Communications Major

Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday locked the accounts of President Trump, which prevents him from posting messages to his more than 88 million followers on Twitter and 35 million followers on Facebook, after he published a string of inaccurate and inflammatory messages on a day of violence in the nation’s capital.

The moves were an unprecedented rebuke of Mr. Trump by the social media companies, which have long been megaphones for the president.

President Trump turned his morning tweetstorm about the travel ban into a Facebook video and the result was ... not good. It seems you can now create a "video" from tweets and old campaign photos. Who needs PowerPoint!?

Inside the alternate reality of the president’s Twitter account, where he absorbs and amplifies a noxious stream of disinformation.

The term "troll" is now widely used to mean "a nasty person on the Internet," but it's worth keeping in mind its more specific, original meaning: someone who seeks to provoke outrage for their own amusement. This is, often as not, done through weaponizing insincerity: pretending to be something they're not, or to care about an issue in order to upset those who do. A classic example would be someone posting steak recipes on a vegan message board. His personal views on veganism are irrelevant – all that matters is his desire to upset the people on that particular forum and the pleasure he derives from it.

Fake news is actually really easy to spot -- if you know how. Consider this your New Media Literacy Guide.