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Fake news & crisis actors & propaganda! Oh my!


What a time to be alive.

The media doesn't trust the government, the government doesn't trust the media, and the majority of people in the U.S. don't trust either.

The political climate in the U.S. is tense and we're currently governed by an administration that voices their distrust of news outlets quite frequently. So, as a citizen, it's hard to know who to trust. We're constantly being fed biased stories and false opinions and not just from political leaders and legacy media platforms.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to regulate the spread of false information largely due to the internet, social media, and our constitutional right to free speech. Anyone can post anything they want, without reason. Your everyday, average Joe can share anything he wants on social media and if it gains enough following, people just might believe it.

However, just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true. Which leads me to the most recent fake news discussion: crisis actors.

Yep, you read that right.

Rumors began to surface on Facebook that the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School portrayed in the news were "crisis actors."

These students who survived this horrific shooting, who lost friends and teachers, whose lives will forever be changed are now having to defend themselves to the world that they aren't paid actors.

How crazy is that?

This all started because someone found an interview online of David Hogg, one of the students from MSD, sharing an eyewitness account of an altercation in California.

Instead of learning the facts, this person decided to share a picture of it on the internet right next to a picture of him being interviewed after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School saying, "So called 'student', but actually a CRISIS ACTOR, David Hogg, was on camera months ago pretending to be a high school student in California. Now, suddenly, he is a high school student in Florida???"

The post went viral, racking up over 100,000 views.

From this post came a YouTube video, which has since been taken down, showing the "conspiracy" of the crisis actors from Florida. YouTube's algorithm made it easy for this video to gain a lot of traffic. It became the #1 trending video of the day it was posted. It was only then that YouTube took down the content because it violated their guidelines.

"Because the video contained footage from an authoritative news source, our system misclassified it," said YouTube. "As soon as we became aware of the video, we removed it from Trending and from YouTube for violating our policies. We are working to improve our systems moving forward."

According to NBC News the real story is, "[David Hogg] had been interviewed by a news crew about a confrontation between a lifeguard and a surfer in Redondo Beach, California."

Hogg, who has been confirmed as a student at MSD, was on vacation in California during August. This had nothing to do with any type of gun violence. He never claimed to be a high school student or a California native, yet that's the narrative that the internet trolls decided to write for him.

The moral of all of this is simple. Don't believe everything you see, especially if it's on the internet from an non-credible source.

However, companies like YouTube, Facebook, and all other social media platforms need to do a better job regulating the content on their websites. Yes, people are entitled to free speech, but at what cost?

We have to regain trust in our news sources and find a way to filter out the garbage.

Sources

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