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Finally called out a fake quote in a viral article that had 50k shares
I used to just scroll past those clickbait articles with bold quotes from 'experts' and take them at face value. Now I run the quote through Google Books or a quick news archive search first. Last week I found a story claiming a famous economist said something in 2018, but the earliest mention was from a random blog in 2021. Took me about 10 minutes to prove it was completely made up. I posted the receipts in the comments and the article got flagged for review. Has anyone else noticed how often these articles just invent quotes out of thin air?
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colescott3mo ago
Bet my fake internet detective skills are way better than my actual life skills.
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henry_ross3mo ago
Yeah i ran into that exact thing with a "Steve Jobs quote" that was supposedly from 2005 but I found the actual interview transcript and he never said it. Best trick I've found is searching the exact quote with "site:archive.org" or just looking for the earliest mention on Google News. Most of these fake quotes start on some random forum or blog months or years after they claim it was said.
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ward.anna3mo ago
That Wayback Machine trick is gold, I used it to bust a fake Einstein quote that was supposedly from the 1950s but first showed up on a forum in 2013.
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