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?

3 comments

3 Comments

colescott9d ago

Bet my fake internet detective skills are way better than my actual life skills.

henry_ross10d 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.

ward.anna10d 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.