Fake News!

Let's be honest, all of us have seen a post on social media, a Youtube video or maybe even an article with a title that grabs our attention and lets us in on gossip. But after you clicked that post or video, you were probably upset that you got curious for nothing and spent your time reading something that was completely fake. I’m sure many of us can relate to this feeling of annoyance and wonder why someone do something like this in the first place.

Nowadays everything is on social media. Many people have access to the internet so just like companies put ads on websites to promote their products, people can put up posts or articles. It’s all about the views. The reason why people put fake news on the internet is so that they can gain money from the views. If they were to post something with a straight forward title, they probably wouldn’t get many views, but by putting a title that attracts people's attention, they would get much more.

When I am scrolling through social media, I sometimes come across "news" posts that seem so real. Not only do these posts seem so legit, they are very detailed so that people believe it, perhaps too detailed. Oftentimes, it is difficult to recognize whether the stuff we see on social media is true or false. Anyone can make up anything, so we need to be responsible and know how to examine if what we are reading is true or false.

Knowing what is real and what is fake is very important because what we hear can be spread around and if what we hear is fake, that means we are also spreading false information.

A few ways we can identify fake news is by making sure we check who the author is, consider the source that it is coming from and check the biases.

So, the next time you come across a post that seems too good to be true or too interesting, you might want to double check who wrote this post and if it’s even worth reading.