“The reason we have to take it seriously is because social networks, which we depend on for our traffic, have relied upon fact-checking sources in the past to determine what’s fake news and what isn’t,” Seth Dillon, the Bee’s chief executive, said in an interview on Thursday with Shannon Bream of Fox News.

“In cases where they’re calling us fake news and lumping us in with them rather than saying this is satire, that could actually damage us,” he added. “It could put our business in jeopardy.”

Indeed, the line between misinformation and satire can be thin, and real consequences can result when it is crossed. On social media, parody can be misconstrued or misrepresented as it moves further and further from its source. And humor has been weaponized to help spread falsehoods online.

About two weeks ago, the Bee published an article that it thought was clearly satire. The piece, headlined “Georgia Lawmaker Claims Chick-Fil-A Employee Told Her To Go Back To Her Country, Later Clarifies He Actually Said ‘My Pleasure’,” was a parody of a real controversy involving a claim of racism, a counterclaim and a fair amount of outrage.

Soon after, Snopes, which investigates assertions based on their popularity or after requests from readers, published a fact check of that article that called its intent into question.