Satirical news has an important place in United States culture. The most obvious example is The Onion, who including making us laugh at our own absurdity, have done some exceptional journalism and highlighted important problems with the way we digest the news on the internet.

Case in point - World leaders and actual news sources taking it literally.

Don't (always) trust the Internet

Since it's launch, the World Wide Web has quickly risen to prominence as one of, if not the most effective means of mass communication. One of those reasons might be that just about anyone can create anything they want on here.

However, as Uncle Ben from Spider Man popularized "...with great power there must also come -- great responsibility!"

The ease of creation enables disinformation to spread unless you're careful and it's getting worse. People are sharing things without reading them (source).

To speak from an individual level, it can be frustrating when loved ones don't understand the internet's wonderful freedom and don't think critically about what they're reading. WNB News was created to be "satirical news for the masses". Create your own "Fake News" and teach people that they can't trust everything they read online.

How does spreading more disinformation help?

It sounds counterintuitive, but it's actually a form of conditioning. Consider the world leaders who shared Onion News stories. They had to retract their statements (or issue a formal apology) and likely think twice before they share an article they found online in the future.

Each post from WNB news contains a message about how they've been fooled. It encourages more thoughtful sharing in the future.

Competition for other fake news

Beyond satirical posts, there are people actively spreading disinformation to push their agenda. Along with sharing, they rely heavily on SEO (search engine optimization). What that means is they purposely optimize their headlines, keywords, and posts to show up on top when you're looking for something. The issue is, fake news competes on phrases and words that credible news sources don't regularly compete against. As a result, disinformation has your undivided attention and can steer people anyway they want.

We've perfectly optimized every meta tag, keyword, title, etc. to be highly readable by search engines. You can help push down fake articles by creating similar ones that show up when people are searching for things.

Example: Someone posts something saying "The Sky is now Green". Now clearly that's some nonsense! It's blue you say! Well, if you type into Google "The Sky is", the fake news source might show up and convince someone that it's green. With WNB, you can make a identical post and show up in the same search, thus helping to convince people that other articles they see might be fake once they read the message.