As some major tech companies roll back their content moderation staffs, a local inter-faith group is sponsoring a free course about how to combat online disinformation.
The class is called “Countering Disinformation in Digital Spaces” and will start at 6:30 p.m. in the Veterans Room on the second floor of the Oak Park Public Library’s Main Branch on Lake Street. The event is being put on by the Oak Park inter-faith organization Congregations Networking for Social Justice, and the class will be led by Oak Parker Lisa Hoelscher, a veteran schoolteacher and education technology professional.
The class will look to teach residents about different types of online disinformation, how to identify them, how to fact check disinformation and what makes people susceptible to believing online hearsay, according to Congregations Networking for Social Justice.
As some tech companies deemphasize content moderation and fact-checking, the group hopes to empower residents to do it themselves.
“Social media companies have a history of decision-making that serves their bottom line regardless of the societal cost,” the group wrote. “Their role in facilitating episodes of violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka through the spread of disinformation is well documented as is their role in helping disinformation spread before the 2016 election in the U.S.”
“Content moderation is not enough! Learn how to combat disinformation at our event. It’s about time we stepped up our game!”
The local event comes after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced that it would be cutting ties with thousands of third-party content moderation staffers around the world as it seeks to end fact checking on its apps in an effort to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms,” as founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in January.
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions after taking office earlier this year was to sign an executive order targeting government involvement in social media fact checking.
“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without government interference,” the order reads. “Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the federal government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”
A 2024 MIT study found that 80% of people generally support fact checking being built-in to social media platforms, and that its presence can reduce the spread of false information by 25%.