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NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - The Trump administration's incoming national security advisor deleted a pre-election tweet about Hillary Clinton.
It was linked to a fake news report about her involvement in a child related crime incident.
It's one of many untruthful stories that some experts believe played a role in this election.
Fake news. It's all over social media, and it's all anyone is talking about lately.
“It's like what you can trust anymore,” said one bystander.
“Usually I think it's fake, but a lot of people buy into that stuff,” said another.
While people we spoke to may be able to decipher what's real and what's not, a Buzzfeed news poll found that fake news headlines fool about 75 percent of American adults.
“The problem with fake news is that it's a lot more damaging than people understand,” said Professor Glenn Lewis, director of journalism at York College.
“The whole effectiveness of journalism depends on public confidence. If you have fake news circulating with real news, it will start to shake public confidence in the press,” he continued.
Former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, also addressed the issue of fake news, calling it an epidemic
“It's now clear that fake news can have real world consequences, this is about politics or partisanship, lives are at risk,” said Clinton.
Pope Francis recently said that spreading misinformation is a sin and compared the proliferation of fake news to the desire to eat excrement.
“The more often that people hear false news, the more often they are likely to believe it,” said Professor Lewis.
As was the case when a gunman walked into a Washington DC pizzeria to investigate the ludicrous conspiracy that it housed a Hillary Clinton-run child sex ring.
In attempt to curb fake news, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined steps that included improving the ability to detect and flag false stories.
“One of the main jobs of journalism is to create positive change in society. You can’t create positive change in society if society doesn't have confidence in the press,” said Prof. Lewis.
One of the best ways to tell if news is fake or real, according to the Professor Lewis is to look at the source and do your own research.