Like Mom Told You: Don’t Believe Everything You Read!

Like so many life lessons, it should go without say – don’t believe everything you see on the internet.

The same goes for deconstructing fake news.  Despite this, with social media being such a quick easy way to stay on top of current events, there is a lot at risk.  Articles like “Apple’s new MacBook Wheel?” or “Donald Trump selects Kanye West as Secretary of State” certainly grab people’s attention, and it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.

As a business owner, you make decisions based upon the information you have.  Therefore you need to be doing constant fact checking, rather than taking such articles at face value.

Something as simple as “Googling” information to gain a better insight of what you’ve read will help. Scrolling through social media, it’s hard to differentiate between the fake news and the real news. Before sharing a trending piece of news, do some research and make sure that what you’re sharing is correct and isn’t being substituted for real information.

It’s easy to believe anything you want to believe. If you read a headline that coincides with your own beliefs, then it becomes harder to accept that as false information.

Like it or not one thing is clear — technology has made it easier than ever to spread false information online and conventional media’s capacity for fact checking is being stretched in unprecedented ways.

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