Like the current coronavirus pandemic, there is another, more insidiously dangerous pandemic that has been around for a long time; which shows no signs of abating. It is the scourge of fake news. It is all around us – so dangerous that it causes violence, lynching and enmity between communities. So under the aegis of TikTok, some celebrities got together to create a public awareness message to awaken people to the menace of mindless forwards:
Virat Kohli, Kriti Sanon, Ayushmaan Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan got together to tell people not to forward messages that are fake, superstitious, hateful or otherwise dangerous.
Firstly don’t forward. Secondly, report fake forwards. Not only do we need to arrest the spread of fakes, we need to call out those who create and forward them and let them know that there will be consequences.
People forward things because they conform to their confirmation bias. Some do so in the innocent belief that this could help someone. Both can do harm.
Fake forwards can cause real harm: fake medical advice, hate filled messages, libelous or morphed messages and so on.
Maybe some will be inspired to stop and think. For others the #MatKarForward hashtag may not make any difference.
Large news organisations and widely watched anchors are also known to disseminate fake news without doing their due diligence.
These are people who should know better and who have vast resources at their disposal and yet contribute to the fake news factory.
The problem is that there is vast machinery in place to create and spread propaganda and misinformation. Various political parties manipulate social media to further their own agendas.
Mindless social media activity also leaves one open to scamsters and fraudsters, as this tweet suggests.
The willingness to forward without verifying or thinking about the consequences is as dangerous as an invisible virus. Some people forward content quite callously because they think something is entertaining, without thinking about the costs to the persons involved.
A lot of people expressed their appreciation for the celebs involved in the public service message. Others pointed out that this generated a passive income for them at a time when they weren't able to generate much remuneration.
TikTok is a Chinese app. They also pointed out that TikTok a lot of hate and fake content is spread via TikTok as well – isn't this a case of rank hypocrisy?
This Twitter-user found it interesting that Twitter and TikTok seemed to have come together to campaign against WhatsApp.
Before hitting ‘Forward’ ask yourself these questions (a) Is it true? (b) Is it helpful? (c) Is it necessary? (d) Is it kind? If not, #MatkarForward . We owe it to ourselves, our loved ones, our community and to our nation to be responsible citizens and just decent human beings. Being a responsible ‘forwarder’ is an important part of that.
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