Too many people believe fake news on the internet. What’s worse, they share it with gullible souls on Facebook, Google and other social media, badly blurring the picture of what’s true and what’s not. 

Without enough public regard for facts, deliberate fabrication takes on a life of its own that can outweigh real news. Spinning false tales has grown into a pernicious practice as evidenced by the campaign for president. 

Both the winner of the election, Donald Trump, and the loser, Hillary Clinton, were duped. The suckers were voters who didn’t care or take the time to determine the veracity of falsehoods masquerading as truth. 

Zealots for the candidates and jokesters reveled in roiling the campaign with cyber fiction such as:

• Pope Francis endorsed Trump for president, an untruth aimed at attracting Roman Catholic voters. 
• Clinton called for civil war if  Trump were elected president, an item marked “Code Red” after she referenced  President Abraham Lincoln saying , “a house divided against itself cannot stand . . . “
• A postal worker in Ohio destroyed countless absentee ballots cast for Trump, an absurd tweet that found an audience on a conservative blogger’s site and Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio show.
• Donald Trump snorted cocaine or some other substance before the presidential debates, causing him to frequently sniffle while answering questions. 
• Fox News fired popular host Megyn Kelly because she endorsed Clinton. Kelly endorsed no one and Fox has been trying to retain her with an offer of $20 million. 

Fictitious stories are often captioned with what appears to be a newsy or sensational headline, causing susceptible surfers to click through to the made-up information. Several websites boast of fake news under the cover of satire. Naïve visitors easily miss the difference and spread bad stories because they want to believe them.

Instant internet distribution – with its jungle of special interest and citizen bloggers, aggregators, pundits, provocateurs and promoters — has opened Pandora’s box of fakery. Facebook and Google, the biggest internet companies, are both enablers and victims. They’re an open door for fake as well as authentic news purveyors, posting targeted ads to popular content. The social networks get a cut of the ad revenue based on click-through volume.

The audience reach of Facebook and Google is astounding. Facebook claims more than 1.2 billion people log on daily; Google says it processes 3.5 billion search inquiries per day. Their software algorithms instantly disburse and promote news, with the most popular stories going viral to the world. They try to block fake news sites and false stories when they can detect them through automation and some human vetting. 

Still, a lot of garbage gets through. Facebook has been accused of contributing to the defeat of Hillary Clinton by unwittingly disseminating an abundance of fake news stories and rumors about her. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, disputes the assumption that hoax stories tilted the election. In a recent posting to Facebook he stated more than 99 percent of the social network’s content is authentic.

Yet an analysis by the online news site BuzzFeed News found fake election stories generated significantly more audience engagement on Facebook than true news stories in the final three months of the campaign.

The review found 20 top-performing phony stories on Facebook generated 8.7 million shares, reactions and comments compared with 7.3 million for 20 legitimate stories from major news outlets. The most popular false reports claimed Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and that the pope had endorsed Trump. 

The prevalence of fake news on social networks caused a journalism professor in Massachusetts to compile a list of “false, misleading, clickbait-y, and/or satirical ‘news’ sources” to share with her students. She posted the Google document to her personal Facebook page for close friends, and from there it went viral, resulting in a king tide of blowback from fans and publishers of the sources. 

“I didn’t want this to snowball in a way that it becomes counterproductive,” Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor at Merrimack College, told the Boston Globe. “This is not a solution. It’s an educational tool run amok.”

So what is the solution?

Facebook and Google say they’re researching additional ways to curtail fake news on their sites, but acknowledge it is impossible in a free speech society to completely eliminate the problem. They have put in place a policy declining to place ads on their sites for bad content contributors, an action that may put some of them out of business.

An alert public can also help by notifying social networks when they suspect fake news. That will appeal to media smart people but likely won’t register with individuals who are wont to believe anything that fortifies their personal predilections.

The line between legitimate news and fake news is not all that hard to discern. Made-up news often lacks credible source attribution, believable details and fairness. Shocking headlines are also a tip-off. 

There’s also a news literacy rule that helps sort truth from fiction: if a story is too improbable to be true, check it out. Odds are it is false.

Bill Ketter is senior vice president of news for Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., which publishes newspapers, specialty publications and websites in 23 states.