made up, false stories are on time lines and twitter streams. this cesspool of nonsense. it s horrible. reporter: and getting worse. president obama is raising the alarm. if we are not serious about facts and what s true and what s not, then we have problems. reporter: these problems are not brand-new. they are becoming a lot more prevalent. here is an example. a story claiming a protester was paid $3500 to make trouble at a trump rally. this went viral during the campaign. it looked like an abc news story. the url reveals it s a fake registered to a domain in columbia. it was a hoax, which tricked trump s campaign manager and his son, eric, who shared it on twitter. we have an epidemic of false information racing around using social networks as the excel ray tor. reporter: the pope endorsing