Fake news isn’t something new, but it has been on the rise these past years and it’s thanks to the internet. A lot of people are on the internet which gives fake news many platforms to spread on. There are many reasons as to why fake news is created in the first place. It could be to misinform the public or deceive them. This was evident in the 2016 US presidential election where fake news helped trump win. There is also fake news on websites where they would tell you how “a grandma magically took 20 years off her age with a secret herb.” These aren't true, their main purposes are for you to click on it and increase the website’s viewer count and contribute to ad revenue. This is something called clickbait.
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| Image by Dan Shewan |
With the growing amounts of fake news on the internet, people should know how to distinguish what’s real and what isn’t. When I come across controversial or interesting pieces of information on the internet, I would consider the source, use my judgement and read beyond to see if other people covered the same topic. If other people covered the same topic and they both come to the same conclusion, I would believe that it’s real. I wouldn’t do this with everything I see on the internet though. It could be about how Fetty Wap magically got his eye back, or something really interesting/controversial about him, but I wouldn’t care, it’s Fetty Wap. I would only check if the information is legit if it affects me, or if it’s something/someone I care about. The most important suggestion/strategy I use when checking if a source is real or not is to see if other people have covered it too. While this may not be the most credible or guaranteed way of legit checking the information, it’s what I usually do. I don’t think there would be anything on the internet important enough for myself to go up to an expert and have them debunk or approve of the information. An example of fake news that everyone has probably heard about is how the world was supposed to end. This has happened on numerous occasions and each time, we all lived to the day after. It’s safe to say believe that every time that “scientists” believe that the world is going to end that it’s all just a hoax and fake news. I determined that it was indeed fake by waking up the next day. One wouldn’t even need to analyze the information that hard to realize that the news was fake. Nobody was outside screaming, it wasn’t the end of the world, the world didn’t declare an emergency, it was all just fake news.
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| Fake news about the end of the world from Sky News |
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