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Fake News

Discussion in 'News' started by napash, Jan 28, 2018.

  1. napash

    napash New Member

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    Fake news, left and right. By now, we have a sense on how dangerous misinformation is. With the breaking headlines such as the suspected US Election and Brexit meddlings, some claim the fake news is being weaponized. I am very wary with online contents and do a lot of checking and verification before believing things, but I am amazed and troubled why a lot of people are being deceived. With technology being so fast-driven, their are challenges on how to deal with it. I believe prudent is required on each of us regarding this matter.

    What do you think? Why are people deceived by Fake News?
     
  2. JackD05

    JackD05 New Member

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    Personally, I think fake news and misinformation is becoming a very common and easy to miss hazard on the internet. I think there are many different ways people can deliver and interpret fake news, from the blatantly obvious, to the believable and professional looking. I always check multiple other aources if I have doubts about what I am reading and avoid sites that I think look fake.

    I think people are decieved by fake news because many sites that look very real and have believable news on them are often fake. I only believe official sources and even then like to check with others.
     
  3. earnt

    earnt New Member

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    Fake news is really getting rampant. Especially on social media. People spread fake news to get attention.
    A lot of fake news in being distributed on Whatsapp. With the emergent of photoshop and other applications ,users can easily distort images
    and fake the truth. We need to be wise and not take part in spreading fake news.
    Especially fake news which involve tainting a person's character be wise. How would you feel if someone told a lie on you and spread it through social media?
     
  4. RianK

    RianK New Member

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    Fake News? One more reason to be ignorant of the newspapers. But it is something worth discussing. That being said, I'd rather not loose my time with something like that.

    As for people being too credulous, well, there is only one cure - people need to get smarter about everything around them, and by that I mean they should stop using their smartphones for everything [thinking included] and start using their brains [I mean, that is why they have then, right?]
     
  5. Aahz

    Aahz New Member

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    What surprises me most is that the "common wisdom" of today is that "fake news" is a new phenomenon. In fact, "fake news" has been a part of the American experience as long as news has been around. Does no one remember the famous Chicago Daily Tribune headline of November 3, 1948?
    [​IMG]
    As you can see, a major newspaper of the time misinformed more than 150,000 of its readers in regards to who had won the Presidential Election. Talk about your fake news!

    Sure, one can argue that in the "Dewey Defeats Truman" case this was more a result of time-pressured deadlines rather than any sort of intentional misinformation. So, let's move from 1948 up to 1969 and from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a rock concert held at the Altamont Speedway in northern California on Saturday, December 6, 1969. It's commonly known as "the end of the 60s" because despite being billed as (and expected to be) the West Coast's answer to the Woodstock festival that was held in August 1969 it ended up being a hotbed of violence. According to Rolling Stone Magazine-

    At 3 AM Saturday, KFRC announced that Woodstock was "Altamont East," and the public wants traffic jams, give 'em the biggest traffic jam ever, despite the fact that there were no traffic jams. You coud drive at sixty-five miles an hour from Altamont to Livermore and back, twenty miles in all, with KFRC, 610 on your car radio, informing you that traffic was backed up twenty miles in either direction and that access was completely closed off.

    If you carried a portable FM at the concert itself you could hear Stefan Ponek of KSAN joyously proclaiming "good vibes" and "peaceful gathering" while Hells Angels beat dozens into the ground before your eyes and the crowd around you pushed, shoved, and cursed your very presence.

    Isn't that the very epitome of "fake news"? These were radio stations (the primary live news source of the era) giving out "news" that was obviously false to any one paying attention in real time.

    None of this is intended to make an excuse for those who create or spread "fake news". It's just meant as a reality check of sorts. Fake news is not new and, if history repeats, it's not going anywhere. It's up to the individual to check multiple sources if they want to find objective truth.
     
    rollinder likes this.
  6. yashiko

    yashiko New Member

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    This topic is very interesting and timely today. I often heard about fake news circulated in different social media platforms especially in Facebook which has the most number of users around the world. We all know that fake news is a form of spreading fake contents of a news that is commonly to mislead people. Fake news nowadays are hard to identify whether it is a verified article or not. For me, I don't usually get true information or news to main mainstream media if its credibility is already questionable. So I often read some articles to some bloggers which I thoroughly check whether the blogger is a reliable and a genuine writer. I also don't usually believe some news being circulated by share feature in facebook until I verified it from my reliable source. Honestly, I learned to fact-check a news first because of this fake news. Therefore, I think it is in our own research or fact checking to accept news from real to fake.
     
  7. mbgd1010

    mbgd1010 New Member

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    I agree with this. In my country many believes in fake news in FaceBook and I think this could mislead others especially those with sheep mentality who blatantly follow what others do, which I think could hurt our society if fake news are not stopped.

    As for my self I always doubt anything I see on the internet. When I see a news, I have to check any other websites just to check if this is fake news or not.

    We can stop fake news on the internet by reporting it, as it will be removed when reported, and I believe we are the ones who can stop fake news, yes we may say that "we are just a single person" but what would happen if a billion says "we are just single person"?
     
  8. PARAG

    PARAG New Member

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    Fake news truly is a very serious problem all over the world. It can cause unlimited amount of damage of life and property if it is misused as a weapon.

    There have been instances in India where social platforms have been used to spread false news and create social disharmony amongst various sections of the society. It is not only the social media but also the mainstream media which is contributing to the phenomenon of fake news.
    Motivated and paid news to influence the opinion of the electorate is more and more prevalent these days.

    I think the media has to self regulate itself in this regard or else the judiciary or the Governments have to step in and regulate these individuals and organizations.
     
  9. First0perfection

    First0perfection New Member

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    Spreading fake news hampers our day to day life badly. Common people are the most sufferer of it. Every now and then, fake news regarding politics, products etc are telecast on social medias like Facebook, WhatsApp etc and common people get huntted of it . Our society should be seriously aware of it and take needful steps to ban it permanently.
     
  10. Ricky Jr

    Ricky Jr New Member

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    Fake news can be very dangerous. It is important to educate people on reliability of certain news articles. They should be taught to verify, research and choose the right sources for articles they read. In countries like India, people read articles on social media(whasapp, facebook etc) and think that it is true. Most of the news my mom tell me comes from sources like these she doesn't verify and keep talking about them with her friends. Some fake articles advertise dangerous products, diets and natural medicines promising extraordinary results when in reality they could end up hurting the people who read them.
     
  11. Sanna

    Sanna New Member

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    In fact even in my country, many issues were misinformed by fake news, which I find unhealthy for the society. There are many trolls and memes created to spread fake news and it is easily deceived by blind followers. Therefore nowadays I unsubscribed many news channels and stop watching news live so that I can prevent myself from fake news.
     
  12. pandapanda

    pandapanda New Member

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    In my experience, fake news is just misinformation or a hoax. You really have to be careful that what you read online is true. Also, maybe live news is not the best because a news reader could make a mistake without noticing but you might not realize it's a mistake and take it seriously.
     
  13. Scott Watson

    Scott Watson New Member

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    People want to be right, and people want their fears and hatreds validated. As such, many people will gravitate to the candidate or the "news source" that confirms their false beliefs and stereotypes. Fake news is the intellectual equivalent of deep-fried Oreos covered in sugar and chocolate sauce.
     
  14. Headz32

    Headz32 New Member

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    Nowadays, fake news are everywhere. For sure, this isn't good at all, but we can't do anything about it. All we can do is just being extremely careful and not believing everything we see, especially on internet.
     
  15. rockonrover

    rockonrover New Member

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    Social Media sites have fantasized over world so much. People believe what they see or hear over the internet and they share without confirmation. We need to stop the spread of false news. if few people take step forward they can make a big difference. We all have to play a part on our sides.
     
  16. danielnicaa

    danielnicaa New Member

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    Fake news are very dangerous. It is important to educate people on it. They should be taught to verify, research and choose the right sources for articles they read. In countries like guatemala, people read articles on social media(whasapp, facebook etc) and think that it is true. Most of the news comes from sources like these she doesn't verify and keep talking about them with her friends.
     
  17. SureelTex

    SureelTex New Member

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    Yes, a lot of what we see is fake. But I find (mature) adults see less of the good rather than looking further and seeing that not everything will be true but theres lots that is not false either.
     
  18. BlaMeese

    BlaMeese New Member

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    I’ve personally seen people around me get deceived because the info they read and watch uses disguised logical fallacies. The media has become especially good at connecting unrelated things to show fake causation.

    For instance, with all the political chaos surrounding the George Floyd case, many people have been sharing a video about systemic racism. The video tries to prove its existence by using examples that have very little to do with race at all, like school funding, and write it off as racist. The video is designed to make people feel guilty for being white, when in reality “systemic racism” is already illegal and no one alive today has actually owned slaves.

    It’s tricks like these that are so easy to fall for. They make the media dangerous and, in turn, it makes it harder to fix real societal problems.
     
  19. Azai87

    Azai87 New Member

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    I think the idea of censoring fake news is very dangerous. The public is smart enough to fact check all news these days and consume various media on the news stories. To censor fake news is dangerous and brings images of the Soviet Union to my mind because once fake news is censored then it would lead to real news that leans away from a accepted political bias to be censored too as fake news. So we do need to be careful.
     
  20. FaKu

    FaKu New Member

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    Lies. Lies have always brought more money than the truth, that's the fact. That's the world, so many people would do so many things to get their hand on some money. And that's where Fake News gets in. People always liked drama so Television gives them drama with Fake News because reality isn't that dramatic at all. And then the Television gets more money by having more people watching at the Fake News.
     

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