Facebook and Fake News

With the increasing popularity of social media for every generation we have seen an increased spread of fake news being shared between peers. Without fact checking, many articles with catch titles that imply false narratives are being rapidly shared on websites like facebook and twitter. Many people have fallen victim to click bait articles and end up spreading false information which only fuels the wildfire in political discourse. There is also an increasing amount of people sharing news articles that they just simply don’t agree with and calling it ‘fake news’ which increases the misinformation about what is true and what isn’t.

In the above tweets and visual elements from various platforms you can see the wide variety of fake news that is spread on a daily basis. Both sides of the political spectrum are at fault for this spread of misinformation unfortunately and somehow continue blaming each other for the narrative being pushed.

As you can see the spread of misinformation is not only frustrating but also dangerous. For example, in this current climate it’s very important to wear a mask to keep yourself and others safe from the spread of a deadly virus. However this debate on masks has somehow become a political debate instead of a scientific discussion. There are several theories that the mandates on mask wearing are just a method to control the population and some people just simply don’t believe that they work. As you can imagine, the spread of this information has caused many to believe it is not important to wear a mask in public leaving other patrons and essential workers at risk.

We also see in the Buzzfeed news graphic just how viral fake stories can become when we don’t fact check the information before we spread the image or article. Some of these stories seem unbelievable and ridiculous but unfortunately without any proof one way or the other, people tend to believe anything they read on social media.

As a result of this massive spread of false news, there is increasing amounts of disagreement between political parties. Regardless of whether or not the information has anything to do with current political events, its common for the people who don’t agree with the information to blame the other side of the political spectrum. This causes many issues that are not originally political issues to unravel into debates about politics.

In conclusion, the spread of misinformation plagues everyone regardless of political affiliation. This ‘fake news’ fad can also cause potentially dangerous misinformation to go viral on social media. If people continue to spread information without further fact checking, and if we continue to allow news sources to create so much click bait content to generate visitors we are risking the education and health of our society as a whole.

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