Fact-checking what you post or share on Facebook

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For the youth and some adults, Facebook is one of the few best and easiest ways in being aware of what’s happening around. Some people use it for the means of knowing the trend, the news, and other sorts of stuff. It is actually good because Facebook is used by more than a billion people.


However, it is not exempted from the harsh environment of reality that even criminals use this to plant wrong information to the brains of its users. Many people tend to forget that not everything they see on Facebook is real and in this article, we will help you on how you can fact-check the things you will see and the things you will share on Facebook.

Think before you share
From Wikimedia

Google is your friend

Well, I am not saying that the topmost result you see on Google is the most legitimate one, you can go and Google it and compare different opinions and websites on the specific topic you are trying to touch. Of course, not everything on Google is correct as well that’s why you need to ask for different opinions and compare it from there in order for you to share relevant and legitimate things on Facebook.

Use fact-checking tools

Pictures are one of the few things that you can recycle online and with this being said, they can use it in order to make or break information that can be shared online. What we can do to ensure that what we are to spread is correct is to check it in multiple sources. These two tools can help you.

Snopes – From hoaxes, legends, internet myths can be found here. You can also check if a certain mystery is debunked in this website.

Tineye – Tineye is known to be a reverse image engine which means that you can check where a certain photo was first published on the internet. It’s somehow like a backtracker of published photos on the internet.


Political-ads or stories

Nowadays, Filipinos are succumb to the habit of ranting through Facebook about what their opinions are regarding a certain political topic or story. Read or watch a certain political or campaign messaging actively; do not let yourself be consumed on what people think about a certain topic. In order to know what the real deal is, go and watch the full videos or stories of the thing you want to know about. PolitiFact.org and FactCheck.org are few of the sites you can visit.

Source-checking

If you aren’t informed, there are a lot of satire or sarcastic websites around the web which can definitely be hard to tell. Say for an instance, you see a post about a politician and you are unsure whether you should believe it or not. Check the source, if it came from SoWhatNews, AdoboChronicles or some other source that projects a more advanced system of thinking, think twice on believing. The best way to check if the site is fake or a satire website is go to their about page.

Think before you share

Of course, it is mandatory for people to read or watch a material first before they go ahead and spread it to other people. Think before you click or think before you share is a slogan used many years before and it just concludes one thing: Your brain is not in your fingers so do not be a happy-clicker, use your head first.

It’s really a headache in knowing whether a certain story is legitimate or not but with these, you can now have an edge on determining the truth from the false. There will be instances when you will share erroneous or untrue information. So what do you do when this happens? You correct yourself and admit that you’ve spread the wrong information. Facebook is a good way to share your thoughts and opinions, just make sure you are not barking up the wrong tree.

Read Also: Identifying a Facebook Hoax

Source: ScoutMag, RealSimple , Featured Image Source Wikimedia


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