The Value of Fake News

It's not April Fools Day, but every day is a new opportunity to prank someone online. Often these can be somewhat harmless. A floating bacon strip on the Kosher Wikipedia entry for example. That's a favorite of mine as I keep Kosher, love the internet, and because it's pretty harmless.

But what hoaxes aren't harmless? Impersonating a company or person can be devastating to someone's bottom line and an individual's livelihood once a fake story gains traction.

We've seen how easy it is for people to get riled up about restaurant stories of racist non-tippers or insensitive fast food staff. Some stories are proven false, although it is after their brands have been publicly shamed and action taken against employees or in favor of malicious patrons.

A few new sites making it easy for any internet user to impersonate a recognized publication or an official website have risen and already begun impacting business.

The first and most impactful is https://shrturl.co/. Using this tool to make a copy of a web page and editing text and images, a user made it look like a credible news source reported a major Silicon Valley investment story which no one questioned when it first appeared online.

Shrturl.co was sold, bought and is undergoing some work, but there are two other tools you can use to pass the time.

Tinyur1.co is a Shrturl.co replacement which does virtually the same thing in making a mimicked web page.

The Sunday Times Daily creates a realistic looking news page citing a story from a known and credible news source. However, once a user clicks the link to read the fake lead-in, a notification will appear to let you in on the joke.

It used to be, in order to have a huge, negative impact with social media, you'd have to hack the AP Twitter account or something to that effect. But now, you can simply send a link or screen grab of seemingly real-fake news to anyone who is not likely to check the facts before sharing with their networks.

Want to use these tools for a good purpose? If you need some positive examples, try the following:

• Mock up stories to give clients an idea of what certain coverage may look like. I recommend you include a watermark or tag of #NOTREAL (or something similar) in the text to make sure it's clear that this is a mock-up to anyone who views it.

• Utilize these tools in a clever non-profit campaign to re-imagine a headline or story which suits your cause. Use real information. Stay honest and transparent or your good-will effort may come back to hurt your credibility.

• Highlight celebrations which obviously would not have been front page news.

What creative (and non-malicious) ways would you use these tools?