Do we Know What News is Real?

     Over the course of the election in particular, I'm sure you've run into some fake news stories if you have spent any time at all on social media. Fake news stories aren't by any means something new, but they have been getting more attention lately due to some people believing that they influenced the recent presidential election.

     Facebook and Google are the two companies receiving the most hate for their fake news stories, particularly due to stories that might influence people to vote for Trump or ones that are falsely reporting that Trump won the popular vote for president.

     According to CNET (a trusted news source, I promise) Mark Zuckerbook, head of Facebook, doesn't think that the sharing of fake news stories can sway that many people's opinions, especially when it comes to the election. Google, on the other hand, confessed that they use an algorithm to decide top news stories, and the one they have right now is obviously not perfect, but they are working on it.

     Facebook supposedly used to have real people filtering through their news stories to make sure they were legitimate, but eliminated those positions after the company was being accused of favoring democratic stories.

Conversation

     I want to sit here and say that everyone is dumb for sharing news stories on Facebook just because they are there without bothering to verify their truth. But in reality, I have fallen victim of it too. In the back of my head, I know that the stories might not be true. But, when we tend to have an idea or belief in our head, we get excited when we see someone else expressing the same one, so we want to click that "share" button as a way to say "See! This is right, I knew it! You might not believe me, but there's a fancy article written about it!" It's not really a matter of them being true or not.

     With that being said, it will be impossible for the spreading of false news to come to a halt no matter what companies like Facebook and Google do about it. People are going to believe what they WANT to rather than what they SHOULD. My advice would be to just understand that a lot of the news on social media is not real. If you are looking for the truth about a story, look on multiple credited official news websites, not just one. If you see someone sharing a false news story, they might not know. So instead of arguing with the point of the news story, maybe just let them know that the article isn't real and point them to the right direction.

     Do you ever share fake news stories? Do you think social media companies should be held responsible for filtering them? Do you think they could have swayed the election? Let me know in a comment below!