Misinformation techniques first deployed by Russian agents are now more commonly used in Britain by the far right, as well as by politicians to convince their own voters, an audience in Oxford has been told.

Plus: "Like the experts predicted back in 2016, we did end up heading down the dystopian path."

Facebook’s refusal to even touch false political ads sends the message that it only cares about lies spread by regular users and not politicians.

Voters may form false memories after seeing fabricated news stories, especially if those stories align with their political beliefs, according to research in Psychological Science. The research was conducted in the week preceding the 2018 referendum on legalizing abortion in Ireland, but the researchers suggest that fake news is likely to have similar effects in other political contexts, including the US presidential race in 2020.

The wildfires burning in Brazil's Amazon rainforest have prompted a public outcry on social media. But interest in the crisis has also led to the spread of misinformation and raised questions about whether the situation is as bad as it may seem. CBC News explains.

If you hear an unfounded statement often enough, you might just start believing that it’s true. This phenomenon, known as the “illusory truth effect”, is exploited by politicians and advertisers — and if you think you are immune to it, you’re probably wrong. In fact, earlier this year we reported on a study that found people are prone to the effect regardless of their particular cognitive profile.

New research shows Google's online ad technologies provide an estimated 70% of ad revenue to 1,700 websites purveying misinformation.

Facebook's promises of sharing detailed amounts of data with researchers and academics to enable them to study and flag disinformation on the site ahead of the 2020 campaign seem to have fallen short, according to a new report from The New York Times. In April 2018, the social networking giant outlined its plans to provide data to academics to "help people better understand the broader impact of social media on democracy — as well as improve our work to protect the integrity of elections."

The same kinds of digital dirty tricks used to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and beyond are now up for sale on underground Russian forums for as little as a few thousand dollars, according to a new report from an internet security company.

Fake news is an epidemic on social media. Even President Barack Obama is concerned about the effect this reckless spread of misinformation is going to have on our nation, and, as he revealed in a lengthy interview with The New Yorker, the effect it will have on our planet. Obama blamed fake news — and social media more broadly — for being a major reason why the country can’t come together to combat global climate change.

In the free marketplace of ideas, true ideas are supposed to compete with false ones until the truth wins -- at least according to a leading rationale for free speech. But what if the rise of fake news shows that, under current conditions, truth may not defeat falsehood in the market? That would start to make free speech look a whole lot less appealing. The rise of fake news therefore poses a serious challenge to our basic ideas about the First Amendment. Much of the debate in recent weeks has focused on social media and search engines.

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts...

THE EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON of fake news spread by Facebook and other social media during the 2016 presidential election has been largely portrayed as a lucky break for Donald Trump. By that reckoning, entrepreneurial Macedonian teenagers, opportunists in Tbilisi and California millennials have exploited social media algorithms in order to make money — only incidentally leading to the viral proliferation of mostly anti-Clinton and anti-Obama hoaxes and conspiracy theories that thrilled many Trump supporters.

Video of the controversial aid group Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the “White Helmets,” has leaked showing the staging of a fake rescue. By Dan Wright.

Jon Stewart is a seasoned satirical news expert. Last night (Nov. 30) in New York City, the former Daily Show host took aim at the real media, commenting on its failures in the latest election cycle and its loss of trust among Americans. “What the media has become is an information-laundering system,” Stewart said, citing the thin, porous line between news published by mainstream media and fake news.

Electric-car evangelist is the target of concerted negative online campaign linked to influential rightwing network

Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising. The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. By Glenn Greenwald.

“Mostly it has to do with words, especially binary oppositions like ‘real’ and ‘fake,’ and ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal,’ which are, of course, essentially meaningless … their value being purely tactical. Which is to say they denote nothing.” By CJ Hopkins.

CDU politician Patrick Sensburg wants to criminalize the creation of fake news. He told DW about what makes misinformation so dangerous and why offenders could be tried for espionage.