Kyle Messenger

In the social media world, there are a lot of news platforms, blogs, articles, and regular people who post fake news stories. Even though something of what seems so wrong actually, can become just an entertaining hobby. There are many types of news out in the world that is fake but it is easy to create. How, well all you have to do is, play the game.

I took a survey or game, no pun intended. It was called, “Bad News Game.” This activity takes you through the process of developing a social media platform that posts fake news. It is a simulator, but it does prove some very good points. If you were to post an opinion based statement about the government or event happening in the world. It would be easy to gain some attention towards your profile. This happens, because your post could connect with people. Now, once you have gotten some attention to your page, something you can do to reel more followers in is to post an article about your latest post that contains emotional distress or fear in order to really capture your audience. Once this is completed, there is a good chance that you will increase your fan base if the article is intriguing enough. In the survey they ask you about getting twitter bots which are fake accounts. In fact, a lot of them. If you were to buy these twitter bots, it raises your chances to receive more attention and reactions from even more people. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to believe all the posts you are sending out if they are all insane statements, but if a story comes with an interesting headline or pitch, that also contains emotional concern. You will see how fast people can get locked in to your statements and even pass it along to their peers.  But, there will be an account of some popularity that will appose your statements and claim its credibility. Well, that’s okay. On the internet, anything goes! A strategy that can be done in order to help diminish these people is just to accuse them of their discredited content. Or, you can attack them by creating memes that sabotage their whole organization. I guess sometimes all it takes to get out of a lie you stated online is to lie more about the person finding the truth! This can spark your fan-base to believe your new claim or conspiracy that empowers you over the accuser of your page. Guess what, there’s more! By posting something like a conspiracy, especially one that attacks major corporations or people. Will, in fact, increase your fan-base even more. 

Now, after explaining what the survey has taught me I hope you can agree that fake news is a very dangerous and too easy to develop issue in our world today. Millions of accounts, claiming, theorizing, and attacking with false claims only to gain their own sense of power. But, there are ways to detect these users , and help block yourself from all the white-noise. I believe when scrolling on your twitter feed, when someone says something a bit irrational is is usually fake. Unfortunately, not all fake news claims seem irrational. Some, may seem, quite real or interesting at least. In order to depict the users who are speaking facts and who aren’t. Don’t be afraid to look into the rest of their content pontheir page. Is it packed with memes, violating statements, and pure emotion. If so, there’s a good chance an evil entity is controlling the account, feeding the lies.