Tools For Identifying Fake News

It's important to remember that the internet/social media did not invent fake news. It's been around forever. However, it is equally true that the internet distributes fake news at an incredible speed and social media is the main, but not the only, culprit. Hence, yesterday's post about how to identify fake news in social media.

If you found that a bit disappointing--the advice is not terribly different from that for identifying fake news in any context--you are exactly right. It's reasonable to ask whether there are any tools that could be helpful.

Before a brief listing of tools, a word about fake news itself. Most of us have read ad nauseum about foreign interference. A lot of it is alarmist and lacking in factual data. I've found two thoughtful reports if you want to review them to be sure what you're looking for. A recent report that is detailed and factual comes from Ars Technica. I took the graphic from there; it was the least repugnant one in that set; you are welcome to look further. The other is a brief post from Axios about uses of social media by various governments.

Now on to tools The best known is one called Botcheck.me. Just a visit there is interesting because it shows the trending hashtags and most active Twitter accounts for the past 24 hours. It's easy to put your Twitter account name in and find out if you have suspicious patterns suggesting the presence of fake news sites. Mine didn't show any, which is not surprising, because I follow mostly business news sites. There are a few more but most, like Botcheck.me which only works on Twitter, are somewhat specialized.

Facebook also has a tool that let you see whether you've followed or liked any suspicious pages. 

The most used tools are probably the fact-checking sites.These have been around for awhile. I've used them all and find them to be reliable:

• FactCheck.org
• Snopes
• Politifact
• Fact Check by the Washington Post

They all have interesting posts about the stories they research. It's worth following one or two of them just to keep up with what's out there.

Tomorrow is the last #CyberAware day. The month has flown by!

Stay Safe!
Updated 10/25, 11:45 am