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With everyone using so much social media its good to know how to spot false stories

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There is widespread concern about the vast amount of misinformation getting a lot of user engagement on Facebook. It does not have to be this way, as fake news are rather easy to spot.

"Fake news" is the latest catchphrase in the political, media and technology discussions, as some serious reports have suggested that false stories may have swung the result of the U.S. elections.

The one rule is that not everything on the Internet is true. If everyone knew that, Facebook and Google would not have to ban fake news site from their advertising system.

CNN put together a user guide to avoid false news on the social media. The outlet consulted Dr. Melissa Zimbars from Merrimack College and Alexis Mantzarlis, the head of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute.

How to outsmart fake news on Facebook?

The experts recommend a healthy amount of skepticism before sharing every piece of news. Likely, readers should check two or three sources before believing a single story.

Next, there are some tips to avoid misinformation on Facebook:

The name of the site: If it comes with suffixes like ".co" or ".su," it should raise a red flag.

The information on the headline: one of the main reasons hoaxes spread on Facebook is because people share a headline without reading the full article. Many times, the text does not support the title of the article.

The date of the story: legitimate news stories twist and resurrect years after they happened to create false events.

The sources of the article: fake news are often big ad shocking news, and relevant information must always have statement and claims from the protagonist of the story. If there are none, it means it is %100 fake.

Photos and videos out of context: users should see if the videos and pictures of the article are verifiable. The content must have evidence of what it says it is.

Other outlets reporting the story: people often take viral news site as if they were independent and credible. However, the right thing to do is check if a professional news outlet is also covering a story and trace the source.

The quotes of the story: likely, viral stories and memes feature shocking quotes. People should take a moment to see if they can find that quote somewhere else before sharing the content.

"Is your bias getting in the way?"

Zimbars and Mantzarlis say bias is a big reason to spread the news. It is because of Facebook's algorithm: the more a user likes or interacts with an individual interest, the more Facebook will show content related to that interest.

Also, there is the so-called "Echo-Chamber," a social media phenomenon where people are actively avoiding material contrary to their beliefs. So, here is the tip: if there is an article that feels "too good to be true," it probably is.

The tricky part: the type of website

Zimbars has divided unreliable news into four different categories and posted a guide to identify and avoid them.Those groups are a misleading report, highly exclusive news, click bait articles and satires.

Snopes site maintains an extensive list of unreliable communication sources as well.

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The user-friendly guide to avoid misinformation on Facebook

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There is widespread concern about the vast amount of misinformation getting a lot of user engagement on Facebook . It does not have to be this way, as fake news are rather easy to spot. "Fake news" is the latest catchphrase in the political, media and technology discussions, as some serious reports have suggested that false stories may have swung the result of the U.S.

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Great article on fake news stories which we see so many of.

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How To Recognize A Fake News Story

$FB, $TWTR, $GOOGL
9 tips to stop yourself from sharing false information
Fake news articles have increasingly become a regular happening on social media. These posts run wild across the Internet. Only later, if ever, do readers discover that the stories they shared may have been false.

The publication of blatantly inaccurate stories is certainly not new to the digital age, or even the analog era just check your local supermarket aisle for tabloids papers, but what is new is how easy it is for a reader to scan a headline on Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), hit share and watch his 500 followers do the same.

In the 3 months before the election the 20 Top-performing fake news stories on Facebook outperformed 20 Top-performing factual stories from 19 major media outlets in terms of engagement, according to data published last week.

There are few checks and balances to prevent any outlet from posting an article that is made up of false facts. In the coming months social media platforms will address many questions, including what level of editorial control sites like Facebook should exercise over the content on their platforms, if any.

After initially downplaying the problem, Facebook announced last Friday that it would begin seeking out ways to weed out some kinds of fake news from feeds. Google (NADASQ:GOOGL), too, said it plans to stop fake news sites from using its ad-selling service.

Part of stopping the spread of hoaxes and misinformation also falls on readers who e-Mail these articles to friends and family or post them on social media, lending these stories their a degree of credibility.

Below are some tips to help you prevent the spread of fake news, as follows:

1. Read Past The Headline

One way that fake news gets amplified is that busy readers may not look past the headline or opening paragraph before they decide to share an article. Fake news publishers sometimes exploit this tendency, writing the beginning of a story in a straightforward way before filling in the rest with obviously false information.

Sometimes, reading through to the article reveals that the story really has nothing to do with the headline.

2. Check What News Outlet Published It

Unfamiliar websites plastered with ads and all-caps headlines should draw immediate skepticism. Googling a site's name and checking out other articles it posts should also help determine if it is trustworthy.

Many fake news sites will outright say that they are satire or do not contain factual information, but others are made to mimic major news outlets. Check the URL names of pages that look suspect, making sure that it's not a hoax site that is pretending to be a trusted source.

3. Check The Publish Date And Time

A common element in fake news is that old articles or events can resurface and lead people to believe they just happened. Checking the publish time stamp is something readers can quickly do to prevent being misled.

Sometimes, finding out when an event happened can take a bit more work such as when the date of an article is current, but the events described within it are old. Click through links and read carefully to determine when the event described actually happened.

4. Who Is The Author?

Looking at who wrote the article can reveal a lot of information about the news source. Searching through the author's previous articles can show whether they are a legitimate journalist or have a history of hoaxes.

5. Look at the Links & Sources Used

A lack of links or sources for claims in an article is an obvious warning sign that the post can be false. Fake sites may also provide numerous links to sites that appear to back up their claims, but are themselves spreading misinformation. Check to see that claims supported by links actually come from reliable sources.

6. Look Out For Questionable Quotes & Photos

It is easy for fake news writers to invent false quotes, even attributing them to major public figures. Be skeptical of shocking or suspicious quotes, and search to see if they have been reported elsewhere.

Also, it iseasy to take a photo from one event and say it is from another. Images can also be altered for a certain story. Reverse image searches, either through Google can help you find where an image originated.

7. Beware Confirmation Bias

People are often drawn to stories that reinforce the way they see the world and how they feel about certain issues. Fake news is no exception, and many of the articles that fall under its umbrella are designed to stir up emotion in readers and prey on their biases.

It is important to check that news stories are based in fact, rather than sharing them because they support one side of an argument or bolster pre-existing political beliefs.

8. Search to Learn If Other News Outlets Are Reporting It

If a story looks suspicious or claims to reveal major news, search to see if other news outlets are also reporting the story. A single article from a suspicious source making a grand claim should be viewed with heavy skepticism. If no reliable news outlets are also reporting the story, then it may likely be fake.

9. Think Before You Share

Fake news sites rely on readers to share and engage with their articles in order for them to spread. In extreme cases, these fake articles can run out of control and have unintended consequences for those involved in the stories.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

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How To Recognize A Fake News Story - Live Trading News

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How To Recognize A Fake News Story $FB, $TWTR, $GOOGL 9 tips to stop yourself from sharing false information Fake news articles have increasingly become a regular happening on social media. These posts run wild across the Internet. Only later, if ever, do readers discover that the stories they shared may have been false.

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PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: The Problem of Skepticism [HD]

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What Skepticism Reveals about ScienceA skeptic's journey for truth in scienceBy Michael Shermer on July 1, 2009  71Credit: Matt CollinsIn a 1997 episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Springfield Files”—a parody of X-Files in which Homer has an alien encounter in the woods (after imbibing 10 bottles of Red Tick Beer)—Leonard Nimoy voices the intro as he once did for his post-Spock run on the television mystery series In Search of...: “The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies, and in the end isn’t that the real truth? The answer is no.”No cubed. The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled to the clicker culture of mass media where attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units. It must be true—I saw it on television, at the movies, on the Internet. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Loose Change, Zeitgeist the Movie. Mysteries, magic, myths and monsters. The occult and the supernatural. Conspiracies and cabals. The face on Mars and aliens on Earth. Bigfoot and Loch Ness. ESP and PSI. UFOs and ETIs. JFK, RFK and MLK—alphabet conspiracies. Altered states and hypnotic regression. Remote viewing and astroprojection. Ouija boards and Tarot cards. Astrology and palm reading. Acupuncture and chiropractic. Repressed memories and false memories. Talking to the dead and listening to your inner child. Such claims are an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction. Cue dramatic music. Darken the backdrop. Cast a shaft of light across the host’s face. The truth is out there. I want to believe.What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide. And after 99 monthly columns of exploring such topics (this is Opus 100), I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know. I believe that the truth is out there. But how can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. The statistical standards of evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis are substantial. Ideally, in a controlled experiment, we would like to be 95 to 99 percent confident that the results were not caused by chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not make the claim false, and, conversely, rejecting the null hypothesis is not a warranty on truth. Nevertheless, the scientific method is the best tool ever devised to discriminate between true and false patterns, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and to detect baloney.The null hypothesis means that the burden of proof is on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptics to disprove it. I once appeared on Larry King Live to discuss UFOs (a perennial favorite of his), along with a table full of UFOlogists. King’s questions for other skeptics and me typically miss this central tenet of science. It is not up to the skeptics to disprove UFOs. Although we cannot run a controlled experiment that would yield a statistical probability of rejecting (or not) the null hypothesis that aliens are not visiting Earth, proof would be simple: show us an alien spacecraft or an extraterrestrial body. Until then, keep searching and get back to us when you have something. Unfortunately for UFOlogists, scientists cannot accept as de­finitive proof of alien visitation such evidence as blurry photographs, grainy videos and anecdotes about spooky lights in the sky. Photographs and videos can be easily doctored, and lights in the sky have many prosaic explanations (aerial flares, lighted balloons, experimental aircraft, even Venus). Nor do government documents with redacted paragraphs count as evidence for ET contact, because we know that governments keep secrets for national security reasons. Terrestrial secrets do not equate to extra­terrestrial cover-ups.[break]So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science, lots of mysteries are left unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day. I recall a mystery in cosmology in the early 1990s whereby it appeared that there were stars older than the universe itself—the daughter was older than the mother! Thinking that I might have a hot story to write about that would reveal something deeply wrong with current cosmological models, I first queried California Institute of Technology cosmologist Kip S. Thorne, who assured me that the discrepancy was merely a problem in the current estimates of the age of the universe and that it would resolve itself in time with more data and better dating techniques. It did, as so many problems in science eventually do. In the meantime, it is okay to say, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure” and “Let’s wait and see.”To be fair, not all claims are subject to laboratory experiments and statistical tests. Many historical and inferential sciences require nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion. Just as detectives employ the convergence of evidence technique to deduce who most likely committed a crime, scientists employ the method to determine the likeliest explanation for a particular phenomenon. Cosmologists reconstruct the history of the universe by integrating data from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, spectroscopy, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Geologists reconstruct the history of Earth through a convergence of evidence from geology, geophysics and geochemistry. Archaeologists piece together the history of a civilization from pollen grains, kitchen middens, potshards, tools, works of art, written sources and other site-specific artifacts. Climate scientists prove anthropogenic global warming from the environmental sciences, planetary geology, geophysics, glaciology, meteorology, chemistry, biology, ecology, among other disciplines. Evolutionary biologists uncover the history of life on Earth from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, and so on.Once an inferential or historical science is well established through the accumulation of positive evidence, however, it is just as sound as a laboratory or experimental science. For creationists to disprove evolution, for example, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. They have not, instead employing only negative evidence in the form of “if evolutionary biologists cannot present a natural explanation of X, then a supernatural explanation of X must be true.”The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants. Show me a Nostradamus quatrain that predicted World War II or 9/11 before (not after) the fact (postdictions don’t count in science). Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Show me, and I’ll believe.Most people (scientists included) treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot—even in principle—be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing. In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. And beyond such controlled research, why does God only seem to heal illnesses that often go away on their own? What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as if an amputee grew a new limb. Amphibians can do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it. Many Iraqi War vets eagerly await divine action.[break]There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question—God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-skepticism-reveals/

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What Skepticism Reveals about ScienceA skeptic's journey for truth in scienceBy Michael Shermer on July 1, 2009  71Credit: Matt CollinsIn a 1997 episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Springfield Files”—a parody of X-Files in which Homer has an alien encounter in the woods (after imbibing 10 bottles of Red Tick Beer)—Leonard Nimoy voices the intro as he once did for his post-Spock run on the television mystery series In Search of...: “The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies, and in the end isn’t that the real truth? The answer is no.”No cubed. The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled to the clicker culture of mass media where attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units. It must be true—I saw it on television, at the movies, on the Internet. The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, That’s Incredible, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, Loose Change, Zeitgeist the Movie. Mysteries, magic, myths and monsters. The occult and the supernatural. Conspiracies and cabals. The face on Mars and aliens on Earth. Bigfoot and Loch Ness. ESP and PSI. UFOs and ETIs. JFK, RFK and MLK—alphabet conspiracies. Altered states and hypnotic regression. Remote viewing and astroprojection. Ouija boards and Tarot cards. Astrology and palm reading. Acupuncture and chiropractic. Repressed memories and false memories. Talking to the dead and listening to your inner child. Such claims are an obfuscating amalgam of theory and conjecture, reality and fantasy, nonfiction and science fiction. Cue dramatic music. Darken the backdrop. Cast a shaft of light across the host’s face. The truth is out there. I want to believe.What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide. And after 99 monthly columns of exploring such topics (this is Opus 100), I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know. I believe that the truth is out there. But how can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. The statistical standards of evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis are substantial. Ideally, in a controlled experiment, we would like to be 95 to 99 percent confident that the results were not caused by chance before we offer our provisional assent that the effect may be real. Failure to reject the null hypothesis does not make the claim false, and, conversely, rejecting the null hypothesis is not a warranty on truth. Nevertheless, the scientific method is the best tool ever devised to discriminate between true and false patterns, to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and to detect baloney.The null hypothesis means that the burden of proof is on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptics to disprove it. I once appeared on Larry King Live to discuss UFOs (a perennial favorite of his), along with a table full of UFOlogists. King’s questions for other skeptics and me typically miss this central tenet of science. It is not up to the skeptics to disprove UFOs. Although we cannot run a controlled experiment that would yield a statistical probability of rejecting (or not) the null hypothesis that aliens are not visiting Earth, proof would be simple: show us an alien spacecraft or an extraterrestrial body. Until then, keep searching and get back to us when you have something. Unfortunately for UFOlogists, scientists cannot accept as de­finitive proof of alien visitation such evidence as blurry photographs, grainy videos and anecdotes about spooky lights in the sky. Photographs and videos can be easily doctored, and lights in the sky have many prosaic explanations (aerial flares, lighted balloons, experimental aircraft, even Venus). Nor do government documents with redacted paragraphs count as evidence for ET contact, because we know that governments keep secrets for national security reasons. Terrestrial secrets do not equate to extra­terrestrial cover-ups.[break]So many claims of this nature are based on negative evidence. That is, if science cannot explain X, then your explanation for X is necessarily true. Not so. In science, lots of mysteries are left unexplained until further evidence arises, and problems are often left unsolved until another day. I recall a mystery in cosmology in the early 1990s whereby it appeared that there were stars older than the universe itself—the daughter was older than the mother! Thinking that I might have a hot story to write about that would reveal something deeply wrong with current cosmological models, I first queried California Institute of Technology cosmologist Kip S. Thorne, who assured me that the discrepancy was merely a problem in the current estimates of the age of the universe and that it would resolve itself in time with more data and better dating techniques. It did, as so many problems in science eventually do. In the meantime, it is okay to say, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure” and “Let’s wait and see.”To be fair, not all claims are subject to laboratory experiments and statistical tests. Many historical and inferential sciences require nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion. Just as detectives employ the convergence of evidence technique to deduce who most likely committed a crime, scientists employ the method to determine the likeliest explanation for a particular phenomenon. Cosmologists reconstruct the history of the universe by integrating data from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, spectroscopy, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Geologists reconstruct the history of Earth through a convergence of evidence from geology, geophysics and geochemistry. Archaeologists piece together the history of a civilization from pollen grains, kitchen middens, potshards, tools, works of art, written sources and other site-specific artifacts. Climate scientists prove anthropogenic global warming from the environmental sciences, planetary geology, geophysics, glaciology, meteorology, chemistry, biology, ecology, among other disciplines. Evolutionary biologists uncover the history of life on Earth from geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, genetics, and so on.Once an inferential or historical science is well established through the accumulation of positive evidence, however, it is just as sound as a laboratory or experimental science. For creationists to disprove evolution, for example, they need to unravel all these independent lines of evidence as well as construct a rival theory that can explain them better than the theory of evolution. They have not, instead employing only negative evidence in the form of “if evolutionary biologists cannot present a natural explanation of X, then a supernatural explanation of X must be true.”The principle of positive evidence applies to all claims. Skeptics are from Missouri, the Show-Me state. Show me a Sasquatch body. Show me the archaeological artifacts from Atlantis. Show me a Ouija board that spells words with securely blindfolded participants. Show me a Nostradamus quatrain that predicted World War II or 9/11 before (not after) the fact (postdictions don’t count in science). Show me the evidence that alternative medicines work better than placebos. Show me an ET or take me to the Mothership. Show me the Intelligent Designer. Show me God. Show me, and I’ll believe.Most people (scientists included) treat the God question separate from all these other claims. They are right to do so as long as the particular claim in question cannot—even in principle—be examined by science. But what might that include? Most religious claims are testable, such as prayer positively influencing healing. In this case, controlled experiments to date show no difference between prayed-for and not-prayed-for patients. And beyond such controlled research, why does God only seem to heal illnesses that often go away on their own? What would compel me to believe would be something unequivocal, such as if an amputee grew a new limb. Amphibians can do it. Surely an omnipotent deity could do it. Many Iraqi War vets eagerly await divine action.[break]There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question—God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-skepticism-reveals/

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Full Definition of skepticism. 1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object. 2a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertainb : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics.

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Full Definition of skepticism. 1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object. 2a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertainb : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics.