Fake News - See Breitbart.com, etc.

[MineralMan]

Donald Trump takes office on a foundation of fake news during the general election campaign. It's so important to him that he has Breitbart's head as his chief adviser.

Fake news was spread everywhere, including right here on Democratic Underground. It appears that many, many people who rely on the Internet for their news have a difficult time figuring out which "news" is real and which is made of whole cloth and deliberately false. I can't even count the number of posts on this very website that had to be debunked by other DUers after a brief fact-check.

We all pretty much need to be more careful, I think, about believing things on the Internet without doing our own fact-checking and weighing the reliability of the sources where we find stories. The salient thing isn't whether the particular story appeals to our own sentiments about something. It is whether the story has a factual basis or not.

There are reliable sources, where fact-checking is still done, but there are thousands of other sources where it is not done at all or, worse, where deliberately false stories are issued to match a particular viewpoint. It's up to each of us to take more care before spreading such stories through our own actions.

[randr]

1. Trump is the result of fake news networks

America needs to wake up and end this attack on our country.

[mercuryblues]

2. The 1st thing

that makes me suspicious are claims on blog sites without links to a credible source Or when the link leads to another blog.

[MineralMan]

3. Yes. Whenever you find a story on blogs and sites you don't recognize,

the links often all lead to the original source of a fake news story. But searching Google News for the keywords will show you whether any legitimate news site is carrying that story. Most often, you won't find it at all on Google News.

That's especially true when you first encounter a story on Facebook or some other social media outlet. Frankly, if you don't recognize a source as a well-known, reliable source, you should check to see if the story is even true.

[mercuryblues]

4. I still laugh

at a debate I had on FB with someone who posted that "obumacare" mandated RFID chips in people then linked to a well known satire site saying people were already getting implanted.

Ok, not debate. I trolled her, bad. Ahhhh, good times.

[Archae]

5. It really depends on the source, obviously.

Some sources are simply bad. At best.

RT.com

WND

NewsMax

Faux "news"

And so on.