X, formerly known as Twitter, is a great source of online entertainment. Celebrity gossip and memes circulate for millions to enjoy. But is it a strong, reliable news source? Yes, official news stations upload their stories to the platform, so in that case (and that case only) it is reliable. Regardless, false information also gets spread throughout the social media platform.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted a study regarding X and false news in 2018 and this is what they discovered. “False news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are. It also takes true stories about six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of people.”
What exactly is false news? False news or information are stories and news headlines that have been created with the intention to misinform and trick others into thinking it is a real news story.
How is false news considerably dangerous? Seeing false news and not recognizing it can be detrimental to your own health and safety. This type of news is simply created to influence and change people’s beliefs, political opinions and certain attitudes, often for the worse.
Spotting fake news can be tricky. It can be hard to tell when fake news is fake news, which is exactly the intention of the misinformation’s creators. Here are three questions to ask when questioning if a source on X is valid or not:
1) Does it look like a real news source?
2) Who is the author? You can look up the author and see if they are legit or not.
3) Look at the comments in the post. Are they all positive or all negative comments? Do some of the comments repeat nearly the same points or are copy pasted from one another? This could be a sign of fake, bot generated comments.
False news on X is dangerous because most users on the social media platform do not truly question whether the source is real before retweeting it. This, in turn, leads to more people seeing the false news and continuing the ongoing cycle of reposting. There comes a point where the majority of someone’s feed is all lies, which is the main problem. X should not be used as a main news source for people since there are more credible news websites and shows that people can use to educate themselves. However, when viewing news sources on X, make sure to follow the tips mentioned above.
