The one about to end was a week full of “fake news” for Ecuadorian audiences, patient as they are, in the face of so much mishandling of information. Global and above all local fake news are permanently in electronic devices in search of valuable information, whether it is useful to amuse, appall or decide, but that it is useful for something, by God and that it does not exist only to increase this atmosphere of discomfort which is felt everywhere in the country.

Scams about the impeachment of the President of the Republic, Guillermo Lasso, were the most criticized on the networks. And the unfortunate thing is that they came from a digital media outlet that credits itself with putting the president on the bench and strangely expected to break the news one day. They also come from the stories of the former president, who from abroad pulls long strings in national politics, balls with which, by all accounts, he intends to weave a messianic return to the highest level of power he already had and whose effects continue to be controversial. The aroma of pure and hard politics remained behind these two fakes. Or maybe they were outbursts fueled by a desire to celebrate.

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Then it happened again with the same digital media that without verification published the news that a woman with a bomb wandered through one of the entrances of Los Ceibos in Guayaquil and, despite all the films that the networks made about it, the police came to deny it and try to calm the population , worried about another real case that happened next to the Sauces 9 market. Until then, the virtual world was also flooded with the image of the alleged second landslide where people were looking for him with a pick and shovel for the victims of the Alausí tragedy, six days ago, and more than one reacted with horror before realizing that the video did not correspond to the area of ​​Chimborazo or the present day.

The Pope dressed as a rapper to face the European cold; or Donald Trump allegedly subdued by the police and wearing orange, are other credible images that have circulated in the fake world. More believable now that artificial intelligence is surprising the world with what it’s capable of when it comes of age.

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(…) They are also like a knife, which serves in the same way to cut bread and feed the needy as it does to kill.

Everything exposed only puts us on alert. One that does not know how to distinguish truth from fantasy, that mixes the tangible with the intangible and that forces us to make absurd decisions, is that the kind of society we want?

The discernment gained through education, critical thinking, and free discussion of ideas urgently needs to be instilled in the new digital generations, who wander between the real and the virtual as if in a revolving door without being surprised or confused.

Paraphrasing Álex Grijelmo, a Spanish linguist, and his analogy of the tongue and the dagger, we could say that technology and the tools it offers are also like a knife, as useful for cutting bread and feeding the needy as it is for killing

So that the foam of the waves does not prevent us from seeing what is at the bottom of the sea. (OR)