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Good morning to you all hiveans, how are you doing today? We are living in a world where news spreads like wildfire everywhere in the world within a minute. Fake news has negative impacts in one’s life when you believe it.
One day when I was in my hostel a friend of Johnson went to the hostel and told him that, “Johnson, 5 results were pasted today in school, I have helped you check your own results, you failed four and passed one”.
Immediately, Johnson held the news, he fainted and was taken to hospital. Though their departmental results were passed, he did not fail any of them but his friend wanted his reaction because Johnson is one of the best students in the department. When he woke up in hospital, they told him that he passed and that his friend was joking with him.
A few years ago, I was 20km away from home. A news article popped up on my phone, and I saw the headline ‘50 houses burnt as a result of a fight between the community boys and thugs, more than 30 dead bodies were found’. I was hundred percent sure that if 50 houses were burnt in the community, my family house cannot be exempted from it.
Immediately I heard the news, I was demoralized, dejected and felt like a homeless child at that moment.
I was trying to get to my mum through phone calls but I couldn’t and my worry increased more.
I was unable to do any work at the moment, and a friend of mine knew that something was wrong with me, he said, “what happened to you? You looked so tired and worried”.
Until I called one of my friends living in the community and explained to me that there was nothing like a fight between community boys and thugs.
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Since then, I don't over react to any information because nowadays anyone can publish news since you have devices that can do so. I checked the source of the information before I could say anything. Even my state television and radio broadcast fake news to favor them. There are ways some of these radio and television stations painted the situation to get favor from the government in my country. There are also television and radio stations in my state that broadcast the truth to the people, and I like to hear news from these radio and television stations.
I was depressed, psychological disorder, panic and fear for hours as a result of fake news because I realized my mum was at home, and if anything may happen at that period, it may affect my mum.
I will share this fake news that happened to me recently on the internet. I saw a link on the internet about betting. When I went through the article, the article made it clear that ‘I can’t not lose on the betting on this website; even though if I didn't predict well, my money will surely be refunded to my wallet.
As I read further on the article, I discovered the betting company had a license from our government but never confirmed if the license was real. Without verifying, maybe everything I read was true. I registered with the betting site, transferred $100 to my betting account. I was using the money to bet on a daily basis, even when I did not predict very well, they refunded my money back to my betting wallet.
A month after I was about to withdraw money from the betting site, I was not able to withdraw my money; I contacted customer care, they said “We are sorry for the inconvenience, be patient with us, everything will be solved within 4 working days”.
After 4 days, the website did not respond, and I cannot contact customer care anymore. That was how I lost both my investment and the profit as a result of fake news I read.
Hmmmm! The money that I have not gotten, I have already calculated how I would spend the money. I was not happy, frustrated, disappointed, emotionally imbalanced and depressed.
With the power of technology and social media, anyone can post anything, whether truth or not. This is the reason I check and check the source of any information or news I am interested in.
I used to be clinical whenever I read news or information that I wanted to use, I think critically about it, contact the source of the information, research, and I don't make haste to use the information.
Since then, I used to be very careful of information online, and I don't make haste to conclude.
I stand up for success, and success is not achieved by merely making mouth, No room for laziness, no room for idleness.
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