Friday, April 20, 2018

Snopes is a good tool to use. Snopes is a website that fact checks articles. "This is where the muddled masses come by the virtual millions to establish just what the heck is really going on in a world turned upside down," according to the New York Times, a widely trusted news source. Snopes is unbiased. Snopes tells the truth. Fake news is proven wrong by Snopes. They research their topics. Many people utilize snopes because it is unbiased. Snopes does not lean left or right. It is universally trusted by both political sides. I use snopes because I trust snopes. It is a reliable resource. I recommend snopes to my friends.




A Green Moon?


A hoax claiming that s green moon would be visible on April twentieth went viral this week on Facebook. Space experts responded by saying there is no such thing and that there will not be any surprises involving the moon any time soon. This fake post has caused sites like EarthSky to be bombarded by searches about the green moon. A Twitter user said "My grandma shared this on FB and truly thinks there is going to be a “green moon” on 4/20." The post has now been deleted but this fake article caused a lot of searches on more about it online.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/04/18/green-moon-hoax-goes-viral-ahead-april-20.html

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April Fools News



Elon Musk joined in on the fake news on this year's April fool's day by tweeting out very controversial things about his company, Tesla. Tweets came out in April first stating, "Elon was found passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by "Teslaquilla" bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks." and "There are many chapters of bankruptcy and, as critics so rightly pointed out, Tesla has them *all*, including Chapter 14 and a half (the worst one)." Many critics online and investors did not find this very amusing as the company is having troubles and delays in production of vehicles that were supposed to be delivered to their customers already. Elon responded by saying he is confident in his company that why he decided to mess around and he has been working very hard to get production back on track.

https://www.cnet.com/news/best-april-fools-day-2018-pranks-on-web/
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Fake Crypto News


The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, denied false reports circulating online that they will introduce dollar trading. This large company handles a lot of trading daily and some days the trading value be over two billion dollars. Several articles circulating on twitter and websites claimed that Binance would introduce USD transactions to try to bring the prices of cryptocurrencies reports claim. This means that you can exchange different forms of digital currencies for other forms of digital currencies like tokens but not for a traditional euro or dollar. A spokeswoman said by email that these reports are "Fake News" and that Binance currently only does exchanges between cryptos and not dollars.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-20/crypto-exchange-binance-denies-it-will-introduce-dollar-trading

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Facebook Fake News


The most popular Black Lives Matter page on Facebook turned out to be a scam run by white Australians after recent reports. The page had nearly one million followers and had raised hundreds of thousands in donations from online fundraising.  This was discovered as they saw funds being deposited into an Australian bank account and shortly after reports came out the page was shut down. CNN contacted someone who believed to know more about the incident but he simply said that he, " once bought the domain name only and sold it.” The CEO of Facebook when discussing these fake news issues says that he is responsible and it was his mistake and that he is sorry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/04/10/facebooks-most-popular-black-lives-matter-page-was-a-scam-run-by-a-white-australian-report-says/?utm_term=.f5912ec12ec7

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Does Eating at McDonald's Make You a Cannibal?


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/swap-meat/
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It is a universal truth that people do not go to McDonalds for their high-quality food. In fact, a lot of people are skeptical of what exactly is in a McDonalds Cheeseburger. A story spread about one Oklahoma chain that had traces of horse and human meat at their store due to lack of resources of actual beef. “that McDonald’s article was just a spoof from the Huzlers web site, which offers users the ability to “Create your own news prank and trick your friends by sharing it”” Fact Check explains. So as questionable as McDonalds Food can get sometimes, I think it is safe to say we do not have to worry about becoming cannibals while enjoying a quick bite to eat there.
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Fake Coupons


Starbucks has become a target for trolls and fake news following its recent racial incident in a store in Philadelphia. A fake coupon that offers free coffee to people of color has been spreading around and has caused outrages.  People responded to this by saying things like, "Even if it's not real, I bet Starbucks would honor it." Many of these fake news and trolls start on anonymous message boards and eventually make their way to bigger sites with more people on them like Reddit and Twitter which makes it nearly impossible to find out where the fake news originated from.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trolls-spread-hateful-fake-starbucks-coupon-n867501

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Threats because of Fake News


Our President, Donald Trump, could probably coin the term Fake News. It is a word he uses quite heavily and frequently. One site he claims to be Fake News is CNN. Could this be the reason of the recent threats by a Michigan man who threatened to come and shoot CNN staff dead? Multiple calls were made by this man “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down.” He told an operator of CNN. Imagine the fear of the staff after this man called and said, "I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f---ing gun every single last one of you." The call was traced, and he was later arrested. Crazy people like this exist in the world and that is why it is important to watch what we say, you never know he may be keenly listening.
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Russia and NATO Scare


It is very hard to tell real from fake these days. It is becoming increasingly harder with the skills people have to make and manipulate pictures or videos to make them seem real. This is what happened when a video spread about a nuclear war outbreak between Russia and NATO. The video seemed to show a man in the BBC studio reporting about a missile attack, it even showed a clip of the Queen being evacuated. “We’d like to make absolutely clear that it’s a fake and does not come from the BBC.” BBC stated. Stories like these are not new but are still a very scary thing. How can we tell what is fake from the truth nowadays?
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The Global Issue of Fake News


Fake news is known to be an epidemic across this country, but the reality is, it’s a huge issue globally. From all age groups people are known to believe what they see without looking at the facts or the whole story. An example of this is when a video spread across India of a woman getting molested by a man. This hit hard for a lot of teenagers where it was widely spread and even discussed in school where a lot of debates emerged about this said incident. Later, the full video was released to show that the man was simply saving the woman from a riot. “The students had trouble dealing with the fact they had believed fake news.” Asia Times reports. No one wants to fall victim of the popular fake news trend, but sadly it is very common for that to happen especially when it comes to young, impressionable kids. I feel it is our duty to set a new standard of News and stop the pattern. We must all come together to share the truth and teach younger generations to do so as well.
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Starbucks Newest Scandal


It is a sensitive time in America where racial tension seems to be on the rise. After an incident in a Philadelphia Starbucks that ended in a wrongful arrest of two black men, rage spread across the nation. As a barista that works at this Starbucks, we were informed on what do incase of a riot that could possibly happen at our store. We were told about what to do incase of angry customers that come in and so on as well. Starbucks is going above and beyond to fix the terrible mistake that one store manager did, however, despite the news going around, there is no coupon for one free drink for people of color. “According to the Daily News, one of the coupons contains instructions for the barista to punch in the code, ‘1488,’ a set of numbers associated with white supremacist groups.” Informed Fox News. This fake coupon that has been spreading also includes a QR code that when scanned will pull up the “N-word.” So be aware when you stumble across this, no Starbucks will accept it and the company is in no way associated with such coupon.
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How Fake News Has Plagued 2017

 FAKE NEWS: TWITTER EDITION




This article talks about how fake news has taken over and become a house hold term in our country this past year. So many of the devastating things that have happened this year such as, school shootings, natural disasters etc have been trivialized. For example, once news of the terror attack on London many "news outlets" and people took to social media to post about it. Many tweets were being posted making it look like it was the people who were involved in the attack but that wasn't the case at all. The article mentions "Another tweet, shared more than 35,000 times, was from a user claiming his brother and sister were missing. But the image shared was taken before the attack and a Twitter user said it was actually a photo of a younger version of himself." This explains just how deceitful some people are and how far they are willing to go for fifteen minutes of fame.


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 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-42487425

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During 2017 President Trump raved on Twitter about “fake news” and the sources that circulate these stories. He tweeted about his upcoming Fake News Awards in which he would rank the news sources that spread the “fake news”. “Subjects [which] will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media.” Many popular news sites such as; CNN, The Washington Post, News Week, ABC News, and the New York Times were all listed along with their “fake news” articles that got them a spot on the list. The Fake News Awards come after President Trump had a tough year fighting all of the biased media, false claims, accusatory statements, and negative news that swarms the media. Once all the fake news sources/stories had been listed, there was a list of all the accomplishments that President Trump has made since becoming POTUS.
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An old news report about Floyd Mayweather's 2010 arrest appeared with a misleading title in July 2017.    The report stated that Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather's fight had been called off due to Mayweather's arrest. The fake news report featured video of Mayweather walking into a courtroom that was recirculating from his prior arrest in 2010. The video was published to the web site Top Buzz under the title “McGregor vs Mayweather FIGHT IS OFF! Mayweather ARRESTED!! LIVE FOOTAGE”. The report did show a real video, however it was used in the wrong place due to its absence of relevance to the 2017 McGregor vs Mayweather fight.

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A story has gone viral claiming the “March for Our Lives’ permit application was made months before the Parkland shooting. The story was entirely based off of misunderstanding and initiates that the shooting was completely staged and the rally was submitted months before February 14th, the day the shooting took place. The story was based off of an email exchange between James Fetzer and Scott Earhardt. Earhardt, a police officer for Washington D.C. MPD, suggested the rally was permitted way before the school shooting that left 17 students dead. He stated in the email, “In reference to your inquiry concerning the March For Our Lives Demonstration, here in the District of Columbia on March 24, 2018. MPD received a permit application several months prior to the actual event, and there was several months of planning for this large event”. FellowshipoftheMinds took this information and ran with it before confirming if it was factual information. Earhardt later confirmed that he confused “March For Our Lives” and March For Life”. MPD confirmed that “March For Our Lives” Permit Application for the rally was received February 21, one week after the deadly school shooting.

Did Fake News On Facebook Help Elect Trump?



After the 2016 election, many feared that fake news articles spread on Facebook swayed the results of the election. It's a broad but reasonable leap to make: many purveyors of fake news aimed to help Trump win, and lo and behold, Trump won. Social media plays a bigger role in bringing people to fake news sites than it plays in bringing them to real news sites. More than one-quarter of voting-age adults visited a fake news website supporting either Clinton or Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign. Not sure if remembered any articles on facebook during the time of the election but if they were fake or real either way they got people to vote for Trump. Maybe they just target certain fackebook account. Weird how social media can control our minds.




“Illegal immigrants cast votes”





Apparently this picture was front 2004 that was used saying that illegal immigrants cast votes in Pennsylvania race. A conservative website falsely reported that “trucks full of illegals” voted in the special House election in southwestern Pennsylvania that saw Democratic candidate Conor Lamb score a shocking victory over Republican Rick Saccone this week. Several of trucks full with illegal immigrants pulled up at the polls across Pennsylvania. Not shocking if someone did pay them to steal votes. You know things like this do happen, but they were probably tricked to vote here in the U.S. and probably were lied to that they could stay over in the U.S. if they voted.




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Kim Kardashian West calls out fake news regarding husband, Kanye West. “Yeezy Mafia” posted a tweet stating that Kanye West “had stockists show up to an empty showroom and didn't present any apparel or accessories for his label's seventh collection because he couldn’t do what he wanted to achieve with the line”. Kim quickly shut down the rumors by tweeting multiple tweets stating, “How can a verified account represent Yeezy with false information," she wrote. "You do NOT work for Yeezy and NOT affiliated. How are you gonna believe an account that posts fake colorways”. But Kim wasn't finished there, she went on to add that the abandoned showroom was intentional and that the looks would be posted online on her Instagram page.

McDonald Pot-Smoking Center





Supposedly there are 15 restaurants in the state of Colorado that have transformed or plan to transform play areas into pot-smoking centers.  Sure why not care about the health of the children; just give them second hand smoke. McDonald's spokesman Khim Aday says he "can confirm 100 percent that this is not true." “He said the false story has circulated since 2015. The story said two Denver restaurants had completed the conversion, while the other 13 were planning completion renovations by the end of 2015. Legal recreational pot sales in Colorado began in 2014.” Wouldn’t this have been wonderful for those who smoke and have the munchies at the same time? Well make in 2030. When marijuana is not illegal and everyone is doing it.



http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/real-news-mcdonalds-adding-pot-smoking-centers-54557817

Information online is easy to post, instant to view and can be shared quickly to a wide audience. While this can seem like a great advantage, there are also dangers that arise with the shift to online platforms. Fake news is one of the biggest dangers to social media and how we receive our information. Eric Tucker, posted a picture of several buses, stating that on the bus were paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory. Tucker's post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem with this was, Tucker didn't know who was on the bus.  He stated “I’m also a very busy businessman and I don’t have time to fact-check everything that I put out there, especially when I don’t think it’s going out there for wide consumption.” This is a prime example of how fast false information gets spread because people are reluctant to look into facts before sharing a story.