Fake news: Is every fake news bad?

Y Nguyen
3 min readMar 15, 2021

An inquiry into how to protect shorebirds populations from New Zealand predators, in 2016, was answered according to the source in the article the conservation, five weeks before the seabirds came the breeding season, that researchers mix the scent with vaseline and smear the mixture on hundreds of rocks on two study sites. They did this every three days for three months (The Conservation article). At first glance, this research looks like it would affect the environment. However, after reading it carefully and looking more closely, it has been confirmed and clearly explained that this is just one way to easily smell the bird’s nest so that it can distract the predators. Also known as creating fake news to be able to maintain the number of shorebirds.

the attack from a predator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOy-bdhSBg

A google search by “Scientists used‘ fake news’ to protect animal ”has led to as many sources of truth about the study as Forbes. Almost all of these sites label this claim as true. According to Forbes, this is one of the “potential non-lethal methods for protecting native wild birds from being killed by feral and free-roaming cats and other discarded predatory pets.” It shows that these experiments are harmless to humans but may also protect the numbers of shorebirds. According to another source from The University of Sydney with similar research content: “Compared with sites where the ‘fake news’ has been deployed, odor treatments resulted in a 1.7-fold increase in chick production over 25–35 days — and doubled or tripled the odds of successful hatching. This suggests that this study has been successfully applied in creating fake news that can protect Shorebirds from predator attacks.

Another search for “New Zealand’s precious shorebirds” has yielded various sources of shorebirds’ health. “Shorebirds under threat,” said New Zealand Geographic. According to some sources from this article, it was said “with the arrival of humans to areas used as breeding sites by shorebirds, the threat profile to these species has been drastically altered and increased.” It shows that the danger from humans is gradually threatening the development of many species of animals and here on shorebirds. Another statement comes from the article “many eggs of ground-dwelling birds, including those of many of the smaller shorebirds, are eaten almost as soon as they are laid.” This shows us that the eggs of seabirds are attacked at birth. This seriously affects the number of specific problems. And Shorebirds is one of those seabirds on the brink of extinction. So implementing fake news for distracting predators is one of the right decisions and it will probably restore shorebirds populations.

Creating fake news is incorrect without enough research on them, but not all fake news is bad. As an example, researchers created fake news for predators to protect populations of Shorebirds that are on the verge of extinction by human influences and predator attacks. In recent years, fake news has always been one of the issues that we all care about, even the government. But with a growing legal world today, we cannot stop the freedom of speech, and it also means that we have the right to talk about certain news without knowing if it is fake news or real. Although the government has intervened, will it stop or create useful fake news for life?

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