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Facebook...Yikes

A did a quick Google search for Facebook, and there it is: Fake News. 2 days ago, 1 day ago, 3 hours ago and even 20 minutes ago, articles about Facebook and Fake News pops up.

I read an article on the Washington Post titled, "I fell for fake news. Here's why millions of you did too." The article showed a dramatic and honestly gut wrenching video of a commercial air plane swerving and flipping in the air.

Well, the video is fake. It is computer generated video by artist Aristomenis Tsirbas. The video found itself gaining over 14 million views on Facebook.

I tried to link the Facebook Video, but the link has expired...(question, did Facebook make them take the video down?)

The artist posts clips of CGI on Youtube, and some clips make its way to Facebook by reposters. Many of these go viral because of shock value, and the clips are just that believable. Tsibar has worked on the "Titanic" film and "Star Trek", so his work is just insane. I mean, I look at the plane clip and I would think it is real. 

So how does fake news work?

Fake news is, as defined by the Collins Dictionary, false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke. 

It gets spread and spread, original sources and context get left behind, and all of a sudden it is an extremely believable piece of media. I look at my mom, a Facebook user, but also a normal TV news consumer. She is pretty good at knowing what is real news vs. fake news, but sometimes I get tagged in posts and I just hope to my self she knows that article is fake. My mom is into fitness and weight loss, and will send me articles about detox teas and oversimplified borderline ridiculous exercises that promise a flat stomach with basically no work. All those videos and tea ads have thousands on thousands of views and thousands more tagged. 

I mean, I get it, I'd like to drop a few pounds and if all it took was a cup of gross tasting tea a day for 30 days, sure, I'd be interested. Yet, I know it is all fake, I know that FiTea is not the reason Kim Kardashian looks the way she does, but for my 50 year old mom, she is not quite aware of that, and I find myself reminding her that those "hacks" simply do not work. 

There are countless of articles about fast weight loss on Facebook that are just utter BS. One of my personal favorites is Sarah's Discovery. Allegedly a Nutrition student came up some drink that makes you shed pounds. They show before and after pictures with captions saying, "Thanks to Sarah's Discovery, I lost x pounds in x amount of days with only 2 bottles!". People who have been in those articles have literally commented that they did not use Sarah's Discovery and did not lose those pounds in x amount of days and did not give permission for those photos to be used. Does not matter, those Sarah's Discovery articles still gain insane views and likes, baiting women into buying the scam.

I can only hope after showing my mom the fake news on Facebook that she does not fall for trickery like Sarah's Discovery. I rarely go on Facebook, nothing is reliable. Even dog and cat videos are altered. And do not even get me started on people who actually use Facebook as a news source. Yikes. Big yikes. But that is a blog post for another time. Until then, do not have a political discussion with me if Facebook in your source. 

An only-when-my-mom-tags-me Facebook user,

Maddy 




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