The meaning of the word "Fake" in simple words. What is fake news on the Internet?

Surely every Internet user has encountered in the open spaces World Wide Web the word "fake". However, not every user knows the meaning of this neologism. If you belong to this category of people, then this article is for you. In it you can learn about what Fake is.

The word, like the lion's share of modern Internet slang, came to us from the English language. To understand what Fake is, it is enough to literally translate this lexeme. The word fake is interpreted as “fake”, “fake”. Despite the fact that the word fake has one specific meaning, after its introduction into Internet slang, this lexeme received several interpretations at once. Let's consider them.

Social media

Most often the concept of fake is used in social networks. What does this lexeme mean in this plane? A fake on social networks is a user account that contains false data. For example, the owner of the page indicated a false first and last name in order not to reveal his identity.

Nevertheless, most often you can find fake pages of famous people on social networks. For example, if in VK you enter in search bar request “Pavel Durov”, the site will return more than 10,000 people. Of course, most of the pages are fakes. How to identify a fake page? This is why social networks come up with various systems identification. In the same VKontakte there is a special mark in the form of a tick, which confirms the user’s identity.

Photos, videos

“Fake photo” or “fake video” – what does it mean? If a person uses such an expression, then he wants to say that the media file is not real. Fake photos and videos are created using specialized software. For example, you can add various effects and elements to pictures using the Photoshop graphic reactor. The same goes for video recordings. The creators of fakes either edit videos in a specialized editor (for example, Sony Vegas) or shoot staged videos.

2. Fake pages, imitating accounts of real people, but with fictitious names and biographical details. For example, the page of Elena from Syktyvkar is copied, which becomes Yulia from Arkhangelsk. In this case, Elena becomes a “donor” for the fake account, since its creator uses real photographs posted on her page. Such accounts are created either for personal entertainment and to prank friends, or to collect information and further fraudulent activities.

3. Fake sites. As a rule, they are used in political games to spread fake news. The fake site is identical in appearance to the real one, but one or two letters have been replaced in its address. It also happens that a unique site is specially created for the periodic publication of fakes.

4. Fake social networks. Externally, the start page is identical to the real social network page, but the address is slightly changed. Necessary for scammers to collect passwords from real pages.

What is a fake on Odnoklassniki?

Creating fakes on Odnoklassniki is often innocent fun for adults who want to try on a different image. To do this, a fake page is created on a social network, biographical data is invented, and someone’s photos are copied. After the page is created, you can go have fun - start a correspondence, flirt, invite you on dates, etc.

The situation is much more serious with the creation of a fake home page Odnoklassniki. This is done for fraudulent purposes, to obtain passwords to user accounts. Selected domain name, externally resembling odnoklassniki.ru- For example, oddnoklasniki.ru or obnokkassnlki.ru .

The average user is unlikely to look closely at address bar and rarely notices a fake. Without the slightest doubt, he enters his login and password for the page into the required window, which is what the attackers require.

Then all that remains is to go to the page and take advantage of the opportunities that have opened up - for example, organize a “night call from your son from the police” with a request to transfer a large sum to the account of the evil policeman.

What is a fake VKontakte?

They act in a similar way when creating fakes on VKontakte, but adjusted for the fact that the audience of this social network belongs to a younger age category. Fake accounts are used to raise funds for fake charities, for dating in order to defraud money, etc.

From a fake account of a pop or television star, for example, you can organize a “sale of her personal belongings” or ask for financial help for a “poor aspiring musician.” Pages created by supposedly beautiful girls are often intended. And, of course, creating a fake VK login is banal password phishing.

Does this remind you of anything? Previously in mailboxes they shoved letters written in crooked handwriting, which said that if you do not rewrite them twenty times, then you will have a misfortune, but Alla Pugacheva rewrote them - and now everything is fine with her.

In situations like the one described above, it's simple: if you believe you were present during an attempted crime, contact the police immediately. If you did not do this, then you are not entirely sure that this was an attempted kidnapping. If so, why scare everyone you can reach?

The most popular fakes (and how to recognize them)

If you receive an alarming message in the parent chat, then take a minute - type it into a search engine keywords and evaluate the results. Now I will write possible queries for several “favorite” parental fakes, especially since against the backdrop of “women in the bushes” they immediately became more active. You will immediately understand how to search.

– “the woman asked to photograph the children” - our latest case;

– “strawberry drug” - the one that fizzes and melts in your mouth and comes in candy and peanut butter; The tale is so ancient that it even received an article on Wikipedia. She came to us from America (which is basically noticeable in the text), where she was born in 2007;

– “gang of pedophiles” - this fake is six years old, but recently it began to circulate on the Internet with renewed vigor, and some time ago the old faces on the ad were replaced with new ones;

– “girls without kidneys were found with 50,000 rubles” - this is a fresh story from September: two girls 6-8 years old without kidneys were allegedly found on the side of the road, each with 50,000 rubles in her hand. In some places they also write that children are stolen in a black Grant. Do you notice anything familiar? In our childhood, of course, instead of “Granta” there was “Volga”, and the amounts were smaller, but the style was quite recognizable;

– “a child was kidnapped from a shopping center and returned without a kidney” - a fake, the police are tired of denying it;

– “AIDS cinema”, here are “needles in the subway” - and I remember these stories about infected needles that are inserted into cinema seats and escalator handrails (how?) from my own childhood;

– “bananas/oranges with AIDS” are bananas and oranges that are supposedly specially filled with the blood of HIV-infected people in order to infect everyone (it’s strange that it’s not watermelons, it seems like it’s customary to pump them full of something).

Read more

You typed into the search the words from the message that frightened you, and saw that exactly the same text that you received with the words “a mother from our class told me” had surfaced in several parts of the country. This is, naturally, a reason to treat him with suspicion. Analyze the text.

– Does it contain a lot of factual information?
– Are there any indications of date and time?
– Aren’t there too many exclamation marks and emoticons?
– Is it written correctly, or like those “chain letters” from the past? Is there a requirement to “distribute immediately”?
– Does everything in this text seem reasonable and unambiguous to you?
– If it mentions a specific street or object, remember if there are any in your city.
– If there is a photo of a “pedophile” (as part of a gang, from a video recording near a music school), think about it: why is his photo not on the official orientation, but on some semi-literate note?

Fake news is often spread with the words “this was told by the mother of my child’s classmate,” “a teacher from our school reported this,” “this happened at school no...”, “sent from the police,” “a friend’s husband works in the police, and he told...” . In the comments to the post about the woman who asked to take a photo of her with the bushes, adults quarreled with each other, proving that the described episode happened at their school, and they did it quite aggressively. A reference to a friend/husband/police/head teacher or simply a categorical statement “it happened at our school” does not prove the authenticity of the story.

Who benefits from spreading “horror stories” among parents?

The question arises: who writes such fakes and why? There are several versions, here they are:

This is done with the aim of intimidating and creating panic: something like virtual terrorism.

People with complexes demonstrate their power in this way.

The speed of information dissemination and algorithms for its distribution are measured.

It tests how suggestible certain groups of the population are.

This is done to distract people's attention from more pressing issues.

Each version can neither be reliably confirmed nor refuted. One can only guess who really needs this and why.

Instead of mailings, talk to your children about safety

Believe me, the fact that people in Bratsk and Stavropol learn about the incident with the bushes will not in any way increase the concern of adults for the safety of children. Most will be horrified, press the “forward” button and not talk to the children, and even if they talk, it’s not enough.

Harmless fakes or deliberate information dumps? Social networks have been overwhelmed by a wave of messages that terrify ordinary people. They scare you with poisonous needles, spice in candies and other horror stories. Who and why is spreading provocative messages that cause mass hysteria? And how to distinguish a lie from the truth?

“The entire WhatsApp was on fire with messages that children were being given chewing gum on the streets, that we need to be careful, be careful, take care of our children. Moms started sending all this to each other in a panic. Everyone was shocked,” says the young mother.

Frightening messages: someone, somewhere, heard from someone that schoolchildren are being offered drugs under the guise of candy. The child tries and gets used to it.

“They heard that one 15-year-old boy even died, but they couldn’t save him. They say this information goes through the FSB,” says the schoolboy’s mother.

If the special services got involved, then there can be no doubt - the machinations of enemies! And how can you not believe it? But the “duck” burst with a bang: the spice packets in the photo turned out to be packages of dried fruits from an online store.

“I want to say right away that someone spread misinformation. In fact, there is nothing of this. Literally two weeks ago at school No. 6 the same thing happened, with the same wording,” emphasizes the deputy director for educational work at school No. 11 Balashikha Natalya Kudryavtseva.

Another horror story that was blown up into a Hollywood horror script. Corrections are happily made by users of social networks: AIDS needles that some villain sticks into the handrails of subway escalators. There was even photographic evidence: a metro employee bent over rubber band, he has something in his hands - he’s probably pulling out needles. Thousands of reposts and comments. Everyone adds shocking details - you have to be original: “Today 4 escalators and two passages were closed due to the fact that people infected with AIDS are sticking needles.”

“This is impossible to do in principle. Inserting a needle into an escalator handrail is generally impossible. Even if you insert an object, roughly speaking, drive a nail, the combs will automatically remove it from there,” explains Moscow Metro press secretary Andrei Kruzhalin.

There are hundreds of similar fakes on the Internet. They are sophisticated in every way. Pressure on compassion: chilling stories about razors glued to children's slides. Heartbreaking - about smart, well-mannered dogs who are threatened with extermination. They say they are closing the shelter where trained shepherd dogs lived. In a week, everyone will certainly be euthanized. For the sake of experiment, we try to call the specified number. The number does not exist.

Such fakes and information dummies are, by and large, harmless. They got scared, felt compassion, and forgot. But there is another type of stuffing - ideological. This is what professionals do. Such messages should be remembered. One of the most global lately The stuffing was enthusiastically picked up by Internet users - a flash mob under the hashtag #I'mNotAfraidToSay. It is more correct to pronounce this phrase in the original language - Ukrainian: “I am not afraid to say it.” It was from there that the wave of hysteria began.

"Women talked about how they were allegedly raped. It ended with enchanting stories about how these women were raped once every 20 minutes, every day. It was clear that 80 percent of these stories were fake. It was conceived to dehumanize Russia, to say “Now, in Russia there is a culture of rape. This was a purely ideological injection from Ukraine. This is a training to tear off the veil of modesty and to do what they said,” explains. general manager social network monitoring company Igor Ashmanov.

Who is behind this is a moot point. But psychologists know the answer to another question - why people so naively and en masse believe such messages.

“There is an effect of social contagion. If a large number of people who are significant to me begin to discuss this or that problem, I naturally become involved in this discussion. And for me this problem becomes relevant,” notes Alexey Obukhov, head of the department of psychological anthropology at Moscow State Pedagogical University.

Experts call for observing so-called information hygiene. Before sharing the next pseudo-sensation, you should wait two or three days. Details and refutations will appear, and the artificially inflated bubble will burst.

You have probably come across the concept of fake more than once on social networks. But even if you hear this word for the first time, this does not mean at all that you have not met them. You just didn’t know what it was called before. So, who are the fakes? It is worth noting that they can be very different, but their essence remains unchanged. WITH English language“fake” is translated as “fake, forgery.”

Who are fakes: definition of the concept

First of all, it is worth noting that fake is a broad concept, and it occurs not only on the Internet, but also in our everyday life. But, as a rule, it is used specifically on the Internet and not only on social networks. You can create a fake in online games. For what? So as not to lose your real page, which it would be a pity to lose if you get banned. So an additional account is created, on which it is not scary to use various bugs and cheats. You can also create an additional account on some forum for spam, for example, or trolling. Basically, fakery is associated with creating a fake page on the World Wide Web, but this is not at all necessary. A fake web page, for example, that pretends to be a well-promoted and popular resource, will also be a fake. Such pages are also called phishing pages. That is, the question “who are fakes” can be answered this way - these are all things that pretend to be something that in reality they are not. Of course, this definition is not entirely accurate, but its essence is reflected correctly. IN real life You can call a fake, for example, a singer singing to a soundtrack, or even a product that contains preservatives, as well as a counterfeit of branded clothing and much more.

How to distinguish a fake photo from the original

If we talk specifically about the Internet, then the question of who fakes are can be answered as follows - this is a network user who pretends to be another person, uses false information, other people's photographs, and so on. On the Internet it is very difficult to distinguish who is a fake and who is a real person. In order to understand who you are communicating with - with real person or fake, you can use several good ways: