GREENSBORO, N.C. — The fake post looks like a real news article with the headline: "Breaking Governor Cooper orders N.C. students to repeat current grade, beginning 2020-2021." This is a prank, but lots of people bought in online. People like one student who got fired up writing: "Roy cooper are you serious about us repeating our grades like what would be the point" And one woman even shared the post saying: "vote him out of office."
Here's how we know this post is fake. The same verification system is something you could do with anything you see on the internet.
First we Googled the headline to see if any legit news outlets had the same story. Nope.
Then we used Tin Eye reverse image search to see where the picture of Governor Cooper really came from. That took us to a sight called Prank Mania where people can create fake news stories to prank others, so it's clearly not true.
There is another easy way to make sure you can always get the real story. Sign up for the WFMY News 2 app and turn your notifications on. If news that big ever breaks for real, we'll send an alert right to your phone.