People have always enjoyed playing trick on others. Heck, we even have a day dedicated to it (April Fools’). With the advent of the internet, it has made it much easier to pull pranks and hoaxes on a much wider scale. Here we take a brief look at the history of internet hoaxes.
Supposedly, the first internet hoax happened back in 1988. An email was sent far and wide with the subject line stating that a ‘Really, Nasty Virus’ was on the way. This started a whole wave of ‘chain letters’ i.e. hoaxes sent by email.
Another notable example would be Bill Gates and his alleged $1000 dollar giveaway. This is a hoax that has seen many iterations of the years, with a similar idea still being shared around on Facebook.
Then, as technology progressed, doctored photographs and images would often be published online complimenting fake news stories.
Today, fake news stories have become a common occurrence making it increasingly difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. This is what Web of Lies aims to discuss.