Fake News in the Past and its Effects on the Future

Over the past few years, nations across the globe have been subjected to the media pandemic of fake news. From tedious Facebook posts about cats with 5 legs, to swaying public opinion and influencing elections, it has grown increasingly hard to deny that fake news has made an appearance in your social media news feed. But as we as a human race look forward into the next coming years, many people are skeptical that the world isn’t falling into a giant spiral down the metaphorical toilet, due to the fake news epidemic. In order to predict what is to come in the future, it is important to look at the impact that fake news has had and draw reasonable conclusions from them.

Looking back at the 2016 Presidential, a huge controversy started as rumors started to fly that the Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were running a pedophilia ring in the basement of a DC pizza shop. While the rumors were later proven to be false, the impact of those words would end up having real life consequences as a man would later walk in to the alleged pizza shop and incite a shooting. Even though luckily no one was injured in the shooting, this incident may very well likely not be the last of its kind. This leaves the question, should people be held accountable for their intentional starting and spreading of fake news?

In the case of the DC pizza shop, news outlets and personalities such as Alex Jones from Infowars has admitted to his wrong doing and apologized to the owners of Comet Ping Pong. Others however have not seen such a reply. During a segment on the daytime talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg responded to a fake news story that she was mentioned in. In the story, she was misquoted as saying she thought the wife of a dead soldier, who was being celebrated by President Trump, was doing it for attention. While Goldberg went public that she in fact did not make the alleged statements, the damage was already done, as she stated she was forced to spend money in order to protect herself and her family as to avoid a similar atrocity such as the one in DC.

Another topic brought up in the segment on The View, was Goldberg’s intention to get legislation started in order to prevent the spread of fake news. As time passes, the need for legislation to dissuade people from committing the same injustices, which have proven to have real life consequences. In order to prevent more incidents like the DC shooting from happening in the future, people need to be held accountable for their actions. If not, moving forward history is destined to repeat itself over and over, until such change is put into place.

The Fall of an Empire

When plotting out the future impact of fake news, it is important to recognize and understand how it has changed leading powers in the past. By looking back at the history of previous world powers, such as the Roman or British Empires, it should not be a surprise that the unrest created by fake news and propaganda will affect any powerful nation from the inside and cause a collapse of all civility.

Popularized fake news that routinely affects the stability and well-being of a country or nation is simply a checkpoint in the decline of a world power. By studying the conflicts that are bubbling throughout the world, it should be clear that the new world of technology has taken fake news to a new level.

Now, with a constantly changing political climate within the American Government, America’s place as a world power is at risk. The United States of America is currently going through a turbulent downward spiral, similar to the decline of the Roman Empire.

By studying the changes within America’s governmental powers, it is obvious that the ability to coexist and come to an agreement is slowly slipping away from politicians and leaders alike.

Should fake news continue to plague the world, we as its audience must stand strong. “We must proceed cautiously,” says Robert G. Parkinson of the Washington Post. “Stories that we think may vanish as a blip in our social media feeds may end up having a longer life than we expected, causing more damage than we can anticipate.”

In our post-industrial world, we are all interconnected by social media. Our politics, laws, and values affect the world in one way or another. Whether we add to the carnage of a civil war or alleviate the tension between warring countries, anything from fake news to conspiracy theories will change the outcome of our story.

For America’s citizens, the impact of fake news in our future will make or break the civilization we have come to know. Our influence as a global power is declining, and it is because of the in-fighting brought on by the spread of fake news that many of us are in this predicament.

Going back to the comparison of the United States of America and the Roman Empire, any fan of history can plot out the fate of America as a global superpower should we continue down this path of disaster and destruction.

“America still boasts a powerful military and massive nuclear arsenal, and even under the most dire economic predictions,it is still a key player in global commerce,” an opinion piece from the Guardian explains in an article from 2009. “But if Roman history is any lesson, America must humble itself to its new position and work as a global partner instead of seeking to once again control the world in the palm of its hands.”

Together with the influx of fake news propaganda that has flourished from the platform that was the 2016 US Election, for the sake of the world we must be aware of fake news as it changes and evolves.

The future is in our hands. We can either change our ways of working together to add power and influence back to America, or we can fall like the empires before us. The world will go on, but its people will change should fake news continue at the pace it is spreading.

"Together we stand, divided we fall..."

Fake news has been circulating throughout the world since the invention of the printing press in the 14th century. This was due to the fact that writers wanted to sway the public to their opinion and way of thinking. The internet then made it easier to post fictional articles for the world to find with the click of a button. People used the articles on the internet to their advantage by adding money to the link so when people click on it the writer gains money. They draw attention by making their titles loud by making it all capital letters and exclamation points.

With articles such as this circulating around the globe, tensions have risen. The 2016 presidential election has brought about so much fake news it is hard to tell the difference anymore between what is true and what is not. Through my research over the past couple of months I have found that through reliable sources you an find the truth, but only if your willing to surrender your biased opinion.

When talking about the future no one truly knows what will happen. If you look at past events you will be able to predict what will happen in the future. The topic of fake news has been controversial since the beginning of time and it only seems to be getting worse over the years.

Social media networks, such as Facebook, are aiming to fix the problems tied to fake news by trying to make it clear what is untrue. This will help with the future of fake news. Fake news will never truly go away, but there are ways we can prevent it from happening and from people believing it. Proper research and the ability for other people to accept others opinions will aid in the trouble with fake news.

The Future of Fake News

How is fake news affecting people today? How will fake news affect people in the future?

Fake news is messing around with people’s minds. They make people believe one thing but see something else totally different. In my opinion I don’t think fake news will change in the future, but I do think people will be more aware.

After I did some research I found an article that Facebook’s news leader, Adam Mosseri on The Verge saying Facebook is now going to pay fact-checking organizations to spot and take away fake news articles that are advertised on people’s news feeds. I thought this was very interesting because at first I did not think fake news was going to change in the future at all.

Going further down in this article I found that Facebook is already partners with organizations that do check fake news articles like “Snopes” and “Politifacts”. But they do not know if they are actually paying them yet.

Fake news has dramatically gone up since this last presidential election and it’s nice to see that Facebook is one step ahead in trying to make a change for the future of fake news

Will this continue?

“Fake news will continue to exist, and it’s up to the individuals to distinguish between fake and real news.” says Mahesh
In the article, What Do You Think Will Happen With Fake News In The Future? Laura Tucker interviews people about their opinion on this issue.  Fake news has been around for centuries and it will continue to grow in the future.

"In the not too distant future, technology giants will decide what news sources we are allowed to consult, and alternative voices will be silenced." by Writer Jonathan Albright." Fake news has been real since we’ve had the capability to communicate language and tell stories. "  Marsha Blackburn, an American congresswoman, has gone so far as to imply that internet service providers should be held responsible for taking down fake news, saying: “If anyone is putting fake news out there, the ISPs have the obligation to in some way get that off the web.”

Another individual Laura Tucker interviewed was Jeffry, he claims “One person can manufacture the fake news, and another will gladly hit the forward button without bothering to check its validity.” Jeffry believes fake news will continue to prosper and it will not stop anytime soon.


There are incentives to put an end to fake news but it will take time and effort to stop it. It is up to the people to decide the legitimacy of the information in front of them.

Future of Fake News or No Future at All.

Welcome to the year of 2016 where social media rules the world, or at least most of it. Just 10 years ago when I was younger my mother would watch the news channel or get the newspaper to get the facts about what was going on in the world. Now you just go to Facebook or Twitter and can get a status or tweet telling you the news but with their own opinion attached to it. The worst part is most of the news I see on social media is fake! This is a big problem with how fast it can travel on social media. Misinform and mislead people could be a problem for us in the future.

From when we first start school we learn the the basics of learning. As we get older and move up higher grade levels and even college we start to learn more and more of how to do certain things. One being that we make sure we have credible sources when we get information and how to cite them. But what about the young generation who hasn't learned that just yet? The young children who have social media but can't differ a worthy site from fake one? Or the ones who can type in google a question and have it answer a question for them? The future doesn't look good for history class or even school at that matter. Maybe our future doesn't have school in it. Kids can learn everything they need to know from the internet. They can learn there history from google like who is our first black President? I never googled this until I read Richard Gray's article and wondered to myself how many people really believed this. These are the same ones who have social media and can get these fake news articles and run with it instead of checking out one of the reliable news cite. Getting more and more people to believe it. Why is this we might ask? In Pablo Boczkowski's article why our future of fake news is a problem, he states that most people trust there contacts on their social media more than the original news site due to their biased opinion.

When we first heard of the fake news article that members of the Democratic Party were having a phedophile camp in the basement of a pizza shop in Washington D.C. it led to a man unloading a assault rifle into the pizza shop. No-one was hurt in this but it could have been a much worse scene. Or even Robert Dear Jr. who killed 3 people and wounded 9 others because he believed Planned Parenthood were killing baby fetuses and selling their baby parts. Fake news could have played a big part in this shooting.

Its not just social media that puts out the fake news, its done by all types of websites which end up spreading quickly through social media. Also its not just news that is questioned these days from readers who believe what they want. It has also been seen with medicine and the people who started the theory of vaccines causing autism in kids. If fake news continues and people keep believing it, we might not trust the education system, we might not trust vaccines that could keep us healthy. That could mean no future at all.

Will fake news haunt the future?

Fake news today can literally be found anywhere throughout the internet. On any page on Facebook or Twitter most of the time the user can find fake news. It’s becoming such a big problem with many people believing it.

Social media like Facebook is trying to help put an end to this. On a Facebook post, posted by CEO and cofounder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, he said that they take misinformation seriously and that they are trying to better their technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.  Facebook is launching a resource to help you spot fake news and misleading information that spreads throughout its service.

But apart from Facebook and other social medias trying to combat fake news people are only going to find different ways to produce it in a way that makes it harder to spot if it's fake. The future of fake news could even get a lot scarier once people start manipulating audio and video. On the video shown below you can see how a simple webcam can help produce a video to be manipulated and with doing that this can be a powerful weapon to create even more believable fake news.

Adobe, an American multinational computer software company, especially known for their programs like, Photoshop and After Effects have shown a program nicknamed "Photoshop for audio." Nick
Bilton, a writer for vanity fair says, "The product allows users to feed ten to 20 minutes of someone's voice into the application and then allows them to type words that are expressed in that exact voice.

The more people get their hands on programs that allow them to manipulate such things the harder it'll be to stop fake news from spreading and the easier that people will fall victims to it.

Many people are making money from spreading fake news. Scott Shane, from The New York Times, wrote an article about a 23 year old named Cameron Harris and how he made $1000 from people clicking his website and reading fake news that he produced.

It's such a scary thing to think but many people have created a job for themselves through the spread of fake news.

Fake news will never end and will only become more difficult to put an end to or even to spot, but it can be avoided. There are many actions being taken to help the spread of fake news, but the best thing anybody can do is to take the right steps and research what they are reading to see whether it is real or not.