Suyin Aerts
May 12, 2023

Disinformation

Yesterday I made the good decision to ignore the traffic jams that Waze was indicating and I decided to go to the Alfons Fosburry Revisited event. The location where I launched my first book about 1 year ago.

Not only did I see many great people back, I met some new people and I won in the drawing competition, a LinkedIn course, with a company I know so that’s going to be great fun.

But the best reason I was happy I did not decide to stay in the office to finish my work (and spent a day at home watching Eurovision) is because of the great keynote digital mastermind Tim Verheyden gave. 

Tim got us up to speed on everything we need to know about fake news, artificial intelligence and the 'disinformation pandemic'

Since Donald Trump, the term fake news has become indispensable. In the war between Russia and Ukraine, we are all witnessing what is the ultimate goal of disinformation: chaos and conflict. 

Information is used as a weapon to confuse people and divide the world. 

Our society faces a much more complex problem than fake news: disinformation. Disinformation no longer only takes place on the other side of the world. It has – especially since the corona crisis – also had a major impact on our society and our daily lives.

The best sentence of the keynote, among many, was : we need to speak a language of nuance!

I truly believe it is very important not to become indifferent, we have to stay aware of keeping our eyes open, as it is easier in our culture to close them from time to time.

Indifference says loud and clear, “I just don’t care about you. What’s happening to you doesn’t matter to me.” I think indifference is a kind of fear, that’s why we need good journalists that go out there to find the truth, those that check all the facts.

But when you are able to push aside any form of indifference and you are able to take the time to listen with compassion to understand the experiences of others I am convinced we can offer support when needed. We need to help others understand that fake news is amongst us, especially on social media.

Social media is not showing us the real world. Let’s face this, accept this, let’s not run away but let’s remember the world wide web was there to unite us not to divide us.

Facebook, founded in 2004  was built to bring people and the world closer together and build a community. But we are very far from that mission statement now.

I will never stop asking questions, and hopefully I always ask the right ones. 

Facts have long ceased to matter and the value of truth is more important than ever.

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