In an era where the digital landscape is rapidly evolving, the threat of misinformation and disinformation has become a growing concern for local authorities across Yorkshire. Recent months have seen the proliferation of fake social media posts claiming to be from councils, with one content creator even refusing to remove them, citing financial gain as the motivation.
The issue has become particularly acute in the City of York, where a series of fabricated posts have been widely shared online. These posts have included an alleged council advertisement seeking to house asylum seekers, a call for volunteers to take down St. George’s flags, and a request for help filling potholes – all of which have been confirmed as completely fabricated by the local authority.
The BBC’s Yorkshire political editor, James Vincent, has investigated the potential threat these AI-generated falsehoods pose to the region’s democratic processes. The fake posts, which often feature convincing council branding and formatting, can easily slip through the cracks during the endless social media scroll, leaving many unsuspecting users to share them as genuine.
“It’s totally untrue and it’s fake, and the problem is that people don’t think that’s the case,” said Clare Douglas, the leader of City of York Council. “It started with the printing press, didn’t it, centuries and centuries ago. It’s not new, but it’s just how easy it is to do now, and how difficult it is to detect whether something is true or whether it’s fake.”
The issue is not limited to York, as councils in Barnsley have also faced similar challenges. Sir Steve Houghton, the leader of Barnsley Council, expressed his concern, stating, “We’ve even had some people with content saying we’re not going to change this because we’re making money out of it. Now, that is unbelievable.”
Ilya Yablokov, a researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Disinformation Research Cluster, explains that the ease and low cost of creating these fake posts, coupled with people’s tendency to share content without verifying it, are significant factors in the spread of misinformation.
“The cost of production of this is almost zero, right? You just have a laptop and you can create a poster,” Yablokov said. “People share with me lots of similar things, and every time it’s like, have you really checked any of this information? Have you? Have you really tried to Google it? But people just don’t have interest or motivation to make the next step and really try to, because then they basically rely on their biases.”
As the use of AI in content creation continues to advance, the threat of misinformation at the local level is only expected to grow. Authorities across Yorkshire are working to counter this trend, but the challenge of maintaining public trust in the face of such pervasive falsehoods remains a significant concern for the region’s democratic institutions.