5 things we need to learn from the Jayden K Smith hoax
If you were on Facebook recently, you probably have heard of a chap called Jayden K Smith.
According to one of the decade’s most viral “flash flood” social media rumours, Jayden K Smith is a hacker who is trying to trick you into accepting a friend request from him so he can “hack” your digital life.
It was a hoax. And an unoriginal one, at that. There was no Jayden K Smith, and accepting a friend request doesn’t allow someone to magically “hack” your computer or your account (not unless you’re posting your account password on your timeline, that is!)
However, the sheer volume of Facebook users spreading the nonsense was staggering. To say this phantom hacker warning went viral would be an understatement. It went mega viral!
It’s only a matter of time before the next “Urgent! Copy and paste this warning” blah blah blah drivel hits your cyber doorstep, so here are 5 things the Jayden K Smith hoax should teach us before that happens.
If you have time to spread it, you have time to confirm it
Copying and pasting a message to all of your friends may only take a few seconds, but so does copying and pasting it to Google. You’d be surprised how many online hoaxes have already been debunked long before you share them, and all it takes to find those reports is a simple Google search.
Copy and paste the whole message into Google or just some keywords. That’s all it takes to see if any number of sites like ours have already dismissed the claim as fake.
And by doing so, you’ll look a lot less foolish to all of your friends. In fact, by doing so it is you that could correct your friends when they share the nonsense.
“Just in case” and “what harm can it do?” are not justifiable justifications
The motto of the share-happy is “What harm can it do?”. Or “Just in case”. Often we pass on such nonsense without verification because we fail to see downside of doing so. We hedge our bets and determine its best to send it than to ignore it.
But there are downsides, especially to rumours like this that identify people by name. While this hoax didn’t appear to describing a real person, that doesn’t mean there are not people who share that name. People who inevitably were the subject of some suspicious digital side-glances and no doubt people who will have trouble sending out friend requests for the foreseeable future for fear of being wrongly identified as cyber crooks.
The Internet is littered with stories of mistaken identity because of unverified hoaxes going viral like this, and if your justification is what harm can it do?, imagine an online hoax with your full name being spread between users without verification and see if you have the same outlook.
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Hoaxes helps scammers
Scammers will always have more success when operating on a landscape bustling with misinformation where people don’t know where to turn, as opposed to a landscape where only accurate information can thrive.
Misinformation can be used to manipulate, extort and herd Internet users towards specific areas of cyberspace where traps lay waiting. The only people to gain from hoaxes are crooks, and the more hoaxes out there, the more crooks and hoaxes will come out of the woodwork.
Don’t be the boy who cried wolf
It’s human nature to want to be taken seriously when we are being serious. We want to help pass on useful information to help our digital acquaintances, and when we shout “wolf” to warn our friends, we naturally want them all to listen.
But can we be any of those things if the information we choose to disseminate is both unverified and inaccurate? Every time we pass on misinformation to our friends, our friends trust us a little less. And that time we want or need our friends to listen, we’re shouting into uninterested and unresponsive ears.
Please stop ruining social media, basically
Social media’s reputation at being able to disseminate information is exceptional. Never before in human history can information be passed between millions of people so easily and so quickly.
But misinformation can spread just as fast – if not faster – than the truth. While social media has become the go-to medium for getting information out fast, its reputation for accuracy and truth isn’t so good.
Every time a rumour like the Jayden K Smith hacker warning goes viral, we diminish the role social media takes concerning how we communicate effectively. We help discredit entire platforms that connect billions. We help turn social media into a gutter of hearsay, misinformation and lies.
And given the potential of such powerful platforms, that’s really the biggest shame of all.
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