Fake news websites (also referred to as hoax news websites) are
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
s on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
that deliberately publish
fake news
Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information (misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and hoaxes) claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person ...
—
hoaxes
A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible.
S ...
,
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
, and
disinformation
Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...
purporting to be
real news—often using
social media
Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...
to drive
web traffic
Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...
and amplify their effect.
Unlike
news satire
News satire or news comedy is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on t ...
, these websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain.
Fake news websites monetize their content by exploiting the vulnerabilities of programmatic ad trading, which is a type of
online advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
in which ads are traded through
machine-to-machine auction in a
real-time bidding system.
Fake news websites have promoted political falsehoods in India, Germany,
Indonesia and the Philippines,
Sweden, Mexico,
Myanmar,
and the United States.
Many sites originate in, or are promoted by, Russia,
or North Macedonia among others.
Some media analysts have seen them as a threat to democracy.
In 2016, the European Parliament's
Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning that the
Russian government
The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental body of the Russian Federation. It is accountable to the president of the Russian Federation and controlled by ...
was using "pseudo-news agencies" and
Internet troll
In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or who performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and ...
s as disinformation propaganda to weaken confidence in democratic values.
In 2015, the
Swedish Security Service
The Swedish Security Service ( , SÄPO , , formerly , RPS/Säk, until 1989) is a Sweden, Swedish Government agencies in Sweden, government agency organized under the Ministry of Justice (Sweden), Ministry of Justice. It operates as a security ...
, Sweden's national security agency, issued a report concluding Russia was using fake news to inflame "splits in society" through the proliferation of propaganda.
Sweden's
Ministry of Defence
A ministry of defence or defense (see American and British English spelling differences#-ce.2C -se, spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and Mi ...
tasked its
Civil Contingencies Agency with combating fake news from Russia.
Fraudulent news affected politics in Indonesia and the Philippines, where there was simultaneously widespread usage of social media and limited resources to check the veracity of political claims.
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
warned of the societal impact of "fake sites, bots, trolls".
Fraudulent articles spread through social media during the
2016 U.S. presidential election,
[ and several officials within the U.S. Intelligence Community said that Russia was engaged in spreading fake news.] Computer security
Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...
company FireEye
Trellix (formerly FireEye and McAfee Enterprise) is a privately held cybersecurity company that was founded in 2022. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and ana ...
concluded that Russia used social media to spread fake news stories as part of a cyberwarfare
Cyberwarfare is the use of cyberattack, cyber attacks against an enemy State (polity), state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, ...
campaign. Google and Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
banned fake sites from using online advertising
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...
. Facebook launched a partnership with fact-checking websites
This list of fact-checking websites includes websites that provide fact-checking services about both political and non-political subjects.
Certifications for fact-checking sites
Whether a fact-checking site is in a network like the Internatio ...
to flag fraudulent news and hoaxes; debunking organizations that joined the initiative included: Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
. U.S. President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
said a disregard for facts created a "dust cloud of nonsense". Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service serves as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also commonly known as MI6), which is part of the United Kingdom intelligence community. The chief is appointed by the Secretary of State fo ...
(MI6) Alex Younger called fake news propaganda online dangerous for democratic nations.
Definition
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' has defined "fake news" on the internet as fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive readers, generally with the goal of profiting through clickbait
Clickbait (also known as link bait or linkbait) is a text or a thumbnail hyperlink, link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow ("click") that link and view, read, stream or listen to the linked piece of online cont ...
. PolitiFact
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
has described fake news as fabricated content designed to fool readers and subsequently made viral through the Internet to crowds that increase its dissemination. Others have taken as constitutive the "systemic features inherent in the design of the sources and channels through which fake news proliferates", for example by playing to the audience's cognitive biases, heuristics, and partisan affiliation. Some fake news websites use website spoofing
Website spoofing is the act of creating a website with the intention of misleading readers that the website has been created by a different person or organization.
Techniques
Normally, the spoof website will adopt the design of the target websit ...
, structured to make visitors believe they are visiting mainstream media
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large Mass media, mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.Noam Chomsky, Choms ...
sources like ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to:
* ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
* ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company
ABC News may a ...
or MSNBC
MSNBC is an American cable news channel owned by the NBCUniversal News Group division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. Launched on July 15, 1996, and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the channel primarily broadcasts r ...
.
Fake news maintained a presence on the internet and in tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalist journalism, which takes its name from the tabloid newspaper format: a small-sized newspaper also known as a half broadsheet. The size became associated with sensationalism, an ...
in the years prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Before the election campaign involving Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
and Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
, fake news had not impacted the election process and subsequent events to such a high degree. Subsequent to the 2016 election, the issue of fake news turned into a political weapon, with supporters of left-wing politics
Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...
saying that supporters of right-wing politics
Right-wing politics is the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position b ...
spread false news, while the latter claimed that they were being "censored". Due to these back-and-forth complaints, the definition of fake news as used for such polemics has become more vague.
Pre-Internet history
Unethical journalistic practices existed in printed media for hundreds of years before the advent of the Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
. Yellow journalism
In journalism, yellow journalism and the yellow press are American newspapers that use eye-catching headlines and sensationalized exaggerations for increased sales. This term is chiefly used in American English, whereas in the United Kingdom, ...
, reporting from a standard which is devoid of integrity and professional ethics, was pervasive during the time period in history known as the Gilded Age
In History of the United States, United States history, the Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mar ...
, and unethical journalists would engage in fraud
In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...
by fabricating stories, interviews, and made-up names for scholars. During the 1890s, the spread of this unethical news sparked violence and conflicts. Both Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer ( ; born , ; April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was a Hungarian-American politician and a newspaper publisher of the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' and the ''New York World''. He became a leading national figure in the U.S. Democ ...
and William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who developed the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His extravagant methods of yellow jou ...
fomented yellow journalism in order to increase profits, which helped lead to misunderstandings which became partially responsible for the outset of the Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the ...
in 1898. J.B. Montgomery-M'Govern wrote a column harshly critical of "fake news" in 1898, saying that what characterized "fake news" was sensationalism and "the publication of articles absolutely false, which tend to mislead an ignorant or unsuspecting public."
A radio broadcast from Gleiwitz by German soldier Karl Hornack, pretending to be a Polish invader who had captured the station, was taken at face value by other stations, in Germany and abroad, fueling Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
's declaration of war on Poland the next day.
According to ''USA Today
''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
'', newspapers which have a history of commonly publishing fake news have included ''Globe
A globe is a spherical Earth, spherical Model#Physical model, model of Earth, of some other astronomical object, celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface ...
'', '' Weekly World News'', and ''The National Enquirer
The ''National Enquirer'' is an American tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1926, the newspaper has undergone a number of changes over the years. The ''National Enquirer'' openly acknowledges that it pays sources for tips ( checkbook journalism), a ...
''.
Characteristics
Common characteristics of fake news websites, as noted by many fact-checkers and journalists, are sorted into several categories:
# Source credibility
#* Impostor sites that appear to be legitimate news sites, newspapers, television stations or radio stations, often using spoofed URLs, typosquatting or otherwise imitating the layout and graphics of established news sites.
#* Impersonating defunct news sources.
#* A disclaimer stating that its content is fictitious (especially on satire sites), or alternatively, no disclaimer at all.
#* Little to no contact information.
#* Little to no information about the source's "mission, staff members or physical location".
#* A site name that has been changed after being repeatedly corrected by fact-checking organizations.
#* "A state-controlled site, a private blog or ... a site containing satirical content".
#* No disclosure of editorial responsibility.
#* No "legal notice for any commercial offer".
#* Obscure or private website registration, such as using a proxy service to purchase the domain.
#* Fabricated or incoherent domain registration metadata.
#* Established in a news desert
A news desert is a community that is no longer covered by daily or nondaily newspapers. The term emerged in the Newspapers in the United States, United States after hundreds of Decline of newspapers, daily and weekly newspapers were closed in th ...
or otherwise has low local news coverage due to mass layoffs of journalists.
#* The site includes both true and false content.
# Article headlines
#* Clickbait headlines, with further signs of content with questionable veracity in the article text itself.
# Article bylines
#* Fictitious author.
#* Recycled photo in a different website by a different author.
#* No byline at all.
#* The author may have a reputation for spreading false information.
#* A real claimed author, but who typically writes about a different topic than in the given article.
#* Hidden byline.
# Article citations
#* The article cites sources that do not support the claim(s) made. For example, "quotes are abbreviated or taken out of context".
#* The article cites sources that are fictitious.
#* The article fabricates quotes.
#* The article makes a claim that is not covered in credible sources.
#* The article contains false or out-of-context statistics.
#* The article is a repost of a story from another site (typically a satire/parody or impostor site), "with or without attribution" and often "omitting indications the tory ismade up".
#* The article contains out-of-context images.
#* The article contains fabricated images.
#* The article cites unreliable or questionable sources.
#* The article copies content from established news outlets without proper attribution.
#* Use of large language models
A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...
to generate content, sometimes evidenced by the inclusion of text prompts, LLM output phrases and/or hallucinations
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the compelling sense of reality. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming ( REM sleep), which does not involve wakefulness; pse ...
in the articles themselves.
# Datetimes
#* Taking a true news story out of context, for example, by reposting a story about an older event and claiming that it is directly related to an event happening currently.
#* Reposting a story from a credible source with a different header and publication date.
# Psychological biases
#* Stories are written to fit a target audience's confirmation biases.
#* Stories contain content that appeals to emotions or is meant to stimulate psychological triggers, including anger and even violence.
# Story syntax
#* The story contains misspellings or "sensational wording".
#* Use of article spinning.
# Claim credibility
#* The story contains incoherent or unrealistic claims or images.
#* Lack of evidence to support given claim(s).
#* Presence of scams.
# Website layout
#* A "dubious" or "unprofessional-looking" layout.
#* "Excessive advertising", especially from services such as Content.ad, RevContent.com, or AdStyle.
#* Website logo created by text-to-image model
A text-to-image model is a machine learning model which takes an input natural language prompt and produces an image matching that description.
Text-to-image models began to be developed in the mid-2010s during the beginnings of the AI boom ...
.
#* Presence of malware (including scripts for cryptocurrency mining).
# Funding
#* "Content spaid for by a company or politician or other potentially biased source".
#* Incomplete or obscured disclaimer on funding or sponsorship.
Fake news website network identification
Many fake news websites can be assessed as likely being part of the same network campaign if some combination of the following are true:
* They share the same Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also mobile app traffic and events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in N ...
account
* They share the same Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Display Network, Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted advertising, targeted t ...
account
* They share the same IP address(es)
* They share the same Gravatar ID
* They share the same New Relic ID
* They share the same Quantcast
Quantcast is an American technology company, founded in 2006, that specializes in AI-driven real-time advertising, audience insights and measurement. It has offices in the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Ireland, Fran ...
ID
* They share the same Matomo ID Tracker
* Link spam: They refer to each other's domains
* They publish the exact or near-exact same content, especially content that has been plagiarized from other sources
* They have the same or similar designs (layouts, bylines, privacy policies, "About" pages, etc.)
* They have the same owner(s) or hosting provider, based on domain registration information
* They use a technique called "domain hopping" - repeatedly switching domain names to stay ahead of advertising blacklists on social media.
Prominent sources
Prominent among fraudulent news sites include false propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
created by individuals in the countries of Russia, North Macedonia
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
, Romania, and the United States.
North Macedonia
Much of the fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential election season was traced to adolescents in North Macedonia
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
, specifically Veles. It is a town of 50,000 in the middle of the country, with high unemployment, where the average wage is $4,800. The income from fake news was characterized by ''NBC News'' as a gold rush
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...
. Adults supported this income, saying they were happy the youths were working. The mayor of Veles, Slavcho Chadiev, said he was not bothered by their actions, as they were not against Macedonian law and their finances were taxable. Chadiev said he was happy if deception from Veles influenced the results of the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Trump.
''BuzzFeed News
''BuzzFeed News'' was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strong ...
'' and ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' separately investigated and found teenagers in Veles created over 100 sites spreading fake news stories supportive of Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
. The teenagers experimented with left slanted fake stories about Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician and activist who is the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from the state of Vermont. He is the longest-serving independ ...
, but found that pro-Trump fictions were more popular. Prior to the 2016 election the teenagers gained revenues from fake medical advice sites. One youth named Alex stated, in an August 2016 interview with ''The Guardian'', that this fraud would remain profitable regardless of who won the election. Alex explained he plagiarized material for articles by copying and pasting from other websites. This could net them thousands of dollars daily, but they averaged only a few thousand per month.
The Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City.
Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
(AP) interviewed an 18-year-old in Veles about his tactics. A Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also mobile app traffic and events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in N ...
analysis of his traffic showed more than 650,000 views in one week. He plagiarized pro-Trump stories from a right-wing
Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...
site called ''The Political Insider''. He said he did not care about politics, and published fake news to gain money and experience. The AP used DomainTools to confirm the teenager was behind fake sites, and determined there were about 200 websites tracked to Veles focused on U.S. news, many of which mostly contained plagiarized legitimate news to create an appearance of credibility.
''NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...
'' also interviewed an 18-year-old there. Dmitri (a pseudonym) was one of the most profitable fake news operators in town, and said about 300 people in Veles wrote for fake sites. Dmitri said he gained over $60,000 during the six months prior through doing this, more than both his parents' earnings. Dmitri said his main dupes were supporters of Trump. He said after the 2016 U.S. election he continued to earn significant amounts. There is no indication that the Macedonian Fake News ring was particularly effective during the U.S. 2020 presidential election.
Romania
"Ending the Fed", a popular purveyor of fraudulent reports, was run by a 24-year-old named Ovidiu Drobota out of Oradea
Oradea (, , ; ; ) is a city in Romania, located in the Crișana region. It serves as the administrative county seat, seat of Bihor County and an economic, social, and cultural hub in northwestern Romania. The city lies between rolling hills on ...
, Romania, who boasted to '' Inc. magazine'' about being more popular than mainstream media
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large Mass media, mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.Noam Chomsky, Choms ...
. Established in March 2016, "Ending the Fed" was responsible for a false story in August 2016 that incorrectly stated Fox News
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
had fired journalist Megyn Kelly
Megyn Marie Kelly (; born November 18, 1970) is an American journalist, attorney, political commentator, and media personality. She currently hosts ''The Megyn Kelly Show'', a talk show and podcast that airs daily on Sirius XM's Triumph channe ...
—the story was briefly prominent on Facebook on its "Trending News" section. "Ending the Fed" held four out of the 10 most popular fake articles on Facebook related to the 2016 U.S. election in the prior three months before the election itself. The Facebook page for the website, called "End the Feed", had 350,000 "likes" in November 2016. After being contacted by ''Inc. magazine'', Drobota stated he was proud of the impact he had on the 2016 U.S. election in favor of his preferred candidate Donald Trump. According to Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other info ...
, "Ending the Fed" garnered approximately 3.4 million views over a 30-day-period in November 2016. Drobota stated the majority of incoming traffic is from Facebook. He said his normal line of work before starting "Ending the Fed" included web development
Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web applications, ...
and search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as ...
.
Russia
Internet Research Agency
Beginning in fall 2014, ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' writer Adrian Chen performed a six-month investigation into Russian propaganda dissemination online by the Internet Research Agency
The Internet Research Agency (IRA; ; 2013-2023), also known as ''Glavset'' (, ), and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino () or Kremlinbots (), was a Russian company which was engaged in online propaganda and influence ...
(IRA). Yevgeny Prigozhin
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group, a private military company, and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a ...
(Evgeny Prigozhin), a close associate of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
, was behind the operation which hired hundreds of individuals to work in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
. The organization became regarded as a " troll farm", a term used to refer to propaganda efforts controlling many accounts online with the aim of artificially providing a semblance of a grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from volunteers at the local level to imp ...
organization. Chen reported that Internet trolling was used by the Russian government as a tactic largely after observing the social media organization of the 2011 protests against Putin.
European Union response
In 2015, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization comprising member states in Europe, North America, and Asia. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, the p ...
released an analysis critical of disinformation campaigns by Russia masked as news. This was intended to interfere with Ukraine relations with Europe after the removal of former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych
Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (born 9 July 1950) is a Ukrainian politician who served as the fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. He also served as the prime minister of Ukraine several times between 2002 and 2007 and was a member of t ...
. According to ''Deutsche Welle
(; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...
'', similar tactics were used in the 2016 U.S. elections. The European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
created a taskforce to deal with Russian disinformation. The taskforce, East StratCom Team, had 11 people including Russian speakers. In November 2016, the EU voted to increase the group's funding. In November 2016, the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning of the use by Russia of tools including: "pseudo-news agencies ... social media and internet trolls" as disinformation to weaken democratic values. The resolution requested EU analysts investigate, explaining member nations needed to be wary of disinformation. The resolution condemned Russian sources for publicizing "absolutely fake" news reports. The tally on 23 November 2016 passed by a margin of 304 votes to 179.
United States
The U.S. State Department planned to use a unit called the Counter-Disinformation Team, formed with the intention of combating disinformation
Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...
from the Russian government
The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental body of the Russian Federation. It is accountable to the president of the Russian Federation and controlled by ...
, and that it was disbanded in September 2015 after department heads missed the scope of propaganda before the 2016 U.S. election. The U.S. State Department put eight months into developing the unit before scrapping it. It would have been a reboot of the Active Measures Working Group set up by Reagan Administration
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
. The Counter-Disinformation Team was set up under the Bureau of International Information Programs. Work began in 2014, with the intention to combat propaganda from Russian sources such as the RT network (formerly known as Russia Today). U.S. Intelligence officials explained to former National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
analyst and counterintelligence
Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...
officer John R. Schindler that the Obama Administration
Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nomine ...
decided to cancel the unit as they were afraid of antagonizing Russia. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel was point person for the unit before it was canceled. Stengel previously wrote about disinformation by RT.
Internet trolls shift focus to Trump
Adrian Chen observed a pattern in December 2015 where pro-Russian accounts became supportive of 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. Andrew Weisburd and Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow and senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University
The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...
, Clint Watts, wrote for ''The Daily Beast
''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc.
It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief ...
'' in August 2016 that Russian propaganda fabricated articles were popularized by social media. Weisburd and Watts documented how disinformation spread from Russia Today and Sputnik News, "the two biggest Russian state-controlled media organizations publishing in English", to pro-Russian accounts on Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
. Citing research by Chen, Weisburd and Watts compared Russian tactics during the 2016 U.S. election to Soviet Union Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
strategies. They referenced the 1992 United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a United States government agency devoted to propaganda which operated from 1953 to 1999.
Previously existing United States Information Service (USIS) posts operating out of U.S. embassies wor ...
report to Congress, which warned about Russian propaganda called active measures
Active measures () is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, b ...
. They concluded social media made active measures easier. Institute of International Relations Prague
An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body.
In some countries, institutes ca ...
senior fellow and scholar on Russian intelligence, Mark Galeotti, agreed the Kremlin operations were a form of active measures. The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were not U.S. citizens but paid Russian propagandists. ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' estimated their number to be in the "low thousands" in November 2016.
Weisburd and Watts collaborated with colleague J.M. Berger and published a follow-up to their ''Daily Beast'' article in online magazine ''War on the Rocks'', titled: "Trolling for Trump: How Russia is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy". They researched 7,000 pro-Trump accounts over a -year period. Their research detailed trolling techniques to denigrate critics of Russian activities in Syria, and proliferate lies about Clinton's health. Watts said the propaganda targeted the alt-right
The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right) is a Far-right politics, far-right, White nationalism, white nationalist movement. A largely Internet activism, online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late ...
, the right wing
Right-wing politics is the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that view certain social orders and Social stratification, hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position b ...
, and fascist groups. After each presidential debate, thousands of Twitter bots used hashtag #Trumpwon to change perceptions.
In November 2016 the Foreign Policy Research Institute stated Russian propaganda exacerbated criticism of Clinton and support for Trump. The strategy involved social media, paid Internet troll
In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or who performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and ...
s, botnet
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more Internet bot, bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service attack, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send Spamming, sp ...
s, and websites in order to denigrate Clinton.
U.S. intelligence analysis
Computer security company FireEye
Trellix (formerly FireEye and McAfee Enterprise) is a privately held cybersecurity company that was founded in 2022. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and ana ...
concluded Russia used social media as a weapon to influence the U.S. election. FireEye Chairman David DeWalt said the 2016 operation was a new development in cyberwarfare by Russia. FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia stated Russian cyberwarfare changed after fall 2014, from covert to overt tactics with decreased operational security
Operations security (OPSEC) is a process that identifies critical information to determine whether friendly actions can be observed by enemy intelligence, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to th ...
. Bellingcat analyst Aric Toler explained fact-checking only drew further attention to the fake news problem.
U.S. Intelligence agencies debated why Putin chose summer 2016 to escalate active measures
Active measures () is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, b ...
. Prior to the election, U.S. national security officials said they were anxious about Russia tampering with U.S. news. Director of National Intelligence
The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a Cabinet of the United States#Current Cabinet and Cabinet-rank officials, cabinet-level Federal government of the United States, United States government intelligence and security official. The p ...
James R. Clapper said after the 2011–13 Russian protests, Putin lost self-confidence
Confidence is the feeling of belief or trust that a person or thing is reliable.
*
*
* Self-confidence is trust in oneself. Self-confidence involves a positive belief that one can generally accomplish what one wishes to do in the future. Sel ...
, and responded with the propaganda operation. Former CIA officer Patrick Skinner said the goal was to spread uncertainty. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff
Adam Bennett Schiff (born June 22, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2024. A m ...
commented on Putin's aims, and said U.S. intelligence were concerned with Russian propaganda. Speaking about disinformation that appeared in Hungary, Slovakia
Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...
, the Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
, and Poland, Schiff said there was an increase of the same behavior in the U.S.
U.S. intelligence officials stated in November 2016 they believed Russia engaged in spreading fake news, and the FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
released a statement saying they were investigating. Two U.S. intelligence officials each told ''BuzzFeed News'' they "believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election". The U.S. intelligence sources stated this involved "dissemination of completely fake news stories". They told ''BuzzFeed'' the FBI investigation specifically focused on why "Russia had engaged in spreading false or misleading information".
By country
Fake news has influenced political discourse in multiple countries, including Germany, Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
, Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
, Sweden, China, Myanmar
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
, and the United States.
Austria
Politicians in Austria dealt with the impact of fake news and its spread on social media after the 2016 presidential campaign in the country. In December 2016, a court in Austria issued an injunction on Facebook Europe, mandating it block negative postings related to Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, Austrian Green Party Chairwoman. According to ''The Washington Post'' the postings to Facebook about her "appeared to have been spread via a fake profile" and directed derogatory epithets towards the Austrian politician. The derogatory postings were likely created by the identical fake profile that had previously been utilized to attack Alexander van der Bellen
Alexander "Sascha" Van der Bellen (; born 18 January 1944), also referred to by the abbreviation VdB, is an Austrian politician serving as the president of Austria since 2017. He previously served as a professor of economics at the University ...
, who won the election for President of Austria
The president of Austria () is the head of state of the Austria, Republic of Austria.
The office of the president was established in 1920 by the Constituent National Assembly (Austria), Constituent National Assembly of the First Austrian Repu ...
.
Brazil
Brazil faced increasing influence from fake news after the 2014 re-election of President Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff (; born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the only woman to have held the ...
and Rousseff's subsequent impeachment in August 2016. In the week surrounding one of the impeachment votes, 3 out of the 5 most-shared articles on Facebook in Brazil were fake. In 2015, reporter Tai Nalon resigned from her position at Brazilian newspaper '' Folha de S.Paulo'' in order to start the first fact-checking website in Brazil, called Aos Fatos (To The Facts). Nalon told ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' there was a great deal of fake news, and hesitated to compare the problem to that experienced in the U.S.
Canada
Fake news online was brought to the attention of Canadian politicians in November 2016, as they debated helping assist local newspapers. Member of Parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
for Vancouver Centre Hedy Fry specifically discussed fake news as an example of ways in which publishers on the Internet are less accountable than print media. Discussion in parliament contrasted increase of fake news online with downsizing of Canadian newspapers and the impact for democracy in Canada. Representatives from Facebook Canada attended the meeting and told members of Parliament they felt it was their duty to assist individuals gather data online.
China
Fake news during the 2016 U.S. election spread to China. Articles popularized within the United States were translated into Chinese and spread within China. The government of China
The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. ...
used the growing problem of fake news as a rationale for increasing Internet censorship in China
The People's Republic of China (PRC) internet censorship, censors both the publishing and viewing of online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of ...
in November 2016. China then published an editorial in its Communist Party newspaper '' The Global Times'' called: "Western Media's Crusade Against Facebook", and criticized "unpredictable" political problems posed by freedoms enjoyed by users of Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
, Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, and Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
. China government leaders meeting in Wuzhen
Wuzhen ( zh, s=乌镇, p=Wūzhèn, Wu Chinese, Wu: Whu-tsen lit. "Wu Town") is a historic scenic Town (China), town, part of Tongxiang, located in the north of Zhejiang, Zhejiang Province, China. It was primarily built in the 7th century during th ...
at the third World Internet Conference
The World Internet Conference (WIC; zh, s=世界互联网大会, labels=no), also known as the Wuzhen Summit ( zh, s=乌镇峰会, labels=no), is an annual event, first held in 2014, organized by the government of the People's Republic of China ...
in November 2016 said fake news in the U.S. election justified adding more curbs to free and open use of the Internet. China Deputy Minister Ren Xianliang, official at the Cyberspace Administration of China
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC; ) is the national internet regulator and censor of the People's Republic of China.
The agency was initially established in 2011 by the State Council as the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) ...
, said increasing online participation led to "harmful information" and fraud. Kam Chow Wong, a former Hong Kong
Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
law enforcement official and criminal justice professor at Xavier University
Xavier University ( ) is a private Jesuit university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier had an enrollment of approximately 5,600 undergraduate an ...
, praised attempts in the U.S. to patrol social media. ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' noted China's themes of Internet censorship
Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...
became more relevant at the World Internet Conference due to the outgrowth of fake news.
Finland
Officials from 11 countries held a meeting in Helsinki
Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...
in November 2016, in order to plan the formation of a center to combat disinformation cyber-warfare including spread of fake news on social media. The center is planned to be located in Helsinki and include efforts from 10 countries with participation from Sweden, Germany, Finland, and the U.S. Prime Minister of Finland
The prime minister of Finland (; ) is the leader of the Finnish Government. The prime minister and his or her cabinet exercise executive authority in the state. The prime minister is formally ranked third in the protocol after the president ...
Juha Sipilä planned to deal with the center in spring 2017 with a motion before the Parliament of Finland
The Parliament of Finland ( ; ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral and Parliamentary sovereignty, supreme legislature of Finland, founded on 9 May 1906. In accordance with the Constitution of Finland, sovereignty belongs to the people, and that ...
. Jori Arvonen, Deputy Secretary of State for EU Affairs, said cyberwarfare became an increased problem in 2016, and included hybrid cyber-warfare intrusions into Finland from Russia and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist organization and unrecognized quasi-state. IS occupied signi ...
. Arvonen cited examples including fake news online, disinformation, and the " little green men" of the Russo-Ukrainian War
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...
.
France
France saw an uptick in amounts of disinformation and propaganda, primarily in the midst of election cycles. ''Le Monde
(; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'' fact-checking division "Les décodeurs" was headed by Samuel Laurent, who told ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' in December 2016 the upcoming French presidential election campaign in spring 2017 would face problems from fake news. The country faced controversy regarding fake websites providing false information about abortion
Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
. The government's lower parliamentary body moved forward with intentions to ban such fake sites. Laurence Rossignol, women's minister for France, informed parliament though the fake sites look neutral, in actuality their intentions were specifically targeted to give women fake information. During the 10-year period preceding 2016, France was witness to an increase in popularity of far-right
Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...
alternative news sources called the ''fachosphere'' ("facho" referring to fascist
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
); known as the . According to sociologist Antoine Bevort, citing data from Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. was a web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded as an independent company by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 1996. Alexa provided web traffic data, global rankings, and other info ...
rankings, the most consulted political websites in France included '' Égalité et Réconciliation'', ', and ''Les Moutons Enragés''. These sites increased skepticism towards mainstream media
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large Mass media, mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.Noam Chomsky, Choms ...
from both left and right perspectives.
Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and Leade ...
lamented the problem of fraudulent news reports in a November 2016 speech, days after announcing her campaign for a fourth term as leader of her country. In a speech to the German parliament, Merkel was critical of such fake sites, saying they harmed political discussion. Merkel called attention to the need of government to deal with Internet troll
In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or who performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and ...
s, bots, and fake news websites. She warned that such fraudulent news websites were a force increasing the power of populist
Populism is a contested concept used to refer to a variety of political stances that emphasize the idea of the " common people" and often position this group in opposition to a perceived elite. It is frequently associated with anti-establis ...
extremism. Merkel called fraudulent news a growing phenomenon that might need to be regulated in the future. Germany's foreign intelligence agency Federal Intelligence Service
The Federal Intelligence Service (, ; BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign cou ...
Chief, , warned of the potential for cyberattacks by Russia in the 2017 German election. He said the cyberattacks would take the form of the intentional spread of disinformation. Kahl said the goal is to increase chaos in political debates. Germany's domestic intelligence agency Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ( or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, the fed ...
Chief, Hans-Georg Maassen, said sabotage by Russian intelligence was a present threat to German information security
Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...
.
India
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) is a UK-based research centre and think tank founded in 2006, which operates Thomson Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme, also known as the Reuters Fellowship.
History
The institute ...
, thinks that "the problems of disinformation in a society like India might be more sophisticated and more challenging than they are in the West". The damage caused due to fake news on social media has increased due to the growth of the internet penetration in India, which has risen from 137 million internet users in 2012 to over 600 million in 2019. India is the largest market for WhatsApp
WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...
, with over 230 million users, and as a result one of the main platforms on which fake news is spread. One of the main problems is of receivers believing anything sent to them over social media due to lack of awareness. Various initiatives and practices have been started and adopted to curb the spread and impact of fake news. Fake news is also spread through Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
, WhatsApp
WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...
and Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
.
According to a report by ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', the Indian media research agency CMS stated that the cause of spread of fake news was that India "lacked (a) media policy for verification". Additionally, law enforcement officers have arrested reporters and journalists for "creating fictitious articles", especially when the articles were controversial.
In India, fake news has been spread primarily by the right-wing political outfits. A study published in ''ThePrint
The Print is an Indian online newspaper, owned by Printline Media Pvt Ltd. It was launched by journalist Shekhar Gupta in August 2017.
History
Printline Media Pvt. Ltd, founded by journalist Shekhar Gupta, was incorporated in New Delhi, Ind ...
'' claimed that on Twitter, there were at least 17,000 accounts spreading fake news to favour the BJP, while around 147 accounts were spreading fake news to favour the Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party, or simply the Congress, is a political parties in India, political party in India with deep roots in most regions of India. Founded on 28 December 1885, it was the first mo ...
. Similarly, the IT Cell of the BJP has been accused of spreading fake news against the party's political opponents, religious minorities, and any campaigns against the party. The IT Cells of the BJP, Congress and other political parties have been accused of spreading fake news against the party's political opponents and any campaigns against the party. The RSS mouthpiece Organizer has also been accused of misleading reports.
Prominent fake news-spreading websites and online resources include OpIndia, TFIPost (previously, The Frustrated Indian) and Postcard News.
Indonesia and Philippines
Fraudulent news has been particularly problematic in Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
and the Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
, where social media has an outsized political influence. According to media analysts, developing countries
A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...
with new access to social media and democracy felt the fake news problem to a larger extent. In some developing countries, Facebook gives away smartphone data free of charge for Facebook and media sources, but at the same time does not provide the user with Internet access to fact-checking websites.
Iran
On 8 October 2020, Bloomberg reported that 92 websites used by Iran to spread misinformation
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation and disinformation are not interchangeable terms: misinformation can exist with or without specific malicious intent, whereas disinformation is distinct in that the information ...
were seized by the United States government.
Italy
Between 1 October and 30 November 2016, ahead of the Italian constitutional referendum, five out of ten referendum-related stories with most social media participation were hoaxes or inaccurate. Of the three stories with the most social media attention, two were fake. Prime Minister of Italy
The prime minister of Italy, officially the president of the Council of Ministers (), is the head of government of the Italy, Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Co ...
Matteo Renzi
Matteo Renzi (; born 11 January 1975) is an Italian politician who served as prime minister of Italy from 2014 to 2016. He has been a senator for Florence since 2018. Renzi has served as the leader of Italia Viva (IV) since 2019, having bee ...
met with U.S. President Obama and leaders of Europe at a meeting in Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, Germany in November 2016, and spoke about the fake news problem. Renzi hosted discussions on Facebook Live
Facebook is a social-network service website launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg. The following is a list of software and technology features that can be found on the Facebook website and mobile app and are available to users of ...
in an effort to rebut falsities online. The influence became so heavy that a senior adviser to Renzi began a defamation
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
complaint on an anonymous Twitter user who had used the screenname "Beatrice di Maio".
The Five Star Movement
The Five Star Movement ( , M5S) is a political party in Italy, led by Giuseppe Conte. It was launched on 4 October 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a political activist and comedian, and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist. The party is primarily d ...
(M5S), an Italian political party founded by Beppe Grillo
Giuseppe Piero "Beppe" Grillo (; born 21 July 1948) is an Italian comedian, actor, Blogger (person), blogger, and politician.
He has been involved in politics since 2009 as the co-founder (together with Gianroberto Casaleggio) of the Italian Fi ...
, managed fake news sites amplifying support for Russian news, propaganda, and inflamed conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
...
. The party's site ''TzeTze'' had 1.2 million Facebook fans and shared fake news and pieces supportive of Putin cited to Russia-owned sources including '' Sputnik News''. ''TzeTze'' plagiarized the Russian sources, and copied article titles and content from ''Sputnik''. TzeTze, another site critical of Renzi called ''La Cosa'', and a blog by Grillo—were managed by the company Casaleggio Associati which was started by Five Star Movement co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio
Gianroberto Casaleggio (; 14 August 1954 – 12 April 2016) was an Italian entrepreneur and political activist. He was co-founder and chairman of Casaleggio Associati srl, an internet and publishing company that advises on network strategies. He ...
. Casaleggio's son Davide Casaleggio owns and manages ''TzeTze'' and ''La Cosa'', and medical advice website ''La Fucina'' which markets anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and medical cure-all methods. Grillo's blog, Five Star Movement fake sites use the same IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
es, Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also mobile app traffic and events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in N ...
and Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Display Network, Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted advertising, targeted t ...
.
Cyberwarfare against Renzi increased, and Italian newspaper ''La Stampa
(English: "The Press") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Turin with an average circulation of 87,143 copies in May 2023. Distributed in Italy and other European nations, it is one of the oldest newspapers in Italy. Until the late 1970 ...
'' brought attention to false stories by '' Russia Today'' which wrongly asserted a pro-Renzi rally in Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
was actually an anti-Renzi rally. In October 2016, the Five Star Movement disseminated a video from Kremlin-aligned ''Russia Today'' which falsely reported displaying thousands of individuals protesting the 4 December 2016 scheduled referendum in Italy—when in fact the video that went on to 1.5 million views showed supporters of the referendum. President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, stated: "Fake news is a critical issue and we can't ignore it. We have to act now." Boldrini met on 30 November 2016 with vice president of public policy in Europe for Facebook Richard Allan to voice concerns about fake news. She said Facebook needed to admit they were a media company.
In 2022 the renowned Italian magazine Panorama
A panorama (formed from Greek language, Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any Obtuse angle, wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography (panoramic photography), film, seismic image ...
brought attention to fake news published by the website "Open di Enrico Mentana" which repeatedly reported a number of false stories with regard to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
These fake news were eventually rejected by Alina Dubovksa, journalist of the Ukrainian newspaper ''Public'', also due to the lack of evidences, by Catalina Marchant de Abreu, journalist of France 24, due to unfoundedness of the stories, as well as by Oleksiy Mykolaiovych Arestovych, an Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[
]
Mexico
In Mexico, fake exit polls have been documented.
Moldova
Amid the 2018 local elections in Moldova a doctored video with mistranslated subtitles purported to show that the a pro-Europe party candidate for mayor of Chișinău (pop. 685,900), the capital of Moldova had proposed to lease the city of Chișinău to the UAE for 50 years. The video was watched more than 300,000 times on Facebook and almost 250,000 times on the Russian social network site OK.ru, which is popular among Moldova's Russian-speaking population.[
]
Myanmar
In 2015, fake stories using unrelated photographs and fraudulent captions were shared online in support of the Rohingya
The Rohingya people (; ; ) are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Ro ...
. Fake news negatively affected individuals in Myanmar
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
, leading to a rise in violence against Muslims in the country. Online participation surged from one percent to 20 percent of Myanmar's total populace from 2014 to 2016. Fake stories from Facebook were reprinted in paper periodicals called ''Facebook'' and ''The Internet''. False reporting related to practitioners of Islam in the country was directly correlated with increased attacks on people of the religion in Myanmar. Fake news fictitiously stated believers in Islam acted out in violence at Buddhist locations. ''BuzzFeed News'' documented a direct relationship between the fake news and violence against Muslim people. It noted countries that were relatively newer to Internet exposure were more vulnerable to the problems of fake news and fraud.
Pakistan
Khawaja Muhammad Asif, the Minister of Defence
A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divid ...
of Pakistan, threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons on Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
after a false story claiming that Avigdor Lieberman
Avigdor Lieberman (, ; born 5 June 1958) is a Soviet-born Israeli politician who served as Ministry of Finance (Israel), Minister of Finance between 2021 and 2022, having previously served twice as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to ...
, the Israeli Ministry of Defense, said "If Pakistan send ground troops into Syria on any pretext, we will destroy this country with a nuclear attack."
Poland
In 2016 Polish historian noted fake news websites had infiltrated Poland through anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958 by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
and right-wing
Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...
focused sources that copied content from '' Russia Today''. Targalski observed there existed about 20 specific fake news websites in Poland which spread Russian disinformation in the form of fake news. One example cited was the false claim that Ukraine had claimed that the Polish city of Przemyśl
Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...
was occupied by Poland. In 2020 fake news websites related to the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
have been identified and officially labelled as such by the Polish Ministry of Health.
Sweden
The Swedish Security Service
The Swedish Security Service ( , SÄPO , , formerly , RPS/Säk, until 1989) is a Sweden, Swedish Government agencies in Sweden, government agency organized under the Ministry of Justice (Sweden), Ministry of Justice. It operates as a security ...
issued a report in 2015 identifying propaganda from Russia infiltrating Sweden with the objective to amplify pro-Russian propaganda and inflame societal conflicts. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), part of the Ministry of Defence of Sweden, identified fake news reports targeting Sweden in 2016 which originated from Russia. Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency official Mikael Tofvesson stated a pattern emerged where views critical of Sweden were constantly repeated. The MSB identified '' Russia Today'' and '' Sputnik News'' as significant fake news purveyors. As a result of growth in this propaganda in Sweden, the MSB planned to hire six additional security officials to fight back against the campaign of fraudulent information.
Taiwan
In a report in December 2015 by ''The China Post
''The China Post'' () was an English-language newspaper published in Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies betw ...
'', a fake video shared online showed people a light show purportedly made at the Shihmen Reservoir. The Northern Region Water Resources Office confirmed there was no light show at the reservoir and the event had been fabricated. The fraud led to an increase in tourist visits to the actual attraction.
Ukraine
''Deutsche Welle
(; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...
'' interviewed the founder of Stopfake.org in 2014 about the website's efforts to debunk fake news in Ukraine, including media portrayal of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Co-founder Margot Gontar began the site in March 2014, and it was aided by volunteers. In 2014, ''Deutsche Welle'' awarded the fact-checker website with the People's Choice Award for Russian in its ceremony The BOBs, recognizing excellence in advocacy on the Internet. Gontar highlighted an example debunked by the website, where a fictitious "Doctor Rozovskii" supposedly told ''The Guardian'' pro-Ukraine individuals refused to allow him to tend to injured in fighting with Russian supporters in 2014. Stopfake.org exposed the event was fabricated—there actually was no individual named "Doctor Rozovskii", and found the Facebook photo distributed with the incident was of a different individual from Russia with a separate identity. Former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych
Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (born 9 July 1950) is a Ukrainian politician who served as the fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. He also served as the prime minister of Ukraine several times between 2002 and 2007 and was a member of t ...
's ouster from power created instability, and in 2015 the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization comprising member states in Europe, North America, and Asia. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, the p ...
concluded Russian disinformation campaigns used fake news to disrupt relations between Europe and Ukraine.
United Kingdom
Labour MP Michael Dugher was assigned by Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson in November 2016 to investigate the impact of fake news spread through social media. Watson said they would work with Twitter and Facebook to root out clear-cut circumstances of "downright lies". Watson wrote an article for ''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' where he suggested methods to respond to fake news, including Internet-based societies which fact-check in a manner modeled after Wikipedia. Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Minister for Culture, Matthew Hancock, stated the British government would investigate the impact of fake news and its pervasiveness on social media websites. Watson stated he welcomed the investigation into fake news by the government. On 8 December 2016, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service serves as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also commonly known as MI6), which is part of the United Kingdom intelligence community. The chief is appointed by the Secretary of State fo ...
(MI6) Alex Younger delivered a speech to journalists at the SIS Building, MI6 headquarters where he called fake news and propaganda damaging to democracy. Younger said the mission of MI6 was to combat propaganda and fake news in order to deliver to his government a strategic advantage in the information warfare arena, and assist other nations including European countries. He called such methods of fake news propaganda online as a "fundamental threat to our sovereignty". Younger said all nations that hold democratic values should feel the same worry over fake news.
United States
2016 election cycle
Fraudulent stories during the 2016 U.S. presidential election popularized on Facebook included a viral phenomenon, viral post that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
, and another that actor Denzel Washington "backs Trump in the most epic way possible". Donald Trump's son and campaign surrogate Eric Trump, top national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and then-campaign managers Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski shared fake news stories during the campaign.
Misuse of the term
After the 2016 election, Republican politicians and conservative media began to Reappropriation, appropriate the term by using it to describe any news they see as hostile to their agenda, according to ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', which cited Breitbart News, Rush Limbaugh and supporters of Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
as dismissing true mainstream news reports, and any news they do not like as "fake news".
U.S. response to Russia in Syria
The Russian state-operated newswire RIA Novosti, known as Sputnik International, reported fake news and fabricated statements by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. RIA Novosti falsely reported on 7 December 2016 that Earnest stated sanctions for Russia were on the table related to Syria. RIA Novosti falsely quoted Earnest as saying: "There are a number of things that are to be considered, including some of the financial sanctions that the United States can administer in coordination with our allies. I would definitely not rule that out." However, the word "sanctions" was never used by the Press Secretary. Russia was discussed in eight instances during the press conference, but never about sanctions. The press conference focused solely on Russian air raids in Syria towards rebels fighting President of Syria Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo.
Legislative and executive responses
Members of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in March 2016 and heard about Russian operations to influence internal Ukrainian matters. Senator Angus King recalled they were informed about Russia "planting fake news stories" during elections. On 30 November 2016 seven members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked President Obama to publicize information on Russia's role in spreading disinformation in the U.S. election. On 30 November 2016, legislators approved a measure within the National Defense Authorization Act to finance the U.S. State Department to act against foreign propaganda. The initiative was developed through a bipartisan bill, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, written by U.S. Senators Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Chris Murphy. Republican U.S. Senators stated they planned to hold hearings and investigate Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. elections. By doing so they went against the preference of incoming Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who downplayed any potential Russian meddling in the election. United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, and Senator Lindsey Graham all planned investigations in the 115th United States Congress, 115th U.S. Congress session.
President of the United States, U.S. President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
commented on fake news online in a speech the day before Election Day in 2016, saying social media spread lies and created a "dust cloud of nonsense". Obama commented again on the problem after the election: "if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems." On 9 December 2016, President Obama ordered U.S. Intelligence Community to conduct a complete review of the Russian propaganda operation. In his year-end press conference on 16 December 2016, President Obama criticized a hyper-partisan atmosphere for enabling the proliferation of fake news.
Conspiracy theories and 2016 pizzeria attack
In November 2016, fake news sites and Internet forums falsely implicated the restaurant Comet Ping Pong and Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party figures as part of a fictitious child trafficking ring, which was dubbed "Pizzagate conspiracy theory, Pizzagate". The rumor was widely debunked by sources such as the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, fact-checking website Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', and Fox News
The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
. The restaurant's owners were harassed and threatened, and increased their security. On 4 December 2016, an individual from Salisbury, North Carolina, walked into the restaurant to "self-investigate" this conspiracy theory. He brought a semi-automatic rifle, and fired shots before being arrested; no one was injured. The suspect told police that he planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory,[ and was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license, unlawful discharge of a firearm, and carrying a rifle or shotgun outside the home or business. After the incident, future National Security Advisor (United States), National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn and his son Michael G. Flynn were criticized by many reporters for spreading the rumors. Two days after the shooting, Trump fired Michael G. Flynn from his transition team in connection with Flynn's Twitter posting of fake news.] Days after the attack, Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
spoke out on the dangers of fake news in a tribute speech to retiring Senator Harry Reid at the United States Capitol, U.S. Capitol, and called the problem an epidemic.
2018 midterm elections
To track junk news shared on Facebook during the 2018 midterm elections, th
Junk News Aggregator
was launched by th
Computational Propaganda Project
of the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. This Aggregator is a public platform, offering three interactive tools for tracking in near real-time public posts shared on Facebook by junk news sources, showing the content and the user engagement numbers that these posts have received.
Response
Fact-checking websites and journalists
Fact-checking websites FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com and Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
authored guides on how to respond to fraudulent news. FactCheck.org advised readers to check the source, author, date, and headline of publications. They recommended their colleagues Snopes.com, ''The Washington Post'' Fact Checker, and PolitiFact.com. FactCheck.org admonished consumers to be wary of confirmation bias. PolitiFact.com used a "Fake news" tag so readers could view all stories Politifact had debunked. Snopes.com warned readers social media was used as a harmful tool by fraudsters. ''The Washington Post''s "The Fact Checker" manager Glenn Kessler (journalist), Glenn Kessler wrote that all fact-checking sites saw increased visitors during the 2016 election cycle. Unique visitors to The Fact Checker increased five-fold from the 2012 election. Will Moy, director of London-based fact-checker Full Fact, said debunking must take place over a sustained period to be effective. Full Fact worked with Google to help automate fact-checking.
FactCheck.org former director Brooks Jackson said media companies devoted increased focus to the importance of debunking fraud during the 2016 election. FactCheck.org partnered with CNN's Jake Tapper in 2016 to examine the veracity of candidate statements. Angie Drobnic Holan, editor of PolitiFact.com, cautioned media companies chiefs must be supportive of debunking, as it often provokes hate mail and extreme responses from zealots. In December 2016, PolitiFact announced fake news was its selection for "Lie of the Year". PolitiFact explained its choice for the year: "In 2016, the prevalence of political fact abuse – promulgated by the words of two polarizing presidential candidates and their passionate supporters – gave rise to a spreading of fake news with unprecedented impunity." PolitiFact called fake news a significant symbol of a culture accepting of post-truth politics.
Google CEO comment and actions
In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. election, Google and Facebook, faced scrutiny regarding the impact of fake news. The top result on Google for election results was to a fake site. "70 News" had fraudulently written an incorrect headline and article that Trump United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote, won the popular vote against Clinton. Google later stated that prominence of the fake site in search results was a mistake. By 14 November, the "70 News" result was the second link shown when searching for results of the election. When asked shortly after the election whether fake news influenced election results, Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
CEO Sundar Pichai responded: "Sure" and went on to emphasize the importance of stopping the spread of fraudulent sites. On 14 November 2016, Google responded to the problem of fraudulent sites by banning such companies from profiting on advertising from traffic through its program AdSense. Google previously had a policy for denying ads for dieting ripoffs and counterfeit merchandise. Google stated upon the announcement they would work to ban advertisements from sources that lie about their purpose, content, or publisher. The ban is not expected to apply to news satire
News satire or news comedy is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on t ...
sites like ''The Onion'', although some satirical sites may be inadvertently blocked under the new system.
On 25 April 2017, Ben Gomes wrote a blog post announcing changes to the search algorithms that would stop the "spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information." On 27 July 2017, the World Socialist Web Site published data that showed a significant drop after the 25 April announcement in Google referrals to left-wing and anti-war websites, including the ACLU, Alternet, and CounterPunch, Counterpunch. The World Socialist Web Site insists that the "fake news" charge is a cover to remove anti-establishment websites from public access, and believes the algorithm changes are infringing on the democratic right to free speech.
Facebook deliberations
Blocking fraudulent advertisers
One day after Google took action, Facebook decided to block fake sites from advertising there. Facebook said they would ban ads from sites with deceptive content, including fake news, and review publishers for compliance. These steps by both Google and Facebook intended to deny ad revenue to fraudulent news sites; neither company took actions to prevent dissemination of false stories in search engine results pages or web feeds. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the notion that fraudulent news impacted the 2016 election a "crazy idea" and denied that his platform influenced the election. He stated that 99% of Facebook's content was neither fake news nor a hoax. Zuckerberg said that Facebook is not a media company. Zuckerberg advised users to check the fact-checking website Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
whenever they encounter fake news on Facebook.
Top staff members at Facebook did not feel simply blocking ad revenue from fraudulent sites was a strong enough response, and they made an executive decision and created a secret group to deal with the issue themselves. In response to Zuckerberg's first statement that fraudulent news did not impact the 2016 election, the secret Facebook group disputed this notion, saying fake news was rampant on their website during the election cycle. The secret task force included dozens of Facebook employees.
Response
Facebook faced criticism after its decision to revoke advertising revenues from fraudulent news providers, and not take further action. After negative media coverage including assertions that fraudulent news gave the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Trump, Zuckerberg posted a second time about it on 18 November 2016. The post was a reversal of his earlier comments on the matter where he had discounted the impact of fraudulent news. Zuckerberg said there it was difficult to filter out fraudulent news because he desired open communication. Measures considered and not implemented by Facebook included adding an ability for users to tag questionable material, automated checking tools, and third-party confirmation. The 18 November post did not announce any concrete actions the company would definitively take, or when such measures would be put into usage.
National Public Radio observed the changes being considered by Facebook to identify fraud constituted progress for the company into a new media entity. On 19 November 2016, BuzzFeed advised Facebook users they could report posts from fraudulent sites. Users could choose the report option: "I think it shouldn't be on Facebook", followed by: "It's a false news story." In November 2016, Facebook began assessing use of warning labels on fake news. The rollout was at first only available to a few users in a testing phase. A sample warning read: "This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: Classification Pending". ''TechCrunch'' analyzed the new feature during the testing phase and surmised it may have a tendency towards false positives.
Fake news proliferation on Facebook had a negative financial impact for the company. Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research predicted that revenues could decrease by two percentage points due to the concern over fake news and loss of advertising dollars. Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg's second statement on fake news proliferation on his website, Facebook decided to engage in assisting the government of China with a version of its software in the country to allow increased censorship by the government. ''Barron's (newspaper), Barron's'' contributor William Pesek was highly critical of this move, writing by porting its fake news conundrum to China, Facebook would become a tool in that Communist Party of China, Communist Party's General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping's efforts to increase Censorship in China, censorship.
Partnership with debunkers
Society of Professional Journalists president Lynn Walsh said in November 2016 that they would reach out to Facebook to assist weeding out fake news. Walsh said Facebook should evolve and admit it functioned as a media company. On 17 November 2016, the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) published an open letter on the Poynter Institute website to Mark Zuckerberg, imploring him to utilize fact-checkers to identify fraud on Facebook. Signatories to the 2016 letter to Zuckerberg featured a global representation of fact-checking groups, including: Africa Check, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and ''The Washington Post'' Fact Checker. In his second post on the matter on 18 November 2016, Zuckerberg responded to the fraudulent news problem by suggesting usage of fact-checkers. He specifically identified fact-checking website Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
, and pointed out that Facebook monitors links to such debunkers in reply comments to determine which original posts were fraudulent.
On 15 December 2016, Facebook announced more specifics in its efforts to combat fake news and hoaxes on its site. The company said it would form a partnership with fact-checking groups that had joined the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers' code of principles, to help debunk fraud on the site. It was the first instance Facebook had ever given third-party entities highlighted featuring in its News Feed, a significant motivator of web traffic online. The fact-checking organizations partnered with Facebook in order to confirm whether or not links posted from one individual to another on the site were factual or fraudulent. Facebook did not finance the fact-checkers, and acknowledged they could see increased traffic to their sites from the partnership.
Fact-checking organizations that joined Facebook's initiative included: ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to:
* ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
* ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company
ABC News may a ...
, ''The Washington Post'', Snopes.com
''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
, and the Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City.
Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
. Fraudulent articles will receive a warning tag: "disputed by third party fact-checkers". The company planned to start with obvious cases of hoaxes shared specifically for fraudulent purposes to gain money for the purveyor of fake news. Users may still share such tagged articles, and they will show up farther down in the news feed with an accompanying warning. Facebook will employ staff researchers to determine whether website spoofing
Website spoofing is the act of creating a website with the intention of misleading readers that the website has been created by a different person or organization.
Techniques
Normally, the spoof website will adopt the design of the target websit ...
has occurred, for example "washingtonpost.co" instead of the real washingtonpost.com. In a post on 15 December, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the changing nature of Facebook: "I think of Facebook as a technology company, but I recognize we have a greater responsibility than just building technology that information flows through. While we don't write the news stories you read and share, we also recognize we're more than just a distributor of news. We're a new kind of platform for public discourse -- and that means we have a new kind of responsibility to enable people to have the most meaningful conversations, and to build a space where people can be informed."
Proposed technology tools
''New York (magazine), New York'' magazine contributor Brian Feldman created a Google Chrome extension that would warn users about fraudulent news sites. He invited others to use his code and improve upon it. Upworthy co-founder and ''The Filter Bubble'' author Eli Pariser launched an open-source model initiative on 17 November 2016 to address false news. Pariser began a Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Document to collaborate with others online on how to lessen the phenomenon of fraudulent news. Pariser called his initiative: "Design Solutions for Fake News". Pariser's document included recommendations for a ratings organization analogous to the Better Business Bureau, and a database on media producers in a format like Wikipedia. Writing for ''Fortune'', Matthew Ingram agreed with the idea that Wikipedia could serve as a helpful model to improve Facebook's analysis of potentially fake news. Ingram concluded Facebook could benefit from a social network form of fact-checking similar to Wikipedia's methods while incorporating debunking websites such as PolitiFact.com.
Others
Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, spoke out against fake news in an interview with the Belgian Catholic weekly ' on 7 December 2016. The Pope had prior experience being the subject of a fake news website fiction—during the 2016 U.S. election cycle, he was falsely said to support Donald Trump for president. Pope Francis said the singular worst thing the news media could do was spreading disinformation
Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...
and that amplifying fake news instead of educating society was a sin. He compared salacious reporting of scandals, whether true or not, to coprophilia and the consumption of it to coprophagy. The Pope said that he did not intend to offend with his strong words, but emphasized that "a lot of damage can be done" when the truth is disregarded and slander is spread.[
]
Academic analysis
Jamie Condliffe wrote that banning ad revenue from fraudulent sites was not aggressive enough action by Facebook to deal with the problem, and did not prevent fake news from appearing in Facebook news feeds. University of Michigan political scientist Brendan Nyhan criticized Facebook for not doing more to combat fake news amplification. Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana University computer science professor Filippo Menczer commented on measures by Google and Facebook to deny fraudulent sites revenue, saying it was a good step to reduce motivation for fraudsters. Menczer's research team engaged in developing an online tool titled: Hoaxy — to see the pervasiveness of unconfirmed assertions as well as related debunking on the Internet.
Zeynep Tufekci wrote critically about Facebook's stance on fraudulent news sites, stating that fraudulent websites in North Macedonia
North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the n ...
profited handsomely off false stories about the 2016 U.S. election. Tufecki wrote that Facebook's algorithms, and structure exacerbated the impact of echo chamber (media), echo chambers and increased fake news blight.
In 2016 Melissa Zimdars, associate professor of communications at Merrimack College, created a handout for her Introduction to Mass Communication students titled "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical 'News' Sources" and posted it on Google docs. It was circulated on social media, and on 15 November 2016, the ''Los Angeles Times'' published the class handout under the title "Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid". Zimdars said that the list "wasn't intended to be widely distributed", and expressed concern that "people are taking it as this list of 'fake' sites, which is not its purpose". On 17 November 2016 Zimdars deleted the list. On 3 January 2017, Zimdars replaced the original handout with a new list at the same URL. The new list has removed most of the sites from the original handout, added many new sites, and greatly expanded the categories.
Stanford University professors Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew authored a 2016 study analyzing students' ability to discern fraudulent news from factual. The study took place over a year-long period of time, and involved a sample size of over 7,800 responses from university, secondary and middle school students in 12 states within the United States. They were surprised at the consistency with which students thought fraudulent news reports were factual. The study found 82% of students in middle school were unable to differentiate between an advertisement denoted as sponsored content from an actual news article. The authors concluded the solution was to educate online media consumers to themselves behave like fact-checkers — and actively question the veracity of all sources. A 2019 study in the journal ''Science'', which examined dissemination of fake news articles on Facebook in the 2016 election, found that sharing of fake news articles on Facebook was "relatively rare", conservatives were more likely than liberals or moderates to share fake news, and there is a "strong age effect", whereby individuals over 65 are vastly more likely to share fake news than younger cohorts. Another 2019 study in ''Science'' found, "fake news accounted for nearly 6% of all news consumption [on Twitter], but it was heavily concentrated—only 1% of users were exposed to 80% of fake news, and 0.1% of users were responsible for sharing 80% of fake news. Interestingly, fake news was most concentrated among conservative voters."
Scientist Emily Willingham has proposed applying the scientific method to fake news analysis. She had previously written on the topic of differentiating science from pseudoscience, and proposed applying that logic to fake news. She calls the recommended steps Observe, Question, Hypothesize, Analyze data, Draw conclusion, and Act on results. Willingham suggested a hypothesis of "This is real news", and then forming a strong set of questions to attempt to disprove the hypothesis. These tests included: check the URL, date of the article, evaluate reader bias and writer bias, double-check the evidence, and verify the sources cited. University of Connecticut philosophy professor Michael P. Lynch said that a troubling number of individuals make determinations relying upon the most recent piece of information they've consumed. He said the greater issue however was that fake news could make people less likely to believe news that really is true. Lynch summed up the thought process of such individuals, as "...ignore the facts because nobody knows what's really true anyway."
In 2019, David Lazer and other researchers, from Northeastern University, Harvard University, and the University at Buffalo, analyzed engagement with a previously defined set of fake news sources on Twitter. They found that such engagement was highly concentrated both among a small number of websites and a small number of Twitter users. Five percent of the sources accounted for over fifty percent of exposures. Among users, 0.1 percent consumed eighty percent of the volume from fake news sources.
See also
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Footnotes
References
Further reading
*
*
*
Final report of the EU Commission's High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation. March 2018.
*
*
*
*
*
External links
"How Do We Know What Is True?" (animated video; 2:52)
"Websites that circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fake news websites
Fake news websites,
Anti-intellectualism
Articles containing video clips
Barriers to critical thinking
Communication of falsehoods
Confidence tricks
Conspiracist media
Criticism of journalism
Deception
Internet culture
Internet fraud
Internet hoaxes
Internet manipulation and propaganda
Internet-related controversies
Journalistic hoaxes
Mass media and entertainment controversies
Media bias controversies
News media manipulation
Propaganda techniques
Social engineering (security)
2010s neologisms