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Fake Mermaids

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One thing that will be very helpful to you when you move to the United States is learning how to find out what news is real and what news is fake. In America, not everything you see on social media is going to be true. A lot of times people will try to create false information to try and scare others. For example, I saw a video of a “mermaid” breathing on instagram and I thought that it could possibly be real. But then I researched the topic and found out that it was a fake mermaid that someone was trying to portray as a real living thing. You might be asking yourself, well how do I spot fake news? The easiest way to spot fake news is by making sure that the article/video has an author or has a credible author. For example, if you find an article that looks really official, but does not have an author, it would still be considered an unreliable source. Let's say that the article does have an author. What you could do is then look up the authors name on “Google.” If it says that the author has a profession in that specific article topic, then that would be considered a good credible source. …show more content…

A helpful website that I use to find out if something is real or not is “Snopes.com.” This website might not have the exact topic that you are researching, but if it does it will tell you if it is fake or not by searching it. Also, an important thing to pay attention to about your article/website is by making sure that the author is supporting their reasons by statistics or hands on experience. If the author is not backing up his/her reasons, then the author is likely biased meaning that all of her reasons are opinionated and likely false. If you do come across an author that has no support to backup their information then that would be considered fake

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