hoax
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A Chinese Wikipedia editor spent years writing fake Russian medieval history
She pulled off one of the largest hoaxes ever seen on the platform.
TikTok takes more action against hoaxes and dangerous challenges
Almost half of teens want more information about how to understand the risks of online challenges, a survey found.
Twitter will let you report posts aimed at suppressing voters
Twitter is rolling out another tool meant to protect the 2020 US election. Today, it announced that during "key moments" of the election users will be able to report misleading information about how to participate in an election or other civic event. Users will be able to specify whether the misinformation contains false info about how or where to vote or register, if it intends to suppress or intimidate people from voting or if someone is misrepresenting their affiliation with a candidate, party, etc.
An old Instagram hoax is back, and it's duping celebrities
An Instagram hoax that first circulated in 2012 is back, and celebrities from Usher to Waka Flocka Flame, Julianne Moore, Julia Roberts and Rob Lowe have allegedly fallen for it. The post claims Instagram is changing its rules and everything you've ever posted will become public, NBC News reports.
Facebook built a tool to track misinformation about itself
Facebook isn't just concerned with the fake news, conspiracy theories and malicious content spread on its platforms. It's also worried about the rumors spread about its platform. According to Bloomberg, the company has a special software program called Stormchaser used to track and debunk misinformation about Facebook, including rumors spread on WhatsApp.
Facebook is fact checking the 'drunk Nancy Pelosi' video, but won't remove it
Facebook won't remove a viral video that purports to show Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nacy Pelosi slurring her words. Instead, according to a Gizmodo report, the social network will display an article from a third-party fact-checking site that will highlight the fact the video has been edited. Facebook also plans to limit the reach of the video, though it hasn't specified how it will accomplish that.
YouTube is removing ads from all Momo-related videos
YouTube is trying to dissuade creators from posting videos about the Momo Challenge (a viral self-harm hoax allegedly targeted towards kids) by stopping ads from running against such content. It told The Verge videos related to Momo violate advertiser guidelines, and as such can't be monetized.
US charges 'Call of Duty' swatter's alleged co-conspirators
Now that Call of Duty swatter Tyler Bariss has pleaded guilty, law enforcement is pursuing the people allegedly linked to his crimes. Federal agents have charged Neal Patel, Logan Patten and Tyler Stewart for reportedly conspiring with Barriss in both swatting attacks (that is, trick police into sending a SWAT team) and false bomb threats in locations across the US, including Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and Texas. Patel and Patten also face respective charges for bank fraud and threatening to injure in interstate commerce.
WhatsApp limits forwarding worldwide to fight hoaxes and rumors
WhatsApp limited forwarding in India as part of an effort to curb hoaxes and rumors that could lead to violence, and now that policy is spreading. The Facebook-owned messaging service has announced that it's lowering the forwarding limit worldwide from 20 people or groups to the same five Indian users have dealt with since July. The update applying the limit will start to roll out on January 21st, starting with Android users and reaching iOS later.
YouTube searches for 'RBG' led to slew of bogus conspiracy videos
As much as YouTube has done to counter hoaxes and fake news in its searches, it still has room for improvement. The Washington Post discovered that "more than half" of YouTube's top 20 search results for "RBG," the nickname for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were known fake conspiracy theory videos. In fact, just one of the results came from a well-established news outlet. And if you played one of those videos, the recommendations quickly shifted to more extreme conspiracies.
Why are people pretending to be dead on Instagram?
Ahmed Simrin, 15, is one of the millions of teenagers who uses Instagram. He doesn't post pictures on his page every day (there are two total), yet somehow he's managed to get nearly 3,000 people to follow it. That doesn't make him a social media influencer, by any means, but his Instagram page quickly stands out when you realize one of the photos has over 22,000 comments and 4,000 likes. This type of engagement is typically only seen on accounts from celebrities. His viral picture, posted in October 2017, isn't anything out of the ordinary, either: It's Simrin simply standing next to his friend, each staring directly into the camera, with a caption that reads "Fresh out the oven." But then you look at the comments, and it would appear that poor Simrin is no longer with us. There are thousands of users telling him to rest in peace. "RIP, you'll be missed." "RIP, bro." "You died way too young." "I can't believe you're gone." The list goes on and on.
The internet’s slow turn against Alex Jones and InfoWars
Tech companies are finally starting to take action on Alex Jones, the man who called the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax and said the Democrats were planning a second civil war, for spreading his hateful conspiracy nonsense on the internet. It all began a couple of weeks ago when YouTube removed multiple videos from his channel for hate speech, a move that was followed by Facebook blocking him from posting on his personal page for 30 days. Since then, Spotify has taken down multiple episodes of Alex Jones' podcast, citing violations of its rules against hate speech, while Stitcher and Apple have gone as far as completely removing InfoWars shows. And now Facebook and YouTube have outright banned him and his InfoWars pages. Although things seem to have come to a head just recently, the battle between the InfoWars creator and tech firms has actually been brewing for months. Here's a timeline of the most important events leading up to today, when it seems that tech companies have decided that enough is enough.
Twitter tries to explain how it fights breaking news hoaxes
During the minutes and hours after shots rang out at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, many people used Twitter just as they have after other high-profile events: to spread fake information and hoaxes. In response to reports about how bad its "fake news" problem is (as a Buzzfeed reporter maintained a live thread collecting hoaxes, trolls started using an image of her in their fakes) Twitter published a post about "Serving the Public Conversation During Breaking Events." It didn't mention hoaxes like the infamous "Sam Hyde" images by name, or the hacking of YouTube's Vadim Lavrusk, but more broadly outlined its policies and aims for moderating posts during this type of event.
Wikipedia had no idea it would become a YouTube fact checker
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said during a SXSW talk this week that the company would be making a more concerted effort to stem the spread of misinformation on its site. Specifically, YouTube plans to start adding "information cues," including text boxes that link to third-party sources like Wikipedia, to videos covering hoaxes and conspiracy theories. But in a statement, Wikimedia Foundation has now said that neither it nor Wikipedia were told about YouTube's announcement ahead of time. "In this case, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation are part of a formal partnership with YouTube," the company said. "We were not given advance notice of this announcement."
YouTube CEO talks misinformation, creators and comments at SXSW
YouTube's presence at SXSW 2018 extended beyond its Story HQ, a space where it turned ads into videos that feel more like art. The company's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, was part of a panel at the event titled "Navigating the Video Revolution in the Digital Age." There, she talked about a wide range of topics, including experiments for YouTube's comments section and how much money creators are making. But the biggest news Wojcicki dropped on stage was about a new feature she called "information cues," which will help fight hoaxes by linking viewers to articles on Wikipedia that debunks those.
YouTube finally notices Infowars is peddling dangerous conspiracies
Earlier this week, YouTube took down a video from one of Infowars' channels. It was one of many videos out there claiming that students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are not in fact students and school shooting survivors, but are instead paid "crisis actors." The video, which was titled "David Hogg Can't Remember His lines In TV Interview," was removed by YouTube from the Alex Jones Channel on Wednesday and the platform said it violated its policies against harassment. CNN now reports that this qualifies as one strike against the Infowars channel and if it gets two more within a three-month period, the channel will be terminated.
Alleged swatting hoax ends in the death of a father of two (updated)
Yesterday evening, a 28-year-old Kansas man was shot by police after the station received a call about a hostage situation taking place at the man's residence. "It was a shooting call involving hostages," Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said during a press conference last night. "The original call, we were told that someone had an argument with their mother and dad was accidentally shot. And that now that person was holding mother, brother and sister hostage. We learned through that call that a father was deceased, and had been shot in the head. That was the information we were working off of." But that information turned out to be wrong and shortly after the incident, reports began to surface online that the call was part of a "swatting" stunt -- a hoax wherein someone makes a false police report in order to fuel a large law enforcement response.
Facebook and Google tackle fake news ahead of French elections
Fake news on Facebook and Google reached millions of people during US elections, and France wants to make sure its own presidential contests aren't disrupted. Compounding the risk, a lot of fake US news reportedly came from Russia, and Marine Le Pen's far right National Front party is funded by Russian banks friendly with Vladimir Putin. As such, Facebook has teamed with eight major news organizations including Agence France Presse (AFP), LeMonde and Les Echos to curb false information during France's April elections.
Facebook tweaks the feed to bury fake news and clickbait
Just how much fake news trending all over Facebook actually influenced the election is still up for debate, but the question pushed the social media company into crackdown mode. In the last few months, it cut off ad funding for dubious posts and added a button to let users flag questionable content for review by third-party fact-checkers. To more actively combat shady stories, the social media giant is tweaking its News Feed algorithm to promote more legitimate and viral content.
Sketchy adoption app Adoptly is a hoax after all
A few weeks ago, a company called Adoptly stated a Kickstarter for an app that promised to make adoption easier -- with the help of a ridiculous, Tinder-style interface for swiping left and right on children. We immediately questioned whether something like this was even real, although it did seem to be legally plausible if extremely ill-advised. But now, the truth comes out: Adoptly was part of an "ongoing satirical art project" from Ben Becker and Elliot Glass, the duo who brought us the "Pooper" hoax of last summer.
