The internet have been seen as a freedom land and as the future of the free speech. Social media gave us the opportunity to share live videos and to know in real-time what’s happening anywhere in the World. On the other hand, social media has also a trap for those who use it. Anyone knows about fake news, fake accounts and trolls, but what can they really do?

Information means power

There was a huge debate when people started questioning whether the spread of fake news had contributed to Donald Trump’s election as US president. Also, fake news were invoked in relation with the vote for BREXIT and the refugee crisis. Experts say automated accounts sharing fake news were used in order to spread ideas and manipulative news on many occasions.

Recently, Facebook suspended 30,000 suspected automated accounts in France. Although, the company argued the action has been taken against spamming, many of the profiles were sharing politically driven misinformation and extremist causes.

Many voices fear manipulative behaviors on the internet will get worse, while the increasing number of cyber attacks is making governments to raise the alarm and to worry about the upcoming elections.

At the same time, fake news and cyber attacks may affect any business in the same way they are used as a political weapon. From this point of view, it seems almost impossible for Facebook to manage all the reports and fake information spread through the social network. However, if for any viruses, there is also an industry producing antivirus softwares, fighting against this machinery has started with online reputation management.

The trolls industry

Every time, you want to buy a new product, you will probably take a look on reviews published by other users. Some of them are buyers like you, some of them are posting positive comments only to raise the product rating and some of them are there only to offer a negative feedback and to invoke a better solution, produced by the competition.

This way it becomes harder to obtain relevant information about the desired product. The same as in the case of fake news, it has a lot to do with manipulative news and propaganda.

One solution

Nowadays, social media and fake news have an impact on any company, person and organization and the power to demonize a person or company. For instance, we can think about a false story spread in 2016 across the internet in which Pepsi was purported to refuse service to Trump supporters. The company’s reputation was so much damaged and it’s been found that it had also a huge impact on sales.

A very simple definition will describe online reputation management (ORM) as a way of taking control of the online information regarding you or your business. Monitoring continuously news feeds and social media posts about you, ORM teams are also ensuring that people find the right materials when they look for you on the Internet.

Although social media and social networks are between the greatest inventions of our century, their benefits depend on how we use them. Things like fake news and trolls may not look like a major issue, but they are actually as bad as cyber attacks while the amount of information published online is almost impossible to manage.