How reputable are the sources and sites?

M0nica Mon 13-Feb-17 14:08:19


If you wrap your fish and chips in the Guardian make sure not to get a bit of paper in your mouth!

We cannot possibly give you a list of all the unreliable sources Ankers but one to definitely avoid is the Daily Mail because of its "repuatation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication"

file:///C:/Users/Val/Desktop/Daily%20Mail%20-%20Wikipedia.html

Implied what Elegran??
I don't think I have contributed much to this thread , and certainly nothing you have said has bothered me

Sorry if I implied that, Maw

Surely ankers is enlightened by now? There are many sensible replies. In the end it all comes down to using your own common sense.

Just to make it clear that my son hasn't set up any sites himself, but he has friends who have.

I suspect GN is able to remain free through advertising.

There should be a disclaimer somewhere about email addresses and phone numbers. It's not illegal to take them or to sell them if a box hasn't been unticked. The site owner should state what's happening to them. That's why UKIP was fined £50,000. It had bought half a million contact details, but the people concerned hadn't been notified how their emails and phone numbers would be used. Apparently Momentum is in some kind of dispute with the Labour Party because it 'owns' the database with contact details of those who signed up for LP membership - nothing to do with fake news.

Clickbait isn't the worst kind of fake news by any means. Got to go right now, but I'll come back if nobody else has enlightened Ankers.

Nothing illegal about clickbait as such - even the most respectable and reputable sites put things on which will attract visitors. Let's face it, a site with boring headings is not going to get as much traffic as one that sounds interesting.

There are many site owners like dd's son who set up a site purely to gain some income out of visitors (if they show ads which pay the site-owner per click) and some of them have outrageous and misleading headlines to draw people in. Then you have those made-up questionnaires that purport to tell you which root vegetable you most resemble, or promise to tell you "ten foods you must NEVER eat"

The catch is that important information about social or political stuff should not be transmitted in this fake way, and those taking email or postal addresses or phone numbers unnecessarily are definitely illegal.

My son informs me that a few of his fellow students make quite a bit of money running blogs with clickbait. They set up a blog likely to attract a decent audience, eg. how to pull at uni, then get paid by advertisers every time somebody clicks on 'bait'. There's nothing illegal about it.

Facebook and Google algorithms can target ads specifically for you. For example, you might get clickbait for women over 60 wanted for trial face creams (or something like that).

Always be very careful of giving details when you apply for an insurance quote online, to reclaim PPI, to enter in a competition, etc.

Ankers firstly learn to distinguish between fact and opinion. Pass 'facts' through a reality filter and recognise the bias in opinions.

Clickbait is worse than I thought.

I presume scammers have a field day with them.

I often wondered where scammers got peoples' information from.

It all becomes easy pickings if a person has given the clickbait site the email address and phone number in the first place.

Unless you have ads blocked in your browser, you will often see 'clickbait' appear. I have one at the moment with a picture of the singer Sting and a headline saying 'Sad news at passing of...'. It looks like a genuine news item about Sting's death. If I didn't know better, I would have clicked it to find out more and would most certainly have found that I had been redirected to a site which has nothing to do with Sting. People are paid when people click on these links, which is how people run websites at no cost.

Your IP address can then be harvested. These sites often encourage people to give email addresses and phone numbers, all of which can be sold as marketing lists, so you can expect unsolicited emails, phone calls and ads appearing on your computer.

Hope that explains what clickbait is. Quite simply, it's 'bait' to get people to 'click' on sites.

Thanks for the link about Clickbait sites POGS
Perhaps I am like Ankers in that I've never heard of them

I could probably ask half a dozen people tomorrow in RL and they wouldn't have heard of them either.

just because someone asks a lot of questions MaizieD doesn't mean that they are childish, not everyone spends their life reading every online newspaper, report, Hansard, news fake or not, but they do want to learn more and to be aware without necessarily having the time to sit all day glued to a computer screen.

'I'm not spending any more time on this.'

Amen to that.

You are miffed, being snide because I took an easy route and copied words from a site and did not say so.

I'm not miffed, I'm amazed that you, of all people, who is always calling for balanced and unbiased views, should pick the most sensationalist and least common definition from a page of google results and copy and paste it as if it were your explanation, and a definitive one at that.

And, I'm afraid that if someone posts like a child they're likely to be treated like one...

I'm not spending any more time on this.

Maizie D

We should all be concerned about Fake News and Clickbait sites .

I still do not understand your point!

Even in your post you are telling Ankers this:-

'especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures'

I am not sowing fear , neither are you , we have presented factual information.

You are miffed, being snide because I took an easy route and copied words from a site and did not say so. Bloody hell that's pathetic.

I don't treat Ankers as a child, like some clearly do, I am sure she can look up further information and make a judgement call.

By the way I have mentioned Clickbait on threads before and probably because most posters are aware of their existence and need to be wary of them I have never been so ludicrously challenged!

www.gransnet.com/forums/site_stuff/1234118-Fake-News-Clickbait-etc-on-GN

I think Ankers knows very well what is real news or not and needs not a shred of help and guidance from any of us . I wonder if she knows what disingenuous means?

Have you actually read the thread roses?

Ankers was asking about how to tell what is real and what is fake...She wasn't, at the start of it, apparently able to decide for herself.

I hope she's better able to now...

Am sure that Ankers will decide for herself what is real news or not.

Because she's obviously worried about getting onto 'fake news' sites and you'll now have got her worried about 'clickbait' sites.

I've wasted my time on one or two before now and although the very small amount of editorial they contain may not be strictly accurate they can in no way be described as 'fake news' sites. Or malicious (apart from the fact that some 'may' contain malware) They're basically just advertising and money making exercises.

Maizie D

I have your read your 'Oh Dear Pogs' again and I simply do not understand your point!

You said this:-

'Why did you miss out the more usual definition? Ankers is a very confused person and you just seem to be sowing a bit more fear.'

What the hell are you talking about, I am 'sowing' a bit more fear?

Especially is Ankers is so worried about being caught by 'fake news' sites...

I think, POGS, that you should have cited the source of that definition. It did look as though you were apparently giving your own definition in your own words.

The other odd thing is that it is a very uncommon definition; the Wikipedia one is the the one that most people seem to mean by 'clickbait'.

Why would you use that definition to explain it to Ankers and not the commonly understood one?

MaizieD

What is your point?

I can detect a tone of snideness again in your post but I must be missing what you are trying to prove.

"Clickbait Websites - Fake News Watch
fakenewswatch.com/conspiracy-theoryclickbait-websites
Clickbait websites are sites that take bits of true stories but insinuate and make up other details to sew fear. Most of these are conspiratorial in nature are very ..."

Oh dear, POGS. You didn't copy and paste this definition from a page of google results did you?

(I'm afraid the give-away is 'sew' fear.)
www.google.co.uk/search?q=what+is+a+clikbait+website&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&ei=JxWiWJWGNNTU8geahKuAAQ

Why did you miss out the more usual definition? Ankers is a very confused person and you just seem to be sowing a bit more fear.

Ankers The commonly accepted definition is this one:

Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social ... (media)
Clickbait - Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/clickbait_hackersafe]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait

I copied and pasted that one from the same page of google search results.