Fake news website

This article is about intentionally misleading websites. For satirical websites, see news satire.

On the Internet, fake news sites publish hoaxes and misinformation to drive web traffic, primarily from social media sharing. These sites are distinguished from news satire because they do not intend to be humorous, but to mislead readers and profit from readers believing the stories to be true.

Prominent fake news sites

Prominent among fake news sites include false propaganda created by individuals in the countries of Macedonia and Russia.

U.S. News & World Report warned readers to be wary of popular fake news sites composed of either outright hoaxes or propaganda, and recommended the website Fake News Watch for a listing of such problematic sources.

Impact on elections

President of the United States Barack Obama commented on the significant problem of fraudulent information on social networks impacting elections, in a speech on 7 November 2016: "The way campaigns have unfolded, we just start accepting crazy stuff as normal. And people, if they just repeat attacks enough and outright lies over and over again, as long as it’s on Facebook, and people can see it, as long as its on social media, people start believing it. And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded: "Sure" — when asked specifically on 15 November 2016 if fake news sites had likely changed the results of the 2016 United States presidential election. Pichai went on to emphasize the importance of removing all fake news sites from purveyance: "Look, it is important to remember this was a very close election and so, just for me, so looking at it scientifically, one in a hundred voters voting one way or the other swings the election either way. ... From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here."

After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the top result on Google for results of the race was to a fake news site.

Responses from Google and Facebook

On 15 November 2016, Google responded to the growing problem of fake news sites by banning such companies from profiting on advertising from traffic to false articles. Facebook made the decision to take a similar move the following day.

Commentary

John Oliver commented on his comedy program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that the problem of fake news sites fed into a wider issue of echo chambers in the media. Oliver lamented: "Fake facts circulate on social media to a frightening extent. He pointed out such sites often only exist to draw in profit from web traffic: "There is now a whole cottage industry specializing in hyper-partisan, sometimes wildly distorted clickbait."

Merrimack College assistant professor of media studies Melissa Zimdars wrote an article "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y and Satirical 'News' Sources" in which she advised how to determine if a fraudulent source was a fake news site. This included: strange domain names, websites ending in "lo" or "com.co", lack of author attribution, inspect the "About Us" page, poor website layout and style of ALL CAPS.

BBC News interviewed a fake news site writer who went by the pseudonym "Chief Reporter (CR)", who defended his actions and possible influence on elections: "If enough of an electorate are in a frame of mind where they will believe absolutely everything they read on the internet, to a certain extent they have to be prepared to deal with the consequences."

Slate magazine wrote that though fake news sites were controversial, their prevalence was obscuring a wider discussion about the negative impact on society from those who only consume media from one particular tailored viewpoint — and therefore perpetuate filter bubbles.

External links

• Fake News Watch