Maybe you’ve seen someone on your Facebook feed sharing a story about how pop singer Katy Perry, tired of Los Angeles, has bought a home in Portland, Maine. Maybe you noticed the website’s address has “news” in it and didn’t look any further.
How did this happen? Did she read a listicle that said Portland was America’s second-classiest party city? Maybe she wants to start a business and heard Portland was the ninth-best city for women entrepreneurs? Perhaps she couldn’t resist moving to America’s 20th most fitness-friendly city?
No, that’s probably not it.
The website that printed the article, mbynews.com, has this disclaimer on its contact page: “MBY News is a fantasy news site. All news articles on mbynews.com are satire or pure fantasy.” It’s not a news story. It’s a lie.
Why post fake news that, rather than being absurd and funny and clearly fake like The Onion, is just a lie? It’s probably because the site’s authors know that many people aren’t very careful to check their sources before sharing links, and they know they’ll get thousands of Mainers reading about it — which will bring in a few dollars in website ads.
Fake news sites have been proliferating online lately. Snopes.com, a website dedicated to debunking false information passed online through chain emails and social media, has a page dedicated to fake “celebrity moving to a small city” stories. If you lived in Gulf Shores, Alabama or Sandy, Oregon or Wildwood, Missouri, you might have heard Justin Bieber was moving there. Other stories say Clint Eastwood or Tom Cruise is moving to a small midwestern or southern town.
According to Snopes writer Kim LaCapria, these stories started spreading around Feb. 28 from sites with names like “MacKenzie Post” and “Headline Brief.” They’re likely betting that people in smaller towns and cities are 1) gullible and 2) would be really excited by the prospect of a major celebrity moving in.
Here’s a link to the false story, in case you want to reward them with ad revenue for spreading misinformation.