Have you ever played the two truths and one lie game? It’s simple. You pick three statements. Two are true statements about you and one is a lie.
Let’s play. Try to pick the lie.
“I have three brothers.”
“I am from California.”
“I voted for Donald Trump.”
None of these statements contain the truth. Did you believe any of them? They all seem plausible, but did you just accept that two of these statements had to be true?
Lies run rapid everywhere in our world from the newspapers people read both online and in print, the advertisements people see, and television people watch.
Facebook, a popular site for fake news articles and videos, has become the platform for news stories that focus on conspiracy theories, false information and generalizations rather than factual news.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, argues most of what Facebook users see on Facebook contains truth. In a status update he said that mostly people see authentic articles, and the fake articles people see on their feed will be easy to detect, but do people aware and check that the story is fake?
One story on Facebook titled “Pope Francis just backed Trump, released an incredible statement why- spread this everywhere” posted by The American Patriot received 2,000 shares in under an hour. Did any of those people who liked the article fact check this? How many of these people actually believed this?
Another example of one of obvious fake news stories on Facebook said Wikileaks revealed a video of Bill Clinton having sex with Megan Kelly. A similar news site called freepatriotpost.com posted this story. No, Bill Clinton did not have sex with Megan Kelly, but thousands of people shared this article to their Facebook feed.
One last article from the Denver Guardian (there is no such thing as the Denver Guardian) titled “FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE” proves that with just a little fact checking you can figure out if it’s a fake article.
If you search where the crime happened, Walkerville, Maryland, it doesn’t exist.
If people take the time to fact check the simplest details of the story the Facebook community could avoid feeding into fake news accounts and stop the spread of false information.
Facebook employees tried taking a stand to irresponsible advertisement and promotion of fake news articles. Employees went to different news outlets , such as Buzzfeed, to express their concern over the spread of fake news.
The news Facebook users receive from news articles, television and radio helps people make informed decisions about the world around them. If the news people read taints their understanding of the world, how can people make informed decisions about the things that matter.
The next time you are on Facebook try to fact check articles to find if you find any fake news.