any] source on the Internet", on the epidemic of Covid- 19 for example.
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Pay attention to the dates
Third thing to pay attention to is the date of a post, video or photo. "We saw a photo circulating from Italy showing a whole bunch of coffins in a morgue pretending that everyone was dead. So there were certainly many dead in Italy, but this photo dated from the drama of Lampedusa in 2013, it had nothing to do with the epidemic, "reports Thomas Huchon.
"The direct link with the citizens is more and more deteriorated"
The journalist also insists on the importance of his profession, "a real job" which "must also be done by independent journalists" to regain the confidence of citizens. "The problem is also that the direct link with the citizens is more and more deteriorated," he worries.
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In addition, Thomas Huchon also wished to alert on an apparently minor practice, the "ten years challenge". This challenge consists in the publication of a photo of the child Internet user. "I think it shouldn't be done because it's a way to allow Facebook's algorithms to improve their image recognition software. They'll be able to predict what you, me, and all our friends will look like in thirty years because they will have been able to calculate the difference on our faces. "