In an age when satire news sites are almost as easy to come across as the real ones, are these sites innocent humorous jokes, or are they more sinister than they appear? When users can’t be bothered to click the link as it appears on their timelines, are the far out headlines being taken as fact?
Websites like “The Onion” are known for their outrageous, fictional articles, but with copycats popping up on a regular basis they can easily lead to the spread of false information. Many users, including myself, have been guilty for sharing or spreading links from satire news sites that we never even read. With so much information at our fingertips, sometimes the headline is as far as I get. Recently, click hole websites have been on the rise, even allowing users to create and share headlines relevant to their communities. I’ve seen articles of all sorts claiming mass shootings, terrorist attacks and natural disasters, sometimes all three. When you click the link it brings you to a “YOU FELL FOR IT, WE GOT YOU!” style article, but if you don’t get too the article, that isn’t uncovered. This type of scary, and very believable, clickbait can cause mass panic in the online world. Especially among the older generation, who aren’t necessarily up-to-date on the existence of click hole articles.
Though a quick google search could quickly tell you that the information you read was false, are those few minutes of utter panic worth those extra clicks such an article might bring to your website?
It’s not all serious though, some articles are purely for the fun of it, and leaves you chuckling with clever headlines like this:
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| A screen grab of a headline from a satire news site aimed at Atlantic Canadians. |
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