Watch out for “fake news”

DAVAO CITY – In an era where information is available and easy to obtain, the phrase “fake news” has quickly come to be used to dismiss a wide range of articles. It is not always easy to spot such lies, but some do become genuinely true.

The actual consequence of the people’s rising interest in fake news has been the awareness that the general public may not be well-equipped to distinguish between factual and consistent and fraudulent information.

Here are three of the many impacts of fake news to each and everyone in the society that people must be concerned:

1. Promotes misunderstanding. Fake news poses a significant threat. It has the potential to persuade the majority of the public. It might cause the readers or viewers, or listeners to lose faith in facts. Anyone could now assume that the earth is flat after reading something persuasive material but basically false.
2. Forms erroneous incorrect views. Fake news that is convincingly real can make anyone believe exactly what it says to the point where you accept it as the truth, especially if you do not consider to read other sources of information.
3. Ruins one’s life and even relationship. It has the potential to make someone look awful without revealing the whole of the story. This is true and rampant on Facebook. Before you know it, the entire internet is against this individual.

These tales – inviting everyone to click on and having the truthiness feels to them – rise on the social media, where links are given the same importance regardless of the source, especially on Facebook, where users and possible audience reached to billions.

Photo credits to Google Site.

So, how are we going to spot fake news? There are things you can do to prevent being scammed by this fake news.

1. There are two types of fake news: one, stories that are entirely twisted, designed to make people believe it is real for them to buy a certain product or to visit a certain website; and two, stories that have some truth, but are not 100 percent accurate. It wiser to read other reliable sources of information.
2. Fake news is not a new phenomenon. You have to compare the write ups or captions from one source to the other. Fake news frequently has grammatical error and even misspelled names or words. The heading of their stories is lengthy.

Majority of the society uses social media platform to share their ideas or stories with the rest of the world. The problem is that most people do not examine the source of internet content before sharing it, which can result in bogus news spreading fast or even going viral.

It may sound cliché, but seriously, everyone should start exercising “think before you click” and “read twice before you share” to avoid being the source of fake news. Let us be responsible social media user.