How Not to Get Duped by Junk News on Social Media

In January, the internet was awash with rumors of a new, far-more deadly new pandemic. “Disease X” was the new global health threat. Covid-weary social-media users freaked out.

The problem?

It wasn’t real: while the name was, the term was actually just a hypothetical pandemic to help governments prepare for future contingencies.

Social-media fueled rumors are nothing new, but they’re getting more difficult to fact check.

Since we’re stuck with social media as one of the main vehicles by which most of us get our news, what we do as news consumers will likely shape future of journalism. But what does that look like? How can we make smart choices about what to seek out, news-wise?

First, be aware of where the information on your social media feeds is coming from. The adage that if you’re not paying for something, you are the product, can hold true for news, too: Organizations that have an interest in getting you to think a certain way about a policy or a politician can buy ads on your favorite social media platform and specifically target you for those messages.

The best way to get reliable news on any platform — fortunately or unfortunately — is to pay for it. Whether it’s donating to your NPR affiliate or subscribing to your local paper, a national magazine, The Washington Post, or New York Times, or even curating a number of outlets inexpensively via Apple News, it’s important to remember that journalism has to originate somewhere, and the vast majority of the stories you see across all social media platforms are, in fact, coming from legacy news outlets.

If you have a subscription to one of these news outlets, you can often “gift” articles on your social media feeds, which helps people who may not be able to afford subscriptions right now. Conversely, if you’re want to share a story about a recent natural disaster, and you can’t get past a paywall, you can ask a friend to share the story. If you’re a student, you might also be able to get free or reduced-cost access, and often local libraries can provide access to news (and entertainment, for that matter).

Regardless of whether one pays for news or not, it’s helpful to understand the benefits and drawbacks of some of the more popular news-hosting social media apps.

Facebook and Twitter (“X”)

These platforms are still the most popular way to get news via social media, despite complicated histories with supporting legitimate journalism. Meta (Facebook’s parent company) has tried to block news organizations in Canada, in response to a new law that mandates that social media companies share their revenue with journalism outlets, and they are threatening to do so in Australia in response to a similar law there.

The chief issue with X is that it’s rife with fake accounts, often run by bots, and often organized by Russian and Chinese government efforts to discredit our democracy and sow discord. One also faces the mixed motivations of X’s owner. Elon Musk doesn’t like it when journalists ask him hard questions and has been accused of suspending journalists’ accounts, but still needs them as users on his platform. Some news organizations such as NPR and others have moved entirely off of X, due to Musk’s hands off approach toward keeping his site free from these bad actors.

One step to find trustworthy news is to follow established news outlets and other verified, independent journalistic voices, on either platform. With Facebook, it’s also important to be aware of that platform’s own intention to put its users in a walled garden of content, making it increasingly difficult to connect to sources outside of the Meta universe.

This helpful guide from the U.S. Army recommends these steps:

• Consider the source
• Do a quick search on the author
• Check the date
• Check your biases
• Read beyond the headline to get the whole story
• See if the sources provided truly support the story
• Consider that the post might be satire
• Consult an expert or fact-checking site

Basically, you have to double and triple check that you’re propagating false information or helping America’s adversaries by  reposting fake content. Don’t be a sucker. Think before you share stuff that’s designed to divide us.

While there is a healthy debate about how much social responsibility tech giants have in our society, there is a good argument that they have at least some. In the meantime, a number of individual journalists and outlets remain, so with careful curation it’s still possible to find verified news there.

YouTube and TikTok

These visual-first platforms are owned by Alphabet (the parent company of Google) and ByteDance, respectively. The latter has its roots in China, which has caused all kinds of concern (ranging from the reasonable to the hysterical). Journalism on YouTube tends to be more of the “explainer” or round-up type, though many otherwise mainstream news orgs have channels, too. The platform itself does more than some to root out the conspiracy videos and racist rants that sometimes get posted there, along with endemically bad actors, such as those who push medical misinformation.

An immediate problem with YouTube and TikTok is DeepFakes, i.e., artificially constructed videos that often try to literally put words in real people’s months in ways that sow confusion. There are methods to detect and deter DeepFakes, including looking for weird facial expressions, glare, hair, and even fake-looking moles, but they take practice and measured skepticism. There are a number of legitimate news organizations and sources on TikTok, and it’s arguable that their presence is actually a very encouraging sign for the future of journalism. But the platform itself, while popular with younger news consumers, is often rife with misinformation, especially about medical issues, and is struggling to clean itself up ahead of this year’s elections, both in Europe and the U.S.

Snapchat and Other Platforms

Snapchat has been what TikTok is now — where young news consumers have gotten their news, and, at least in the last few years, not a bad place for it, partially based on how it has sourced its news; for instance, using photos taken by ordinary people as source for what’s happening in conflict zones. It’s currently going through a rebrand that may have some interesting, and possibly positive, ramifications for journalism. Snapchat is trying to lean into authentic community, as far as a company can, and that’s a good thing for local journalism, which needs that to survive.

Other platforms, such as Bluesky, have pitched themselves as healthy alternatives to X, though it’s still an open question which one site could “replace” it as a more reliable source for news. It’s likely that no single platform will rise to the top; instead, it will likely be several sites, with most of them doing a better job than X in keeping the bots and bad actors under control.

The bottom line with all of the above is to be wary and judicious. And if some sites won’t police themselves, it’s more important than ever to watch out for misinformation and disinformation. This worksheet from ProQuest provides another resource that can help you figure out how to assess information and push back (as best you can) against your own confirmation bias. The burden is now on the user to sort the real from the fake — it’s always been, to a certain degree, that way, but it’s just now clearer. We as consumers can call for more and better human moderation, but that comes at a steep human cost, and machine-led moderation can hurt the environment.

There are no perfect solutions to the challenge of getting vetted news via social media. But it doesn’t mean we have to throw up our hands in despair. As with lots of other things, knowing is half the battle.