Factoid

In thinking about Fake news, the word arrived in my consciousness through a merger of Fact and Plantoid. For me it represented the weaponisation of Memes for political purposes.

Researching the origin and existing use of the term I discovered that the term factoid, in common usage, can mean either a false or spurious statement presented as a fact, as well as a true, if brief or trivial, item of news or information.

The term was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it is not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print.

Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning and has assumed other meanings, particularly being used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information - wikipedia

As a result of confusion over the meaning of factoid, some English-language style and usage guides recommend against its use.

William Safire in his "On Language" column advocated the use of the word 'factlet' instead of factoid to express a brief interesting fact as well as a "little bit of arcana", but did not explain how adopting this new term would alleviate the ongoing confusion over the existing contradictory common use meanings of ''factoid''.