Recent events around COVID-19 inspired me to speak, so here's my five cents for the topic.
Let's kickstart this by looking at how information is formed and how it serves us.

What makes information what it is?

Fancy a quote from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The term “information” in colloquial speech is currently predominantly used as an abstract mass-noun used to denote any amount of data, code or text that is stored, sent, received or manipulated in any medium.

In other words, information has been all around us since the world exists, now even more then ever. In basic situations we have two end roles - emitter and observer. Something transmits information, another one collects it and reacts/acts to it in some way. In basic terms, everything we hear, see, feel, smell or taste is considered as information gathered. The reacting part is when we start analyzing(thinking) the collected data. To act, based on information, is optional. For example: we see dark clouds filling up the sky above us - we register that it will start to rain and put on the raincoat. We touch the hot stove - we feel the pain and our mind remembers to never do that again. We can think of countless examples like this. Of course whether it is burning hot or ice cold it doesn't matter, because pain is the information we get from feeling, in the meantime our eyes inform us about what we are touching. Simple and straightforward situations.

I like to call such type of information sovereign, because it is undeniable and the consequences are clear. This kind of information is easy to digest, it is sure, trusted and the observer can act fast to the data gathered.

On the other hand we have the unsure type of information. For the sake of our little study I will address it as collateral. This is the data we are dealing with most of the time.

Ask the right questions

Thousand decades ago humans invented language(written or spoken) at some point and sovereign information easily became covered in mist. Back to the earlier rain example, you won't trust a neighbor that comes at your door and informs you it's going to rain? Or will you? Basically what happens in this scenario is that we register the provided information to us, but before we act, we must start questioning ourselves: Who is giving me this information? Can this man be trusted? Is he lying or is he deceived by something? What reason he has to tell me this? And last but not least: How can I prove his words?

Nowadays information around us is vast and everflowing. We no longer look at the sky to try and predict the weather, we simply open our favorite app and take a look at the weather for the whole month. Hence, it is needless for the neighbor to come at our door and provide us with collateral information. By opening our social network feed, news sites and etc. we are exposed to information on different topics from almost everywhere. Then again, we must lean on the questions we asked above.

It is time to give sovereign and collateral information another good distinction. The flow of events in the first one should be emit->observe->act, while the second - emit->observe->react->act. Collateral information is uncertain and we must analyze(react) it before starting any action.

Ready to identify fake news

It seems now, that humans are the main producers of collateral information. So, the responsibility is ours alone to sift out misleading from valuable data. It is not an easy task though, but I'll give you some advices.

These days news sites seems to be popping everywhere. Like every kid with an internet and a mobile phone is a mass media. And that is not a lie, information in social media and forums travel the world faster than anything else. This gives us the opportunity to create amazing content, but also to intentionally write crappy posts. Sadly, the ones giving us fake information are not kids...

The first and foremost thing we have to do when we stumble upon potential substantial news is to look at the source of the information. Remember "Who is giving me this information?" ? I am surprised how many people fail so hard at this and just refuse to react(think), before acting(sharing the fake news, giving it more publicity).

The next thing we will gaze upon is actually the first thing that we see - the title. Does it try to play with our emotions and is it too loud? Starting the heading with words like EXCLUSIVE, SCANDALOUS, SHOCKING, BLOW OUT, EXPOSED...(the list goes on, but you get the point), there is a 90% chance that the article is a fraud. Emotional factor is tool #1 for scam, phishing and cyber crimes, not only on the internet. Many false stories from fishy sources tend to use this method for growing audience and spreading lies faster.

After we've checked these two it's a good thing to take a look at the spelling and vocabulary of the article itself. Every self-respecting media will hire paid editors and writers, or at least a well-educated reporter to create news for them. It seems logical, they will be representing this media site, so fair spelling and sophisticated utterance is a must.

Last, but not least take a moment to analyze the whole content, what is it about and what is trying to tell us. Many fake news are written by political oppositions, business competition, or just angry, problematic people, spreading hate and contagion to make themselves feel whole, or to gain some advantage and influence. These parties tend to hurt their rivals, by denigrating them with false stories.

Summary

If you've read my whole article, this part is nonsignificant to you and can be skipped. This is for the lazy readers, or those who didn't like my writing and skipped to the end. If there is one thing I want you to take from this post, it is this list of things to do, the next time you read something on the internet.

How to spot fake news:

• Start with verifying the source. Try to figure out if it can be trusted.
• Check for too emphasized emotional factor in the title.
• Look for spelling and syntactic mistakes. Too much of them means poor revenue of the source.
• Analyze the meaning of the article - is it trying to blacken individuals or some organization, is it promoting something/someone and etc.

Last words

Let us reach to a conclusion that 99.9% of the information around us is collateral. We can check the weather for tomorrow in our favorite app, but that data will never be sovereign. There's always a factor of error and inaccuracy.

It is our job to double, even triple check every portion of information we get.

Let's finish this with another quote from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, that seems relevant to the topic:

Information reduces uncertainty. The amount of information we get grows linearly with the amount by which it reduces our uncertainty until the moment that we have received all possible information and the amount of uncertainty is zero.

See you later alligator. Be safe.

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Don't hesitate to contact me to report any mistakes or just to say hi.