You're being trolled: stop trusting every news article on Facebook

Facebook will celebrate its 12th anniversary in February, and in those years Facebook has blossomed from the small private website for college students into the largest social media website in the world.

The social network, originally founded to provide a friendly online connection between students at Harvard, now is its own massive empire and founder Mark Zuckerburg sits at its throne.

Roughly two-thirds of adults in the United States use Facebook and about 30 percent of those adults receive their news from Zuckerburg’s website.

I see hundreds of news articles a day just from scrolling through my Facebook news feed for a few minutes. The number of those news articles that are irrelevant, useless and false is haunting and terrifying, but they are still shared by a countless numbers of people.

Facebook’s news feed makes the perfect target for Internet trollers and hoaxers to fool thousands of people a day.

With that being said, it’s important to note that you have been fooled recently too. Yes you, Facebook user, who sees the headline “President Obama funds Muslim museum” and automatically becomes infuriated and shares the fake article with your other conservative, patriotic Facebook friends (don’t feel too discouraged, though, even FOX News fell for this one).

In minutes you’ve tossed your own match into the wildfire of lies that these fake news outlets hope to set. You contribute to the cause only because you didn’t check the credibility of the source — that is listed in the bottom left corner of every summary of a news article on Facebook.

Daily Buzz Live, World News Daily Report, News Examiner, The News Nerd — they are all out to fire you up in hopes that you will also press the infamous “share” button.

So do us all a favor, lazy Facebook user. Check the credibility of your news sources. Chances are, if an article looks too good to be true for you, it probably is. You can Google the source and you will be quickly informed if the source is legitimate or not.

Stick with the big dogs. ABC, NBC, CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times will usually get you the true news that you need to see, read and share.

Jake Whiteley is a senior at Oklahoma Christian University and the opinions editor for The Talon.