Does it read Factoid Or Faktoid? Simple tips to weed out fake news

On a pale wintry Sunday morning, as I am lazily sifting through all the detested Good Morning and life-enhancing WhatsApp messages cluttering my phone, one particular message makes me take a closer look. It is a tweet from President Trump featuring him, his wife Melania, and Putin in a photo where Putin and Melania seem to be having a private laugh together with Trump frowning into the distance. The caption reads How to Start World War III. I zoom in on the Twitter handle and laugh. It says @RealDonaldTrunp (notice the misspelling of Trump?). For a person who doesn't take this closer look, it would be very easy to assume it is Trump's real handle — @RealDonaldTrump.

In a world of social media forwards, disregarding a silly fake like the one above is simple if one knows where to look for the tip-off. At the same time, inundated daily with fake news, scams and phishing schemes, it is increasingly becoming difficult to ascertain which forwards or messages are true. This is not to say that we dismiss all news we get as fake news. Sometimes, you may not agree with a forward carrying the view of a political party, but that is not fake news. What one has to be careful of is content that has been deliberately manipulated to cause confusion.

Recently, I came across a Stanford University study of middle school to college going students, which reported that a whopping 82 per cent of them could not distinguish between ads with "sponsored content" and a real news story on a website. Unfortunately, the same may hold true for adults too.

So how does one separate the wheat from the chaff?

The first thing to look at is the name. This can range from major news organisations to famous logos and brands that one recognises or trusts. If you are getting something from www.dnaindia.com, then a red herring should be raised if the website you are accessing is www.dnaiindia.com. Often shady sites peddling fake news will try to imitate the name of a trusted and popular news source by incorporating it into their own URL.

Another simple way is to check the spelling. So, Times Now becomes Time How or Times Wow. Times of India can become Tines of India. To the reader in a rush, the easiest way to deceive is by using nearly the same URL as a popular site, or omitting a letter or two, or misspelling the name. Assume if you are getting a message from PM Narender Modi asking you to contribute generously to his farmers' fund by following the link attached, delete the message. Narender Modi (spelling again) is probably sitting in his basement in a Delhi suburb and gleefully waiting for unsuspecting viewers to respond to his message.

A third option is to use common sense. Half the time, the story is so incredulous that one can see a falsity rearing its head a mile away. "10-year-old in Portugal has discovered a cure for cancer" or "Man marries a rat saying it is his wife reincarnated" or "Hungry body eats damaged cancer cells so fasting increases immunity and kills cancer cells" are examples of forwards which need a finger hitting the DELETE button faster than you can say Fake News!

If the story makes you angry or upset or taps into an emotion which makes you uncomfortable, pause before you buy into it. Most of these messages thrive on the fact that anger or fear makes us react with our emotions rather than brains. Message about the government spying on you secretly, or forwards saying that a particular bank has run out of cash can spread panic and fear if not looked at critically.

A final and more sophisticated way to spot fake news is to look at the images and videos. Missing limbs or limbs out of proportion to the body, shadows around the image, or objects that are only half or look oddly out of place are some of the tell-tale signs to spot fake photos or deduce whether the picture has been altered or taken out of context.

As I am writing this column, I get a forward from a friend: a photo of a snake with a shining red hood in Karnataka. She calls me to enthuse about how it must be a holy reincarnation. I bite back the unholy thoughts that come into my mind and proceed to 'bust' her fake news balloon.