Fake news has been around as long as real news...  Social media has certainly transformed how fake news circulates, speeding up its circulation and extending its reach and impact...  a much more important problem ... is the continuing delegitimization of real news by American conservatives...  This is not “fake news.” It is a blatantly ideolog…

Italy’s antitrust chief has called for EU member states to set up a network of public agencies to combat fake news... “it is not the job of a private entity to control information. This is historically the job of public powers.

THE WASHINGTON POST on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system...media reactions... were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations ... It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” ... The level of groupthink, fearmongering, coercive p…

thoughtfully designed user interfaces can make us a freer, more humane, and more just society, just as poorly designed ones seem to have made many of us less compassionate, less informed, and more antagonistic... for a case study, we only need to look ... online forum Nextdoor.com originally ... a way of fostering community through neighborhood-s…

Forty-four percent of people shown a native ad couldn’t correctly identify the company that had paid for it... 54% ... indicated that they had felt deceived by native advertising before. And 77% ... didn’t even identify native ads as “advertising... I guess they co-created it, so I guess maybe that’s not an ad.”

It’s easier than ever to spread misinformation.... social media tools are, after all, just that: tools.... fake news has been with us, in different guises, since long before anyone ever had the chance to tweet it.

... no one has direct access to reality. The real world is nearly impossible to see in this maelstrom ... because human minds need to “construct” their own version of reality — and each of us does this within a community of shared experiences and beliefs... there are many social worlds and each is built on its own version of what is real and true.…

the idea that fake news was central to the outcome of the campaign has little basis in fact... it’s mostly likely to be shared by people who have already bought into a partisan or ideological worldview... Clinton’s campaign ... problem was ... coverage that dwelled overwhelmingly on a bullshit email server scandal, devoted far fewer resources to…

if publishers disagree with their labels they’ll have to take it up with the third-parties... won’t receive any payment from Facebook, but may get a traffic and branding boost from the debunk post links... Facebook is still working on better classifiers to automatically detect fake news, and preventing fake news from appearing as “Related Article…

Mantzarlis expects the partnership will result in a huge increase of applications to sign on to the IFCN’s code.... leads to a surge in genuine fact-checking projects, so much the better... Facebook decides which fact-checkers to include; the IFCN code is just the ‘minimum condition...

Here’s a look at the challenges facing each of Zuckerberg’s specific ideas... The technology to identify blatantly false news exists — the real question is what Facebook will choose to do with the content it categorizes as “misinformation.”... Relying on third-party fact checkers could lessen scrutiny on Facebook’s verification process and give …

Facebook ... cannot — act as The Great Editor... It passes that task on to outside entities.... If Facebook is going to pay for video, it might want to consider paying for truth, which is also good for business... I would also like to see Facebook share data about how lies spread and what motivates people to reconsider before sharing lies so resea…

Users will be able to mark stories as fake...algorithm will look at whether a large number of people are reporting a particular article, whether or not the article is going viral, and whether the article has a high rate of shares... create an algorithm-vetted set of links that then goes on to a team of researchers within Facebook... links are sent…

Broadsides against fake news amount to a rearguard action from an industry fending off competitors who don’t play by the same rules... an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is an historical anomaly... Fake news is but one symptom of that shift back to historical norms... Just as Watergate gave the media a bright stor…

Asked who should tackle the problem, respondents gave about equal weight to government, tech companies such as Facebook and Google, and the public... The term “fake news” is fuzzy... disinformation, propaganda, conspiracy-mongering or ... “very biased takes on public affairs”Eli Pariser... online clearinghouse for potential solutions... All of the…

A work in progress from an upcoming eponymous post. Another experiment with the enewsletter format: some initial thoughts on this seemingly intractable problem, with some of the source materials I’m studying.

Let’s start with a broad definition of “fake news” as information... that then proves unverifiable or materially incorrect... used to be called propaganda. And there is an extensive social science literature on propaganda... How does mainstream journalism that is also clearly politically biased – on all sides – claim the moral high ground? ... “f…

Not only is Facebook not providing little red warnings along with links to potentially specious news—it’s now blocking links to the plugin that did... . “It would seem I’ve caused them some embarrassment by showing them to be full of bull when it comes to their supposed inability to address fake news and they are punishing me for it.”... Update #…

fake news wouldn’t be a problem if people didn’t fall for it and share it. Unless we understand the psychology of online news consumption, we won’t be able to find a cure... online news readers don’t ... care about the importance of journalistic sourcing ... “professional gatekeeping.”... I mocked up a news site and showed four groups of partici…

For a term that is suddenly everywhere, “fake news” is fairly slippery... government propaganda designed to look like independent journalism... any old made-up bullshit ... a hoax meant to make a larger point... only ... when it shows up on a platform like Facebook as legitimate news? What about conspiracy theorists ... satire intended to entertai…

What we need today is metaliteracy – an ability to make sense of the vast amounts of information in the connected world of social media... educators and policymakers must “demonstrate the link between digital literacy and citizenship.” ... Metaliterate individuals ... learn to carefully differentiate among multiple sites... question the validity o…

psychological science suggests that exposure to false news would have an impact on people’s opinions and beliefs... repeated exposure to false information can change people’s beliefs ... phenomenon is called the “illusory truth effect.”... simply repeating false information makes it seem more true... prior knowledge does not protect people from …

Scottie Nell Hughes ... drove a stake into the heart of knowable reality: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts... So, how should Trump’s statements during the campaign have been covered? Should reporters have added something like this in the second paragraph of every news story? “Trump probably didn’t mean that he would appoin…

There’s large-scale, statistically significant research into the impact of search results on political views... Google is doing a horrible, horrible job of delivering answers here. It can and should do better... people are finally saying, ‘Gee, Facebook and Google really have a lot of power’ like it’s this big revelation. And it’s like, ‘D’oh.’”…

Major enterprise stories — stories that take deep dives and attempt to inform readers in substantive ways or to elicit impact... require considerable resources... the potential audience is limited... how can journalists get readers to complete these long pieces?use multiple elements and platforms to tell the story... the parts that pull your reade…

Propaganda warfare is increasingly shaping narratives, policies and lives around the world.

Do we really want to set up Facebook or Google as censors ... to decide what is real and fake, true and false?

a look at the growth of fact-checking sites in Europe... legacy news media remain the dominant source of political fact-checking... in Western Europe. “In the East and the South, meanwhile, the practice is less a supplement to conventional journalism than an alternative to it, based almost entirely in NGOs and alternative media outlets...

The Five Star Movement controls ... sprawling network of websites and social media accounts that are spreading fake news, conspiracy theories, and pro-Kremlin stories to millions... profitable sites that describe themselves as “independent news” outlets but are actually controlled by the party leadership... crossposted scores of fake stories... o…

once a user has downloaded the extension, when they come across articles online a red flag will appear if the site or news is deemed fake, yellow if the source is unreliable or green if it’s ok... resemble a search engine that can query relevant databases to spot and provide context around false news