The appearance of fake news on websites and social media has inspired scientists to develop a "vaccine" to immunise people against the problem. A University of Cambridge study devised psychological tools to target fact distortion. Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims.

William Jennings Bryan, the Trump-like presidential hopeful, warned of an “epidemic of fake news.” By Adrienne LaFrance.

The stinger gets stung. By Ryan Grim.

A thirty-strong group of security researchers have co-signed an open letter calling for the Guardian to retract a story it published last week that had claimed mobile messaging app WhatsApp contains a “backdoor”. “Unfortunately, your story was the equivalent of putting “VACCINES KILL PEOPLE” in a blaring headline over a poorly contextualized piece,” writes academic Zeynep Tufekci, who organized the open letter.

Current theater critic and Fox News commentator Judith Miller is undoubtedly best known for her fact-free reporting on Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” for the New York Times that helped create the pretext for the 2003 war in Iraq. So it was rather odd yesterday when Miller criticized President Obama’s decision to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning by wondering, “How many people died because of Manning’s leak?” The quick answer is none, but the internet wasn’t going to let Miller off that easy.

The BBC is to assemble a team to fact check and debunk deliberately misleading and false stories masquerading as real news. Amid growing concern among politicians and news organisations about the impact of false information online, news chief James Harding told staff on Thursday that the BBC would be “weighing in on the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”. The plans will see the corporation’s Reality Check series become permanent, backed by a dedicated team targeting false stories or facts being shared widely on social media.

Russia has coordinated a campaign over the past two years to influence Sweden’s decision making by using disinformation, Russia has coordinated a campaign over the past two years to influence Sweden’s decision making by using disinformation, propaganda and false documents, according to a report by researchers at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. One of the main tools for spreading false information was the Swedish language version of the state-funded news website, Sputnik News, one of the reports co-authors Sebastian Åsberg told Radio Sweden.

The Washington Post on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat: The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta — what is now routinely referred to as “Russian hacking of our election” — by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials...

False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid. By Glenn Greenwald.

Those who want to combat Fake News should stop aggressively spreading it when it suits their agenda. Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents). But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make.

When the issue of “fake news” came to prominence at the end of this year’s election cycle, traditional media outlets were the firsts to engage in relentless finger-pointing. Journalists everywhere deplored the spread of misleading, lazily reported and, in some cases, totally fabricated stories that had been facilitated by social media. That’d be ignoring — of course — that in a competitive media climate where virality and accuracy go head-to-head...

President Obama on Friday signed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, providing nearly $619 billion for war and military spending. The measure passed both houses of Congress with a veto-proof majority and will bring troops a modest pay raise while increasing the number of active-duty soldiers to more than 1.3 million. The NDAA also restricts transfers from the Guantánamo Bay detention center, guaranteeing that Obama will leave office without fulfilling his pledge to close the prison.

Germany's government plans to create a center to fight "disinformation" online ahead of next year's elections, a media report has said. The move comes amid reports that fake news influenced the US election.

Assuring users that the company’s entire team of engineers was working hard to make sure a glitch like this never happens again, Facebook executives confirmed during a press conference Tuesday that a horrible accident last night involving the website’s algorithm had resulted in thousands of users being exposed to new concepts. [Satire]

“Yet, the Times falsely asserts that “a direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states.” But the two largest states, Virginia, which had almost 300,000 slaves, and Massachusetts, which had none, both favored the Virginia Plan in the early days of the convention.” By Steve Byas.

Bana al-Abed, the Syrian girl whose Tweets from eastern Aleppo captured the world’s attention, meets with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his palace in Ankara.

In an interview with Sputnik, Igor Nezhdanov suggested that despite the wide array of fake videos about Syria, the story always remains the same. On Monday, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said that the country's police detained a man for making staged "wounded children" photos, which he was planning to post on social media. He had intended to claim that they were actual photos of destruction and injured people in Aleppo.

US government “propagandists” push for a foreign policy of “intervening around the world,” former presidential candidate and founder of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Dr. Ron Paul, told RT in a wide-ranging interview that also touched on Syria.

Earlier this week, Facebook said that it would be partnering with fact-checking sites like Snopes to help weed out the fake news that has been plaguing the site in recent years. But it seems that Germany is not confident that self-regulation will be enough. The chairman of Germany’s Social Democratic Party, Thomas Oppermann, has suggested a new law that would require companies like Facebook to set up an office in the country that would deal with fake news and hate speech at all hours of the day.

Here is the reality that Lenny Pozner faces every day: On a Friday morning four years ago, Lenny dropped off his son, Noah, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. It was three weeks after Noah's sixth birthday, and he had just lost his first tooth. He was a little guy, bright and inquisitive, who loved books and started reading at an early age. "He had this charm about him,” said Pozner. “He was handsome. He was incredibly loving." But that morning, on Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook and gunned down Noah, along with 19 other children and six staff members.