The problem isn’t that we are believing fake news — it’s that we stopped believing in news. Since the middle of the 1900s, trust in the news has been slipping. It opened up a gap that financially-motivated false information generators happily filled. 

Click and someone makes money. It doesn’t matter if you quickly leave the site — the event has been logged. Unfortunately, that’s the incentive for creating clickbait. While we’re waiting for the industry to catch up, you can lower the amount of junk news you consume by learning to spot them before you click.

Let’s start on the other side of things. Facebook makes its money through advertisements. Advertisers, in a desire to reach their intended audiences, rely on Facebook to sell them space in front of the right types of people.

At this point, people are aware that fake news exists. Their problem with it is twofold. First, people aren’t sure how to identify fake news. Second, it has rattled their trust in any source of news or caused them to build extremely loyal affinities for select sources. 

When President Trump’s long-hyped Fake News Awards dropped, they hit with a thud. First, the website glitched (and *cringe* it still doesn’t have metadata as of this publishing). Then, people blinked in confusion as the top spot went to opinion columnist, Paul Krugman. He had mused in his New York Times opinion column that the economy would suffer if Trump won the election. Since the economy did not crash, Trump declared the author the first place winner of his fake news awards. 

I’ve taken money to write click bait. Although I prefer to produce thoughtful, valuable content, I have written click bait for entertainment purposes. (Isn’t that what we all say?)