There’s an ugly side to the Internet, and it’s fake news sites. From stories about random celebrities dying to stories about people from memes suing Instagram for millions of dollars, these types of sites pop up every day. The sad thing is, not only are they usually not funny, but people actually believe everything they read without proper investigation.
On the heels of more accusations from women alleging that Bill Cosby raped them, a site called Hip Hop Hangover published a story claiming that Raven-Symoné was also drugged and raped by Cosby. Since such stories have been resurfacing for the last couple of weeks, of course this fake news site saw an easy opportunity for page views. The site has a disclaimer, which isn’t exactly noticeable, but so far the post has been shared more than 136,000 times on Facebook and tweeted close to 400 times. Personally, I’ve seen people post questions about the accusations on Facebook, not even realizing that the site is fake.
Well, there’s one person who has taken issue with the site, and that’s Raven-Symoné. The actress has vehemently denied the accusations on her Instagram account.
“I was NOT taking [sic] advantage of by Mr. Cosby when I was on the Cosby Show! I was practically a baby on that show and this is truly a disgusting rumor that I want no part of! Everyone on that show treated me with nothing but kindness. Now keep me out of this!” her post stated.
It’s one thing to make fake news that has a satirical or humorous twist to it, but it’s another to falsely say that someone was raped and abused, especially when there are real women out there dealing with similar situations. These sites are only in it for the clicks, and they’re nothing to laugh about.
For those people not in the know, here is a list of fake news sites you should be aware of before you decide to share their posts:
* World News Daily Report
* National Report
* The News Nerd
* Empire News
* Lark News
* Christwire.org
Currently, there are only two sites that are genuine satire and humor, and they are The Onion and Clickhole, The Onion’s sister site. One rule of thumb when coming across a story that sounds crazy: Just Google the title. If it doesn’t pop up on a regular news site, chances are it’s fake.