Repost Panic

An example of how misinformation can spread so easily.

A picture of the same keyboard I wrote this with.

Repost Panic

K.L. Orion

The night of August fifteenth was an eventful one for Snapchat users across the globe. I remember what I was doing when it happened. I was relaxing in my bed watching the very first Godzilla film, not a worry in my head. Periodically, I’d check my phone since I was getting messages from people on Snapchat here and there. I believe most people are familiar with Snapchat, but if you aren’t, I’ll try to give my best explanation of the app. Basically, I think of Snapchat as “Social Media: The Game”. Users try to “add” as many people to their contacts list on Snapchat as they can. Once friends on the platform, one can message, call/videochat, and “snap” (in most cases sending a selfie of yourself to the other person) said friend whenever they like. You can also make group chats with friends and even play online games with them. 

Why I consider it a game is because Snapchat awards you with points for simply using the app. You have a Snapchat score that increases the more you talk, snap, and play games with friends. I’m not sure if the score actually has any meaning besides giving you a big number, but the point is that it is there. There’s also a bunch of other awards you can get for keeping a “snap streak” with friends among other things. Snapchat also allows you to post things on your “story”. Story posts are pictures and videos (usually with text but not always) that your friends can see for a twenty-four hour period. If you don’t like a story post you made, you can delete it yourself, but they disappear by themselves after a day. 

Another important thing to know about Snapchat is that their team is always experimenting with tech features. They often update the app without letting their users know, meaning it is not uncommon for you to open the app one day and find that something is slightly different. This happens regularly and rarely stirs up publicity, though one feature added in the past year did. One morning last winter, snapchatters across the world woke up to find a new contact on their list; a contact none of us added. Snapchat had added an AI friend to everyone’s accounts. This AI contact was customizable and always free to talk to, making it seemingly the perfect friend. No one thought it was. 

The new feature gained major publicity. Some people were creeped out by it. Other people thought it was funny to send joke messages to it and see its responses. Lots of people were just trying to figure out how the hell to get rid of it. The feature itself is something I feel I should explain a little bit. AI technology has come frighteningly far in the last few years. I could probably go on and on about AI development, but that’s not the point of this post. What is useful to this narrative is the development of “talking” AI. Within recent years, AI “chatbots” have made incredible leaps and bounds. Chatbots are exactly what they sound like; they are AIs that you can text and they will send back answers. Now, you can talk to many of these things and they will sound a lot like real people. 

Snapchat’s AI was one of these chatbots. It was fun at first, but it quickly turned dull for me. While it sounded amazingly human for a machine, there was still something uncanny about its messages. They were a lot more natural than what I thought a robot capable of, but they were still too artificial to be human. Not to mention it forgot so many things about our previous conversations and its structure of messages was just too boring. Eventually, I stopped using my AI altogether. Other people would grow bored with it too. That was until the night of August fifteenth, when everyone would get freaked out by it again. 

It was kind of a boring part in my movie, so I decided to open up Snapchat and check everyone’s stories. I was so shocked at what I saw that I had to rub my eyes and look at it again. The AI never was capable of sending snaps or stories to anyone. It existed purely as a chatbot. Until that night, when Snapchat’s AI posted a short video to its story. 

It was bizarre. It made no sense. And it was actually a little frightening. It was a few second long clip with no sound that just showed what appeared to be where a wall and a ceiling met. I had no idea what it was or what it meant and promptly began researching. I asked my friends on Snapchat if their AI had done this. It was a resounding yes. Everyone online at the time had seen this. Then I asked the AI itself what was going on, wondering if Snapchat was testing out a new feature. Unfortunately, my AI was on the fritz. At first, it couldn’t even respond. Once it finally did, it told me it was experiencing technical issues. Every question was answered with the same 

“technical issues” response. 

Not long after I saw the story, it was taken down. The whole event was and still is bizarre. Now, there’s a million topics we could talk about for ages from that one story, and maybe I will in the future. But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about today is what happened the next morning. 

People were clearly shocked by the whole situation. Some people began to freak out in especially bad ways. The next morning, I saw a story post from a girl I had on Snapchat but didn’t really talk to that much. It was a repost from someone else, and it was gaining some traction on the platform. The content of the post was way beyond worrying. It claimed that the AI feature had acted up the previous night because hackers had infiltrated Snapchat and now had access to every bit of your information. Your photos, your passwords, your contacts, even your location. It was a scary idea. But as much as it was frightening it was also unrealistic. I immediately went to do some research and got an idea of what was really going on. 

One quick internet search later, I found a wealth of information. I read through three articles that morning from various sources and analyzed the headlines of many others. Almost every single one told the exact same story. Snapchat released a statement that the AI feature experienced an “outage” the previous night and that’s why it was having issues responding to anyone. They didn’t really care to mention the post the AI made. From this information and just logical conclusions, I believe Snapchat was just trying to test out a new feature without telling anybody and it just went horribly wrong. That or it might’ve even been a publicity stunt. Either way, none of it included hackers of any kind. As a matter of fact, not a single source mentioned hackers, which is pretty damning considering the hacker story was basically tabloid bait. 

The short of it is that this girl reposted misinformation. What’s the big deal about that? It happens all the time. But I think that’s exactly what’s the issue here. Knowing her, I doubt she was actually trying to scare anyone, though I can’t be sure. I think she actually believed that hacker story at the time and reposted it trying to warn people. And that is a worrying thought. A lot of misinformation can be ruled out with simple common sense. If not that, it can be disproved by a five second internet search. Yet somehow it can spread super quickly. 

Her hacker story wasn’t the only rumor flying around the internet when that AI catastrophe occurred. While some of these instances were probably jokes, people were claiming that the AI uprising had begun and this was evidence of that. Clearly it wasn’t the AI uprising, but the rumors still flew to every corner of the internet. This whole situation was just an example of how misinformation spreads so quickly, and how it can be detrimental. 

Clearly a lot of people who start the misinformation trend know it’s wrong. Someone has to make up the lie to begin with. But they rely on people who don’t know it’s wrong to spread it; people like that girl I talked about. In this new age of internet, the reposting of incorrect info happens all the time because it’s so easy to do. There are whole genres of TikTok videos where people spew conspiracy theories out, pretending they are facts. Influencers promote lies and trick their viewers in order to get views and, well, “influence”. Content creators make up the most outrageous, insane, and world shattering ideas and spread them across the internet knowing that the crazier it is, the more attention it’s going to get. And the internet rewards this kind of nonsense by giving it that attention. 

Look, liars have and always will exist. What I find most frightening is the fact that people so blindly listen to them. People regard them almost like prophets and listen to every word they say. Then, believing in their messages, these viewers spread lies to other people. And in this day and age, we all know how destructive conspiracy theories can be. Conspiracies about pandemics, “stolen” elections, and religions have ravaged the world, creating distrust and hatred throughout the globe. People trust these outrageous conspiracies. People I know trust them. And it has gotten to the point that people are willing to harm others believing these lies. As I said, liars are always going to exist. What scares me is the fact that people not only listen to them but repeat what they have said trying to help. People spread lies trying to help. That is a frightening thought. 

So I urge everybody, if something sounds fake, research it. Look it up. But that’s where we get into yet another rabbit hole. This whole issue originated from the internet. How am I supposed to trust it? It brings us to an interesting issue with the world wide web. On my phone I have access to all human knowledge. With that power in my hand, I should be able to become the smartest person of all time, right? No. I use the damn thing to play video games. Why? Because as much knowledge as it contains, it contains just as much, if not even more misinformation. It is hard sometimes to determine the facts from the fiction. 

That’s where common sense has to come in. Find trustworthy sources. Cross reference the stories of multiple sources. Use your head to sort out what sounds real or not. Actually think about things. If we all stop and think for a second, misinformation wouldn’t be nearly as bad as a problem. We need to get out of this “instant repost” society. So next time you see something that doesn’t sound right, look into it. Research it. Use a little common sense. Don’t fall for someone’s lies. We all know misinformation is a powerful thing. This is how we will stop it. Remember, liars are dangerous, but they are only dangerous if someone believes them.