Facebook helps you detect fake news

In the information society, there is a paradox that disinformation is one of the greatest threats. This is something that those who have intervened in events such as the last US elections, the referendum for "Brexit" in Great Britain and who knows where else, know very well, using social networks, especially Facebook, to spread false news that modifies the people's opinion.

Facebook gets down to business

Now, and only when the scandal has jumped to the press around the world, and after repeatedly denying it, Facebook has taken action on the matter and, in addition to the actions that are taking place in the background, have launched a notice Users who are given a series of guidelines to follow to detect false news. These are some of the tips that the social network gives us and that we should not miss:

First of all, Facebook alerts us to the importance of being suspicious of excessively flashy, shocking and / or sensational headlines, those that are difficult to believe and that, at times, abuse the exclamation marks to get our attention.

We must also examine the URL since, as in internet scams, many of the sites that publish false news usually imitate the design of large information media, however, they make small modifications to their url since they cannot use the original one.

Also like scams, pay attention to the format because many of these false news contain misspellings and expressions that, sometimes, are meaningless because they come from machine translation services.

You should also check the photos, the dates and the source of the news. Dates and photos can be altered to give credibility to the information; a search is enough to verify its plausibility, however, it is not enough because the image could be true. Investigate the source of the news, make sure it is a trusted source and mistrust organizations that are not known.

And of course, verify the narrated facts. This is as simple as going to other prestigious information media and checking if they collect the news and if they count the same. If it's a fake news, you shouldn't find it on CNN, or the New York Times, or The Guardian….