Fake News Explosion Near End of Election
December 5, 2016 1:00 PM   Subscribe

In the last three months of the election, fake news stories got more Facebook engagements than the legitimate news outlets. While Pizzagate has quickly become the most high-profile example of fake news going seriously wrong, it is part of a much broader problem with fake news that has quickly become widely recognized in the aftermath of the 2016 election.

Here’s one example of just how widespread fake news is: Over at BuzzFeed, Craig Silverman pit Facebook engagement for the top 20 fake news stories — like “Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president” (he did not) and “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apartment in murder-suicide” (this did not happen) — against the top 20 legitimate news stories, from outlets like the New York Times and Huffington Post.
posted by xammerboy (1 comment total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This is of a piece with a lot of stuff that's been discussed in a few recent threads, probably better as a link in e.g. this or this. -- cortex



 
What's not clear to me is the actual damage this did to Clinton during her campaign. One thing is clear, a LOT of people believed these garbage stories.
posted by xammerboy at 1:04 PM on December 5, 2016


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