In the past few days, there have been numerous, yet unconfirmed reports regarding followers of Nas Daily plunging from 38 million to 20 million between the past nine or ten days. Though we’ve searched day and night to corroborate such reports, we have yet to find an official report on the matter. Despite the tug of war on social platforms on this matter, one factor about this ordeal seems to be circulating like wildfire. The rumors state that Nas Daily’s followers have allegedly been spiraling down due to the travel vlogger posting a status on Facebook, where he regarded the Palestinian occupation as a “conflict”.
After Nas Daily posted his controversial status on Facebook, Technologistan published an article, and stated that “people from all over the world who used to appreciate his charming one-minute videos do not agree with his stance on the notion. Therefore, after his recent statement of describing the torment as a conflict, he has suffered a tremendous loss of his followers”. Regarding the source of where this rumor originated from, we have yet to discover it, if ever. In addition to the viral rumor, Nas Daily responded on an Instagram story where he posted the same picture above and said “beware of fake news”, adding links to his pages where it showed his followers’ numbers for each of his platforms.
Meanwhile, comments to Nas’s post have been non-stop, and include a mix between those who support his stance, those who claim he is working with the Israeli government, to those who tell him to be cautious in the vocabulary he uses when discussing the Israeli occupation of Palestine. One social media user wrote “I wasn’t expecting this much biasness from you Nas. You have disappointed us to the greatest limits. This isn’t a conflict. Can’t you see the brutality happening? How can you be so blind eyed to something so obvious? When you tell people’s stories to the whole world, your storytelling and truthfulness had failed here to tell the truth. It would have been better if you had not posted anything than to post this,” said one user named Zainab.
When it comes to fake news, which there is an abundance of, make sure to apply the following steps to ensure its validity:
- Develop a critical mindset. Much fake news is also written to create “shock value”, that is, a strong instinctive reaction such as fear or anger.
- Check the source. If you come across a story from a source that you’ve never heard of before, do some digging!
- See who else is reporting the story. What are they saying about it, if anything?
- Examine the evidence. A credible news story will include plenty of facts – quotes from experts, survey data and official statistics, or detailed, consistent and corroborated eye-witness accounts from people on the scene, for example.
- Don’t take images at face value. Enough said.
- Check that it sounds right. Bear in mind that fake news is designed to “feed” your biases, hopes or fears.