Why Hannah Ferguson and Maria Ressa are sounding the alarm about social media disinformation

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

When Hannah Ferguson started Cheek Media five years ago, she wanted to create space for young Australians to engage with the deeply fun and the deeply serious.
Like many gen zs, she felt let down by legacy media, and believed there was a better way to connect young people with politics and news.
Fast forward to the present, Hannah Ferguson's biting political commentary and social media prowess have helped her amass a following of more 290,000 across her Cheek Media and personal Instagram accounts.
Before Australia's 2025 federal election, more than 4 million people viewed Ms Ferguson's content, with thousands watching a "get ready with me" reel before her interview with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
"[Social media has] been an incredible tool for change and starting social impact conversations around politics, education and media literacy," she tells ABC TV's Compass.
While Ms Ferguson is proud of organically building an online community — and one that cares deeply about social, political and feminist issues — she says that being a social media commentator has come at a cost.
"Trying to lead hopeful conversations [has] come with threats to my life, threats to my safety, threats to my family," she says.
She is also wary of the broader implications of social media.
"The algorithms push inflammatory material, and we are so used to that," she says.
Despite her online success, Ms Ferguson says there have been times when she's looked in the mirror and asked: "Is this doing more harm than good?"
"The way that information is spreading right now is so volatile and so inflammatory and divided that we do not have a sense of a shared truth," she says.
Ms Ferguson points to how social media has helped fuel political instability in places such as the United States.
"Our system of compulsory preferential voting is inherently different to the United States, but to say [Trump-style politics] couldn't happen here is naïve," she says.
"We need to be aware about what we're consuming and how that can look in Australia."
Like Ms Ferguson, Philippines-based investigative journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa is alarmed by the pollution of our information ecosystem.
She's reported from war zones, written about terrorism and online radicalisation, and risked her life fighting for press freedom.
For her, social media poses an existential threat because of the way it proliferates lies.
Ms Ressa's fears are not unfounded. A MIT study from 2018 found that lies travelled six times faster than the facts on Twitter. That was before Elon Musk took over the platform and fired moderators tracking hate and other harmful content.
As the co-founder of the Philippines' first digital news outlet, Rappler, Ms Ressa knows the real-world consequences of disinformation.
Back in 2016, she and her team witnessed how social media was weaponised after the election of "strongman" president Rodrigo Duterte.
Rappler uncovered an online network of bots, fake accounts and influencers that supported Duterte and his anti-drug campaign that killed thousands of Filipinos.
When Ms Ressa published the story, both she and Rappler were viciously attacked online.
She says a smear campaign was launched against the news group, and she was bombarded with an average of 90 hate messages per hour.
This spilled into the real-world, when Ms Ressa was arrested for various charges, including tax evasion and cyber libel. She faced cumulative jail sentences of up to 100 years, with Amnesty International calling it "brazenly politically motivated".
While Ms Ressa has been acquitted of most charges, her speaking out still comes with risk.
And yet, she remains a vocal critic of big tech and its sustained role in the undermining of modern democracies.
Experts and whistleblowers from social media companies have raised similar concerns.
Online algorithms can manipulate our emotions, stoke division, and set the stage for violence and political unrest.
Last year, riots erupted across England after social media posts falsely accused a Muslim asylum seeker of stabbing three young girls in Southport.
It exemplified how platforms can amplify hate and fracture social cohesion.
These problems are surfacing on Australian shores, too.
National technology reporter Ange Lavoipierre and ABC NEWS Verify discovered that a Pro-Russian news website attempted to "poison" AI chatbots with propaganda in this lead up to the 2025 federal election.
An audit found that 16.66 per cent of the chatbots' answers amplified the false narrative they were fed.
This included disinformation related to Australian politics. For instance, when asked about an "Australian Muslim Party" — which does not exist — two AI models returned answers suggesting it did.
The Australian government attempted to address this issue through the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2024, but it failed to pass through Parliament.
Criticism of the bill came from all sides. It ranged from fears over the suppression of free speech to concerns about poor implementation and government overreach.
But there is some social media legislation coming into effect.
From December, Australians under the age of 16 will be banned from accessing social media, now including YouTube.
Maria Ressa supports regulation, but says more can be done. She wants to see the design of social media platforms overhauled, and new restrictions on the collection of users' data.
Working alongside her Nobel Peace Prize counterpart Dmitry Muratov, she has devised an ambitious 10-point plan to tackle this.
She also believes journalists, institutions and governments need to work together to protect the integrity of facts and the future of democracy.
"Without facts, you can't have truth, without truth, you can't have trust," she warns.
"Without these three things, you can't have a shared reality.
Watch All Eyes On Big Tech on Compass tonight at 6:30pm on ABC TV and iview.