Why the fake news confidence trap could be your downfall

As the Goodbye Meta AI meme proved, many of us vastly overestimate our abilities to discern what’s true online – but spotting misinformation isn’t something we can do alone

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It’s a wild world out there online, with dis- and misinformation flying about at pace. I’m part-way through writing a book about the history of fake news, so I’m well aware that people making stuff up is not new. But what is new is the reach that troublemakers have, whether their actions are deliberate or accidental.

Social media and the wider web changed the game for mischief-makers, and made it easier for the rest of us to be inadvertently hoodwinked online (see: the odd “Goodbye Meta AI” trend that I wrote about this week for the Guardian). The rise of generative AI since the release of ChatGPT in 2022 has also supercharged the risks. While early research suggests our biggest fears about the impact of AI-generated deepfakes on elections are unfounded, the overall information environment is a puzzling one.