Fake News is Big Business
Only a couple of weeks into 2014, I implored bloggers and journalists to stop linking to bad satire, but as I expected, my pleas went largely unnoticed.
And as it turns out, however, my warnings were correct. A mere five months later, bad satire is rampant in part due to easy back-links handed to them by journalists and bloggers.
But why?
Satire is fine when it’s clearly defined, and The Onion would be considered the gold standard of internet satire. Many of the stories going viral on social media in 2014 read nothing like satire. They simply read like fake news, often poorly-written.
Although fake news sites have been around for some time, the number of stories seen in heavy circulation has increased dramatically in 2014. Consider:
December 2013
In December 2013, there were a modest amount of bad satire links floating around, such as:
- Internet altercation video star Sharkeisha shot, leading to #prayforsharkeisha trending on Twitter (Huzlers)
- Terio Kidnapped (Huzlers)
- Justin Bieber “Beached Whale” comment leads to suicide (National Report)
- 9-year old suspended for saying Merry Christmas (National Report)
By April, the number of popular fake news articles had soared. Below is an abridged list of some of the more popular fake news stories I’ve encountered:
April 2014
- Vine Star Bryan Silva Killed for Using Racial Slurs (Huzlers)
- Ted Cruz “racist” interview scrubbed (National Report)
- Lil Terio hospitalized after being stuck in a Chuck E. Cheese’s tube (Huzlers)
- Militia members arrested at Bundy ranch (National Report)
- Walmart to sell marijuana in Colorado and Washington (National Report)
- Pacquiao cheated against Bradley is plaster in his gloves (Huzlers)
- Woman killed 9 people for not accepting her Facebook friend requests (National Report)
- State of Kansas to black out Cosmos TV show (National Report)
- Kurt Cobain hologram to tour with Nirvana (National Report)
- George Zimmerman to sell Trayvon Martin painting (News Nerd)
- Undertaker’s Wrestlemania loss was a mistake (Huzlers)
- Justin Bieber’s “bi” photo (Huzlers)
In early May 2014, a fake story by Huzlers about the death of Vine “shovel girl” also received significant sharing.
From the lists above, you can see that the two primary producers of bad satire are National Report and Huzlers. There are, of course, others, such as CreamBMPDaily, Lightly Braised Turnip, Call the Cops, The Duffel Blog, Free Wood Post.
Another fake news site is Mediamass, which appears to reproduce the same article for hundreds of celebrities. Often when a celebrity dies, fans stumble across a Mediamass “death hoax” article and claim the celebrity did not die. Or they marvel that a death hoax immediately preceded the actual death of that celebrity.
What’s the point?
While it is impossible to know the intent of anyone who creates a website or writes fake news, a popular belief among savvy internet users is that some satire sites produce outlandish articles, line their pages with ads, and attempt to lure as much traffic as possible in order to make some easy money from advertising. It’s not uncommon to find a disclaimer buried deep in these satirical websites, perhaps to excuse their content, but the veil of satire often feels quite thin.
Fake news, of course, is nothing new, as anyone who has perused a copy of Weekly World News could tell you.
What to do?
Everyone will fall for a fake news story at some point, but not everyone wants to support those who generate false news disguised as satire. If you realize you’ve shared a fake news story, you may want to delete your post, and link to an article which debunks the story instead.
Sharing a link is a way to empower the owner of that link, so don’t empower bad satire by sharing it.
What fake news have you seen circulating today?
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