FAKE NEWS

VOST PORTUGAL, as an association of digital volunteers, has online its main field of action.
In the daily monitoring of social networks you often encounter:
– Wrong information: False, unintentionally created and/or unintentionally disseminated information.
– disinformation: false information, created deliberately and with a defined purpose.
– requests for validation of information submitted by our followers on social media

Any situation can trigger an avalanche of false information, for example:
– Any body responsible for a particular communication does not do so clearly and makes room for rumours and rumours.
– a story with a suggestive title, but which, in the body of the story, is not informative.
– a fake comment in a comment box of a real news story.
– A Meme

I light the fuse,

Propagation is fast and difficult to control.

The attentive look at social networks allowed, over time, to identify and expose various situations. These include:
– several asteroids that would pass very “close” to Earth, but in reality that “close” was quite distant.
– Some home recipes, both for prevention and cure, for Covid-19, and foods with their pH value, on a scale never seen before for foods.
– An adverse weather phenomenon that would bring us very high temperatures for several days in a row, which never happened.
– WhatsApp reports of COVID-19 deaths hidden from the population
– a MEME with official entity logos, easily identified by some but taken seriously by many others.
– stories of megaphones, police officers and supermarkets told by his friend, his girlfriend’s father, his doctor and his cousin.
– a fake deconfinement plan circulated on WhatsApp

Rumors or deliberate misinformation (may even be truths, manipulated and misrepresented) mix and merge with true information. They create noise and make it difficult to identify what is truth, what is lies, what is harmless and what can be dangerous.

VOST’s role in countering misinformation and disinformation has been (and will continue to be) always to protect people:

– detecting, identifying and exposing misinformation or misinformation.
– alert, for potentially dangerous situations,
– validate information with the responsible bodies, through the existing open channels, in order to restore the truth of the facts
– provide clear, unbiased and credible information, promoting the extinction of rumours.
– working to reduce digital illiteracy, raising awareness of, among other things, the importance of preferring validated and official information to information obtained on the website inventeiagoraporquedajeito.com , with YouTube channel, rumble and BITCHUTE.

Some hashtags have been created to index the fight against disinformation: specific ones such as
#StopRumores, or #Conspiracy, other more general or pedagogical, such as #EstánahoraFrom

It should be noted that fake news online does not stay online.
A little bit of the world, reports of real consequences arrive, some of extreme gravity. From the cancellation of professional activities, job loss, riots and civil disobedience, to people who neglected the most basic safety rules and lost their lives for following what they read on WhatsApp or saw on YouTube.
There are also reports of people who have committed suicide because they can't stand rumors being hurled at them; of people who have been persecuted, assaulted and even murdered.

Misinformation and disinformation

are real threats

They are a threat to everyone's security.

More than ever, it is important to realise that tackling them is an emergency.

This is a struggle in which VOST Portugal has been engaged on a daily basis, since its existence, in the most varied forms – a struggle that must also belong to everyone, individually.

Note: This page is, unfortunately, constantly updated.