Now more than ever it’s important to be able to tell when you’re reading #FakeNews. However, determining whether something is fake or real isn’t always easy. Think you know your stuff? Give Factitious a try.
The web game displays actual news stories that have been published around the web, along with source information. Your job is to determine whether what you’re reading is real or fake — and it’s not as easy as it looks.
Most of the stories I was shown while I played were things I had already seen pop up on Facebook. I like to consider myself pretty good at being able to tell whether a story is bogus or not, and I still didn’t get them all right.
The game was made by a team at American University as a way to show people how to detect fake news. Playing it works a lot like Tinder. You’re shown one story at a time and have to pick yes or no after reading it. Once you choose, you find out the answer and some tips for how you could have chosen correctly (presuming you didn’t).
It’s a fun way to spend a few minutes, and you (or the ::cough:: family member you send this to) might learn something in the process.
Some tips from the Factitious team: Always check the source of an article and think about what the purpose of it is, and look for contact information on the site. If there’s no contact info on the site then that should be a red flag. You can also use sites like Snopes, factcheck.org, and the Washington Post Fact Checker to see if a particular story has been verified.
Check out their full list of tips here.
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