There is a barely-furnished apartment in Long Beach, California that houses two men, one international business and an endless supply of ways to sell a story.
Paris Wade and Ben Goldman sit at the forefront of a new industry that’s emerged from social media, news outlets and people’s curiosity: fake news.
Wade and Goldman goad almost a million readers online into sharing, commenting, liking and believing stories that are – at best – exaggerated versions of the truth, according to LA Times.
It may seem unbelievable that anybody could profit from “fake” news but so long as readers continue to click on pages that claim Pope Francis supported Donald Trump, owners will continue to profit.
Listen to Monique Bowley, Mia Freedman and Jessie Stephens talk about fake news on Mamamia Out Loud, here:
Top spotting tip: Keep your eyes trained on the url. (Source: Original.)[/img_caption]
The pages are often created to mimic a regular news site – making it difficult to determine whether the publication is real.
Maybe it won’t fool you but if you’ve ever had to explain to a relative why they didn’t just win a million dollars for being the 99,999th visitor… you know how convincing they can be.
The video playing above takes you through some of the best ways a reader can determine which sites are real and which are fake.
Stay vigilant!
Top Comments
I read this already on The Onion, so it must be true.
You can also spot fake news sites that push a totally biased political agenda by going to Wikileaks or by the fact they have acronyms. For example, FOX, CNN, MSNBC.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
BOTH sides of politics have "fake" news ;)
Wikileaks itself has a completely biased agenda. Assange is a shill for Putin & the Russians.
Wikileaks...bahaha!