Why does nobody talk about the 4% rule for checking news sources

Last week I got into a debate with my brother about a story he saw shared on Facebook. He kept saying it proved his point about local government waste. I told him to look up the original source and he found it was a satirical site from 2019. The numbers were all made up. Now I check the source date and domain on everything before I share it. Has anyone else found a quick rule like that that stops bad info from spreading?

3 comments

3 Comments

pat_roberts553d ago

That satirical site thing got my uncle once with a fake story about penguins taking over a town.

singh.harper3d ago

Is it bad that I believed that penguin story for a solid week?

the_eric3d ago

Take a closer look at the original source. That penguin story was written by a known satirical site that usually labels their articles as fiction, but this one didn't have the disclaimer. The publisher quietly changed it a few days later after people got fooled, so the confusion was partly their fault. It wasn't just you missing something obvious.