Nowadays, Jakarta’s Governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, maybe the most influential people live in Indonesia. His short speech has moved over hundred thousands fundamentalist Muslims to take the streets, not only once but twice, asking for justice on his alleged blasphemy case. The peace rally which claimed to be purely intend to guard Ahok’s court trial, at the end has turned to be a trial for treason.
All of this chaos may never happen if we do not live in social media era where it has allowed people to communicate in more efficient ways than ever before. Things can be “liked” or “shared” on Facebook without even leaving the comfort of seat. It only needs one simple post to move a heart, cause a suspicion or spark hate all over the country.
Sharing hoax news in social media is easy and relatively safe. By making a fake account, we can post everything we like without being identified. To make it more believable, we can also buy followers or friends. Or else, if we want to keep our hands clean, we can give some money to an administrator of a famous social media account and let them generate the news we ordered, @triomacan2000 for example.
Hoax news even when it first intended as a joke isn’t victim-less. Back in 2013, news about a man who sued his wife for bearing ugly children emerged in social media. A family photo of a beautiful couple with their two ugly weird looking children accompanied the news. According to the news, at first the husband suspected his wife for being unfaithful, but after he found out the DNA test of his two children showed that they were his children, he sued his wife for dishonesty for never telling him about her history of plastic surgery. Without questioning its accuracy, many people hit the share button and jokingly talked about it.
Apparently, this story was an internet fiction and the picture in it was photoshopped. Although a fabricated one, but the magnitude of sharing has made this news seems true and lure us to believe it. Only recently we learned about its accuracy after the woman in the picture confessed in a press conference that the news was fake and it has costed her a modeling career and her mental health. She has battled for depression ever since. One that we just learned after 3 years of believing.
In Indonesia, Facebook has turned into a platform to stay up to date, not only with our friend’s life but also with world news. Throwing back in 2014 presidential election, our current president Joko Widodo was accused of being a Chinese Christian and a communist, a fatal blow-though-ridiculous sounding for a presidential candidate in a Muslims country.
Now that we are close to Governor’s election, there are parties who once again try to gain benefit by using social media to post over-analyzed-extrapolated claims about what Ahok’s been saying and his true intention. Since Ahok belongs to a Chinese Christian, a group that much dislike by most indigenous Indonesians for being richer and more successful, it is easy for a political actor to bend what he actually meant to say into a case of blasphemy, a lure that is embraced by extremist fundamentalist muslims groups.
Recently, the issue of news accuracy shared in Facebook has finally reach Zuckerberg’s main concern. During US presidential campaign, Facebook had helped disseminating fake news, showing how poorly Facebook algorithm managed over its content. Following this embarrassment, it will finally try to find a way to limit deceptive posts by using artificial intelligent. However, this may take sometimes to be implemented in their page.
Until social media has figured out how to filter false news, users themselves should be at forefront of filtering every information they come across during browsing. It’s important for us to be doubtful about everything shared in social media until we find other reliable resources to confirm or debunk the news. Nevertheless, this isn’t an effective way to curb threat for treason. Thus, government may need to intervene every social media posting that could hurt country’s stability. If censorship is needed to maintain our unity in diversity, then maybe it should be done.
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