Speaker 1: What is fake news?

Speaker 2: First, let me explain what news is. News is information about important stuff that's happening in the world right now, and fake news is...

Speaker 1: News that's fake?

Speaker 2: Congratulations. It's news that is made up. We also call it disinformation.

We hear about fake news a lot these days, but it is nothing new. It has always existed.

Speaker 3: Hear ye, hear ye. An evil magician turned the king into a goat.

Speaker 1: What? LOL.

Speaker 2: In 1835, the New York Sun published a series of articles that said that unicorns, human bats and two-legged beavers had been discovered on the moon. Guess whether that was true or false. Answer, false. Good job.

Speaker 1: If fake news has always existed, why do we hear about it everywhere these days?

Speaker 2: Thanks to the internet, disinformation is everywhere these days. Here, here, here and here, here and also here and here.

New technologies have made it easy to create false information that looks real, even when it isn't. The news, scorpion invasion.

Speaker 3: Yikes.

Speaker 2: It also makes it very easy to get people to see fake news-

Speaker 3: Dear heavens.

Speaker 2: ... share it-

Speaker 3: I must warn all my friends. Click, click, click.

Speaker 2: ... and, unfortunately, believe it.

Speaker 3: That's it, I'm moving.

Speaker 2: So scary.

Speaker 3: OMG.

Speaker 2: All this makes it very hard for people to know which news is true and which is false.

Speaker 1: But why do people make up news?

Speaker 2: Good question.