Who/what is the propery authority on reality?

It certainly isn't government sources, and it's not traditional news sources, and big technology isn't a good choice either.

Snopes used to be a pretty good place to link to dispute clearly bullshit stuff that idiots would forward around the internet as if it had any chance of being true, but at some point there was just too much of that. And they also seemed to expand their scope into things that were more nuanced and easier to get wrong.