Fake News

Politico reports: Social media companies from Facebook to YouTube are failing to stop people from setting up fake accounts, buying false online followers and promoting inauthentic digital content, according to a report published Friday by a NATO-accredited group. The findings — based on analysts purchasing social media manipulation tools and then testing how the companies responded — stand in stark …

The Daily Beast reports: A former staff member at Alex Jones’s far-right conspiracy site Infowars has admitted to making up stories for Jones about the threat of Shariah law within the U.S. Writing for The New York Times, Josh Owens expressed his regret for helping Jones spread Islamophobic misinformation. The former Infowars video editor said that he made up lies …

From the homocon fake news site Gateway Pundit: President Trump is too good for the Democrats. He has an ‘America First’ agenda which the traitorous Democrats and elites despise. It’s time that we Americans stand and call this what it is. This is another Democrat attempt to remove a President through any means necessary. It is seditious and treasonous. The …

USA Today reports: As the final votes trickled in during last week’s Kentucky gubernatorial election, a network of automated Twitter accounts suddenly sprang into action. They spread misinformation about the election being rigged, according to the CEO of a company that tracks political misinformation on social media. Gideon Blocq, the founder and CEO of VineSight, told The Courier Journal his …

Politico reports: False news reports that attack U.S. politicians have been viewed more than 150 million times on Facebook since the beginning of 2019, according to an analysis published Wednesday that points to a growing threat of deception swamping next year’s elections. The analysis, from the activist group Avaaz, highlights how misinformation — often targeting political figures like House Speaker …

Heavy.com reports: Kelvin Whelly is the U.S. Marine who says he was paid by Senator Elizabeth Warren to have an affair with her in 2018. Whelly, 25, was brought into the spotlight by right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman at a press conference on October 3. Wohl has previously admitted that he promotes false news if it helps President …

Public Information reports: The “Police Lives Matter” Facebook page accumulated over 170,000 fans, with viral content that reached more Facebook users than some of the largest media outlets. The page purported to be run by U.S. police officers, with cops posting about the “first dayshift of my career with a K9” or being “brand new dad.” What these posts did …

Reuters reports: Twitter has continued a crackdown on what it considers improper content by removing more than 10,000 accounts for spreading political misinformation and unrest. According to a company blog post, most of the accounts were engaged in fomenting political dissent through the spread of false information. It said many of the accounts in the UAE, for example, “were often …

Jared Holt reports at Right Wing Watch: Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist proprietor of Infowars, and his attorneys were denied an appeal regarding a lawsuit that alleges Infowars broadcast defamatory comments regarding the father of a child murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The Texas Court of Appeals has ordered Infowars to “pay all costs” related to …

Talking Points Memo reports: After initial reports identified Patrick Crusius as the alleged gunman behind the the El Paso Walmart massacre that left 22 people dead and more wounded, Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit, presented an inaccurate picture of Crusius to his readers. Selectively plucking information from the reputation management website MyLife, which can …

Just in from Pew Research: Many Americans say the creation and spread of made-up news and information is causing significant harm to the nation and needs to be stopped, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 6,127 U.S. adults conducted between Feb. 19 and March 4, 2019, on the Center’s American Trends Panel. Indeed, more Americans view made-up …

Politico Europe reports: More than half of Europeans may have seen some form of disinformation promoted by Russian actors on social networks ahead of the parliamentary election later this month, according to an analysis reviewed by POLITICO. The report — by SafeGuard Cyber, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm — coincides with criticism that tech companies, notably Facebook, are not doing enough …

The Daily Beast reports: A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump on Thursday shared an inaccurate graphic on Twitter that significantly overstated his overall job approval rating in a new poll and falsely suggested it was “soaring.” Later Thursday morning, Washington correspondent Blake Burman offered an on-air correction on behalf of Fox Business. “It’s been a quiet start to the day for President Trump, though …

Courthouse News reports: A Virginia federal judge ruled on Friday a defamation suit can move forward against Alex Jones, former Florida Rep. Allen West and other right-wing commentators who claimed a former State Department official was a “deep state” operative after he posted video online that showed a white supremacist plow his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia in …

The Guardian reports: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he is considering crowd sourcing as a new model for Facebook’s third-party fact checking partnerships. “I think that the real thing that we want to try to get to over time is more of a crowdsourced model where people, it’s not that people are trusting some sort, some basic set …

The Hill reports: Roku said late Tuesday that it deleted its channel for InfoWars just hours after the streaming platform said the show, which is hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, didn’t violate its content policies. Roku initially defended its decision in a statement to The Hill on Tuesday, saying that it “allows our customers to choose from thousands of …

ABC News reports: Six families of victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School won a legal victory Friday in their fight against controversial radio and internet personality Alex Jones. A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, InfoWars’ internal marketing and financial documents. The judge has scheduled a hearing next week …

Unshocking. The Associated Press reports: Sharing false information on Facebook is old. People over 65 and ultra conservatives shared about seven times more fake information masquerading as news on the social media site than younger adults, moderates and super liberals during the 2016 election season, a new study finds. The first major study to look at who is sharing links …

NBC News reports: An internet fundraiser for Donald Trump’s border wall took in more than $7 million from over 131,000 donors by early Thursday evening. The Florida man behind the GoFundMe page, a triple-amputee Iraq War veteran named Brian Kolfage, spent a large portion of the fundraising campaign’s description outlining his past, including a bolded section titled “How do you …