Welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Jane Wakefield, here at the TED conference in Canada's Vancouver.

It is truly terrifying when you think of the speed with which totally malicious rumours and lies can be spread now and without anybody's knowledge.

We really, really, really all need to be more scared and concerned and doing stuff

because this is very dark times ahead, I think.

Fake news, disinformation, rumour spreading, political manipulation.

Whatever you call it, it's been the ongoing scandal

that's rocked the world's biggest technology firms.

In today's program, I'm hearing from people involved in the heart of the story

and others offering solutions to reset the online landscape.

We know that things like friction make a difference.

So if you force people to slow down before they share, then actually people are less likely to share misleading or false information.

Last year, news broke that a previously little-known political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica, had got its hands on the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent.

Those affected had no idea that taking part in a personality quiz on the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent. Those affected had no idea that taking part in a personality quiz on the social network would see their data and that of their friends potentially used for psychological profiling and political marketing.

How much of that data was used to influence opinion in the US presidential election

and the UK European

Union referendum is still not clear. But the scandal exposed not just a lack of care towards

the privacy of data on Facebook, but opened a debate about how social networks were being used

to target voters and help spread misinformation. So I'm Carol Kedwalader. I don't really have a title. I'm a reporter with the observer.

You're now an investigative journalist. Come on, Carol, that's where you are. I can't actually say it

still. I'm an investigative reporter. You know, you always thought investigative reporters

were these kind of like macho, hard-bitten men.

Carol was the British journalist who broke the scandal.

...