In the last 24 hours I've had 5 significant news items shared to my Facebook page by family and friends. When I looked into each of them, either looking for independent corroboration or more detail, they've all been FAKE NEWS.
The last piece was about JustGiving taking £2,000,000 of the Captain Tom Moore donations as their commission. It finished with, "Share the hell out of this. I'm never using JustGiving again. JustGiving's commission is 3%, 3p in the pound. Bearing in mind the bank charges for each transaction and the need for a load of secure servers, 3p in the pound isn't a lot. And to cap it all, JustGiving donated £100,000 to Captain Tom's appeal. Imagine the damage this sort of thing does if people lose their trust in JustGiving.
Not that long ago there was a video doing the rounds on Facebook reputedly to be from a medic from Madrid crying about the decision to only put people under the age of 60 on vents, if they caught Corona Virus. A good friend, who lost her husband recently, who lives on her own out in the country rang me in tears about it. A few days later it was proven to be FAKE NEWS.
Earlier this week we had the Sunday Times piece, shared via Twitter. The reporter has been asked several times to prove his claims. He's refused, saying he wants to gold-plate it before he releases the detail. Maybe it is true, maybe it isn't but why release something so damning if he hasn't gold-plated it?
Tough times for everyone at present. Anxieties and emotions are all over the place, not to mention the mental health issues.
Out of curiosity I did a search on FAKE NEWS sites detected by Facebook and Twitter. Totally gobsmacked. There has been thousands of accounts closed down for disseminating FAKE NEWS. Not the accounts that have shared it, but the accounts that started each item. Nearly 3,000 of those sites were from Iran, with Russia and China being next. The odd account by the odd weirdo but so many from one place?
The last piece was about JustGiving taking £2,000,000 of the Captain Tom Moore donations as their commission. It finished with, "Share the hell out of this. I'm never using JustGiving again. JustGiving's commission is 3%, 3p in the pound. Bearing in mind the bank charges for each transaction and the need for a load of secure servers, 3p in the pound isn't a lot. And to cap it all, JustGiving donated £100,000 to Captain Tom's appeal. Imagine the damage this sort of thing does if people lose their trust in JustGiving.
Not that long ago there was a video doing the rounds on Facebook reputedly to be from a medic from Madrid crying about the decision to only put people under the age of 60 on vents, if they caught Corona Virus. A good friend, who lost her husband recently, who lives on her own out in the country rang me in tears about it. A few days later it was proven to be FAKE NEWS.
Earlier this week we had the Sunday Times piece, shared via Twitter. The reporter has been asked several times to prove his claims. He's refused, saying he wants to gold-plate it before he releases the detail. Maybe it is true, maybe it isn't but why release something so damning if he hasn't gold-plated it?
Tough times for everyone at present. Anxieties and emotions are all over the place, not to mention the mental health issues.
Out of curiosity I did a search on FAKE NEWS sites detected by Facebook and Twitter. Totally gobsmacked. There has been thousands of accounts closed down for disseminating FAKE NEWS. Not the accounts that have shared it, but the accounts that started each item. Nearly 3,000 of those sites were from Iran, with Russia and China being next. The odd account by the odd weirdo but so many from one place?
