Some media reported that there might be a kind of “Pokémon GO Hogwarts” with Harry Potter GO. They fell for a hoax.
It sounded too good to be true: After the success of Pokémon GO, they are doing something with Harry Potter! This was reported on some gaming websites, and even large German online magazines jumped on the trend and published the story over the weekend.
“Sounds credible!”
At first glance, it all looks good: In an interview with IGN, “Senior Developer” Marcus Figueroa allegedly confirmed this.
That was enough for about two of the largest German online magazines in the gaming and hardware sectors to bring the story over the weekend. It may have helped that it all looked like it would generate a lot of traffic.
The awakening came quickly: The link to the alleged IGN interview led to nowhere. No one had heard of Marcus Figueroa. And the site where the news initially appeared also featured intriguing headlines like “Waitress attacked by Muslims for serving bacon during Ramadan” or “These are the sexual practices of people who support Hillary Clinton.”
The Harry Potter GO story originally comes from a fake news site
Initially, the news probably appeared on the site “JTXH News.”
This is a so-called fake news site that places no value on credibility but simply publishes stories with headlines that guarantee clicks and thus revenue. There are entire “fake networks” that quote each other to appear more credible. In the gaming sector, they prefer to publish news like “These are the next free games on PSPlus” or “Skyrim sequel Elder Scrolls 6 announced.”
The idea for “Harry Potter GO” was likely taken by the fake news site from an online petition where fans demanded such a Harry Potter GO.
Due to the lack of willingness in online journalism to cite sources, it happens that such reports, which are normally recognizable as nonsense at first glance due to their context, slip through. They spread like a snowball system and through the telephone game principle, without anyone bothering to check the links.
Thus, in the reports of the supposedly “established sites,” there are no references to the origin of the news at “JTXH News,” but only IGN is mentioned.
Among the large German sites that had the news over the weekend, one has already managed to issue an apology. In another, the news still stands as it was published.
