Social media can be an excellent tool, a platform for people to share opinions and create intelligent debate.
But it can also be an awful place to be, with wild, inaccurate rumours and general unpleasantness
And it is the latter we are going to focus on when it comes to something that has reared its head in terms of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
For football journalists, social media has become an increasingly-important device, but caution is urged when dealing with tweets, Facebook posts and items dressed up as fact.
With Jose Mourinho appointed as the Tottenham head coach this week, replacing Mauricio Pochettino at the helm, there has been plenty of discussion about the former Chelsea and Manchester United boss.
What Mourinho has said about the club and players in the past are good sources of information for new stories, as can tweets from the past be.
One such 'tweet' started doing the rounds on Twitter.
It purported to be one that Spurs midfielder Dele Alli posted in 2012 and it said: "Surely I can't be the only one who thinks Mourinho is overrated and too cocky...it just makes you look like a bad manager, I'm glad I'll never have to work with him."
However, the tweet is a fake.
And we can explain exactly why.
There are two facts that prove the tweet is fake.
The first is that Twitter had a 140-character limit on all posts until 2017. This post, supposedly from 2012 has 164 characters. How did Alli get around that fact? He didn't.
The second is that the tweet comes from Twitter handle @dele_official. The Spurs man did not have that Twitter handle back in 2012. At that time he was using @Dele_Alli36.
So there we have it. Don't be taken in by everything you read on social media. And what's more, the pair seemed to be happy in one another's company on the training ground yesterday!
