ATHENS – In an age when newspapers – on paper – are going the way of the dodo bird, most Greeks, like most people around the word, get their alleged news on social media where conspiracy theories and fake news abounds.

Some 77 percent of Greeks shun professional news organizations, preferring to get what they think is news on sites on social media which are usually unfiltered and often put up partisan pieces that range from harmless to near dangerous.

Those include places like Facebook and the Chinese site TikTok that critics and some government said is a ruse by the Chinese government to track followers and mine personal information from them.

France, The Netherlands and Norway ban the use of TikTok on government phones amid growing fears it’s a spy tool by China. It’s a social media app that allows users to create, watch, and share 15-second videos shot on mobile devices or webcams.

Nikos Panagiotou, an Alternate Professor of International Journalism at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, told the Association of Balkan News Agencies-Southeastern Europe (ABNA-SE) Conference  about the trend to social media and said real media sites have a distinct advantage in being objective, even if unused.