Just like a virus that infects us with the flu, fake news… quickly spreads everywhere! The difference is if the flu can be treated by resting and eating healthy food. Hoaxes, or fake news… need stronger medicine! But — as our friend asked — why do people easily believe in hoaxes? Why can it spread so fast?
Why should hoaxes be stopped?
The answer is because… confirmation bias! Okay, so to put it simply, we often play things without being questioned first because the information makes us agree. Yes, that’s because hoaxes contain information that is bombastic, and sensational. It makes the reader feel compelled to spread the information quickly, without asking questions. Finally, even deceptively fake news can spread — as fast as lightning. But, why should hoaxes be prevented? And, how to prevent it?
Simply put: hoaxes are… evil. It’s so evil, this hoax is often used by politicians to bring down opponents, and terrorists to spread threats and fear, to people who don’t have a job and whose hobby is to spread hatred. The point is, if left unchecked, repeated lies will be believed as reality — and if that happens, the world will be full of manipulation and deception until in the end, we don’t know which one is honest and which one wants to destroy. It’s terrifying.
So, how to prevent it?
For hoaxes to be blocked, we must have — in a cool term — digital literacy skills. In this way, everyone can search for, evaluate, use, spread, and even create positive content — and discard negative ones — when using digital technology and the internet. So, every time someone says that there was an explosion somewhere, a sophisticated stone that – he said – makes the disease quickly disappear, or news about someone who can multiply money, we can quickly check the search engine and ask for the truth before believing it and even spreading it everywhere.
So, if you find information that doesn’t include the author’s name, the source is only from the neighboring group, the content is bombastic and full of sensations, to unproven assumptions, that information must be suspected because it could be, the news is fake and only deceives us. Now you know why do people easily believe in hoaxes.
