Social media content that is designed to get likes and shares (engagement), often using deceptive methods such as sharing false claims and fake or out-of-context images. The people behind social media accounts that publish engagement bait often seek to attract a large number of followers so that they can then profit from them in some way, either by selling and placing ads in their feed or by selling the entire account to a third party to use as they wish.

Misinformation that is entirely made up and is designed to deceive you into thinking that it’s real.

Information that is misleading, erroneous or false. While misinformation is sometimes created and shared intentionally, it is often created unintentionally or as humor (for example, satire) and later mistaken as a serious claim by others.

Misinformation that takes an image, quote or other piece of content and puts it into a new, false context to change its meaning.

Misinformation that falsely uses a well-known name, brand or logo to fool people into believing that it is authentic content.

Misinformation in which something is altered from the original, such as images that have had content added or removed using photo editing tools.

A piece of information that uses humor or exaggeration to critique or mock a person, organization or policy.

Social media accounts that are either fully or partially automated, meaning that they are controlled by a computer program, rather than a human. Bots are programmed to do a variety of things, such as post messages on a schedule, automatically reshare posts from or reply to specific accounts, or automatically reply to posts with specific keywords. They can be used to promote brands, distort conversations, amplify specific viewpoints and antagonize others.