Can satanic fake news, as the Pope said, be encouraged by devilish mismanagement of the big internet platforms?

There can be a systemic complicity of large internet platforms in the spread and fabrication of fake news. If it is not addressed it soon will engulf even the biggest platforms and it could destroy the whole internet.

The output and collection of information through mobile communications and the internet has now become one of the most important activities in our lives. This occurs mostly through large platforms. It has become as important and necessary to our lives as access to water or electric power, and it is becoming intimately linked with the flow of money, credit, payments, and interest on deposits and loans.

Therefore, it is essential to guarantee the safety of the flow of information, just as with all other utilities. Water must be drinkable, and if it is not, then it should be clearly marked as such; otherwise, people will die. Electricity should be stable; otherwise equipment can be damaged and burned by fluctuations.

The services provided by these platforms are increasingly similar to those of utilities and thus should be regulated accordingly. The key to safety in all of this is information that is flowing through the net. The Pope has recently censured fake news, calling it “satanic.”

In fact, it pollutes the most important utility, the one that is growing the fastest and becoming the thing on which we are most dependent. It is like poisonous water flowing into the pipes and out our water taps—everything becomes contaminated.

It is impossible to eliminate fake news, and it is also very difficult sometimes to tell the difference between real and fake news, which is not just the difference between mainstream and not mainstream. Sometimes there is a lot of interesting information and innovation outside of mainstream media. (see also http://www.limesonline.com/en/the-fake-problem-with-fake-news) But the large internet utilities must at least create a clear hierarchy of news, so that the reader is alerted to the source of the “water-info” he receives.

The lack of hierarchy of news then has a direct impact on distribution of money on the internet: if the big platforms take the lion’s share of advertising revenue, and other web businesses will eventually suffocate or remain small and in a state of survival.

In this way, that are born out small firms, creativity and competition end. In the end, even the big platforms that have carved up a digital world divided into companies and states (and often in companies with a state behind them) are stifled because of lack of innovation and competition.

If it becomes a game only between ultra large companies, only the most organized—those with the oldest culture of bureaucracy in themselves or in the state behind them—will succeed.

If the game does not change, and no more resources are distributed to solid news organizations and newspapers, solid information will only come from large corporate or state sources and unreliable sources.

Today solid news groups and newspapers (where journalism is paid) are only ancillary to large web platforms, are more dependent on ad revenues driven by large platforms, where content is also generated by the frenzy and outbursts of anyone.

In this formless ocean of news stories from reliable journalists are on the same level of lunatics or criminals looking for notoriety and money, and in this night where all stories are black only the most scandalous, darkest, most outrageous and devilish stands out.

But good news, produced with lots of work and research, is rewarded by the internet less than cheap outbursts, produced with little work and no research.

That is: this formless internet puts a prize and de facto encourages fake news. It is the old economic adage: bad money drives out good money, and eventually crashes the whole economy. In this case fake news drives out true news and eventually destroys all news.

If we do not reestablish a more equitable distribution of resources, and therefore a hierarchy of information, only the loudest mouths and most infamous will win. Is this the future that #Google, #Facebook, #Tencent, and #Alibaba want?

For sure running water, electricity at home and internet are all wonderful, and now we can’t live without them. But poisonous water from the tap, or fake news, could drive us all back to the Neanderthal caves.