Spotting "Fake News" and Misinformation: The Fallacies of TikTok

Breaking News: Climate change is seasonal! This was a claim from “a fake screenshot of a nonexistent CNN story” found on TikTok a couple weeks ago (NYTimes). In the past year or so, use of AI has gone mainstream. All over the internet you can find fake photos of celebrities, false audio clips, and AI generated news articles that so closely resemble real articles it is hard to tell the difference. This growing problem is worrisome because many misinformed or fake posts target young impressionable audiences especially on TikTok where most of the users range from 10-19 (Exploding Topics). By now, you are probably wondering how misinformation spreads through this popular social app. Misinformation and fake news are spread by mimicking real news posts, the voices, and the images of credible sources. For example, in the fake CNN post, the image looks eerily similar to something you would see on CNN’s actual news site. It follows the same template, uses similar language, and even lists names of real CNN journalists. Through this, they build credibility allowing your everyday users to fall victim. Manipulative posts such as this are becoming “more common and difficult to detect” as technologies such as “deepfake” improve (NYTimes). This is why it is important to always fact check your sources when you can. Even popular news sites can spread misinformation from time to time.

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