Analysis

Christopher Blair AKA Busta Troll Starts Several New Trolling Websites (And A Porn Site Network)

Regular readers of Lead Stories know we've been following the exploits of Christopher Blair for quite some time now. From taking over right wing Facebook pages with hordes of goats... [Read the full story]
American Troll: John Prager Takes Us Inside Christopher Blair's Secret Troll Cave (Part 1/2)

Readers of Lead Stories know we've been following the work of Christopher Blair (featured in the Boston Globe today by coincidence) for quite some time now. For those of you... [Read the full story]
Why Lead Stories Debunks Satire Stories

We sometimes get asked by readers why we bother fact checking and debunking stories that were clearly meant as satire and which are properly labeled as such by the sites... [Read the full story]
Looming Crisis As Experts Warn The World Is Running Out Of Facts To Check

Experts have warned a crisis is imminent as the world is running out of facts to check. A recent study by the Federal Institute for Statistics on Hoaxes (F.I.S.H.) estimated... [Read the full story]
Fake News: Oilsjt Analytica Does NOT Actually Guess Your Name

Can the website Oilsjt Analytica really guess your name just based on the answers you give to a few questions? Many internet users were stumped today by the website that... [Read the full story]
Defunct Fake News Website NCScooper Is Back As "Gish Gallop"

Remember the Nevada County Scooper? It was a satirical fake news website that disappeared somewhere in 2017 but before it went away it was responsible for such fake story titles... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories Now Tackling Fake News Faster Through Automation

You may have noticed we've upped the tempo a bit at Lead Stories in the past few days, posting more stories per day than we used to. And you may... [Read the full story]
Forget Russian Bots: Fake Native Americans Are Using Russian Characters To Avoid Fake News And Plagiarism Detectors

Compare following two headlines: Thе rеаsоn аrmy hеlіcоptеrs аrе nаmеd аftеr nаtіvе trіbеs wіll mаkе yоu smіlе The reason Army helicopters are named after native tribes will make you smile... [Read the full story]
EUvsDisinfo Publicly Retracts Disinformation Labels After Lawsuit Threats And Political Pressure

The website of EUvsDisinfo, a project set up by the East StratCom Taskforce of the European Union to fight pro-Kremlin disinformation, has published a public retraction (archived here) on the... [Read the full story]
BREAKING: Dutch Parliament Approves Motion Calling To Disband EUvsDisinfo

The Dutch parliament has approved a motion today calling for the EU to disband the EUvsDisinfo project, a part of the East StratCom Taskforce of the European Union set up... [Read the full story]
Facebook Appears To Be Down, Fake News Sites Hardest Hit

Reports are coming in from all over the world that a major outage is happening at Facebook. According to DownDetector.com the outages seem to be concentrated in Western Europe and... [Read the full story]
Twitter Users Are Complaining About a #Twitterlockout and a #Twitterpurge

It appears Twitter has temporarily locked a large number of accounts for exhibiting "automated behaviour that violates the Twitter Rules". Users are urged to enable verification of their account via... [Read the full story]
Dutch Newspaper And Two Websites Sue European Union Over Fake News Accusations

Popular Dutch weblogs geenstijl.nl and tpo.nl along with the publisher of regional Dutch newspaper De Gelderlander have filed a lawsuit against several European Union defendants inlcuding anti-fake news website EUvsDisinfo... [Read the full story]
A Closer Look At The Sites In Newsweek's Al Franken vs. The Alt-Right Bot Network Story

A recent Newsweek article titled "How an Alt-Right Bot Network Took Down Al Franken" published on February 19th 2018 caused quite a stir online with its claims a Russian bot... [Read the full story]
Fake News: Various Celebrities Who "Peacefully Passed By A Home" Are NOT Dead

Wrestler Mark Calloway, actor Matt LeBlanc, Rapper DMX (aka Earl Simmons), singer Jennifer Lopez, Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith), rapper Tekashi69 (aka Daniel Hernandez), actress Mahira Khan, Dwayne "The... [Read the full story]
Fake News: Soros And The DNC Are NOT Clients of Snopes.com

On February 15th 2018 an image was posted on the subforum "The Donald" on Reddit (archived here) that was titled "SNOPES.com's only clients are Soros and the DNC". The text... [Read the full story]
Twitter Appears To Be Blocking All Blogspot.co.uk Links

Something weird appears to be going on with the sharing of links on Twitter to articles on the UK domain name blogspot.co.uk of Google's Blogspot/Blogger service. Blogger is one of... [Read the full story]
Update: Macedonian Officer Launches New Fake News Website

Remember Marjan Zlatanovski, the Macedonian officer at the Ministry of Defence of Macedonia that we wrote about last week? He and his wife had been running a network of fake... [Read the full story]
Oxford Study Does NOT Prove Right-Wingers Share and Believe More Fake News

A study released on February 6th 2018 by the University of Oxford as part of the Computational Propaganda Research Project was widely used as the source for news articles with... [Read the full story]
Meet The Macedonian Officer Running A Ring Of Fake News Websites

Lead Stories recently became aware of beaware.com, a website with a domain name registered to a man named "Marjan Zlatanovski" on January 3rd 2018 according to WHOIS records (archived). At... [Read the full story]
Some Fake News Scammers Just Scammed Themselves By Buying A Worthless Domain Name

Some scammers probably thought they struck gold when they bought the expired domain name of an old satirical fake news website. It seems their plan was to put up a... [Read the full story]
This Fake News Network Specializes In Celebrity Death Hoaxes And Visa Free Travel

Question: What do British singer David Cassidy, American serial killer Charles Manson, British comedian Ken Dodd, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and British actor Malcom Hebden have in common? Answer:... [Read the full story]
This Website Keeps Making Up Fake Celebrity Quotes And New Domain Names

Meet the website "American President Donald J. Trump" which is published by "A Tested and Trustworthy Team" according to its own subheader. But is it really? First of all a... [Read the full story]
Newborn Fake News Websites Replace Recently Shut Down Ones Within Days

Fascinating to observe it happening "in the wild" and almost live. Last friday the fake news website conservativedaily.info was still happily posting fake news stories (including one that we debunked... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories Fastest At Finding And Debunking Top Fake News Stories Of 2017

Buzzfeed released an analysis of the top 50 fake news stories of 2017 which you should definitely read. Many of the stories in the list have been debunked at some... [Read the full story]
Fake News Website Conservative Stamp Banned By Hosting Provider After DMCA Blitz

As we reported in our previous article liberal troll extraordinaire Christopher Blair has been on the warpath against "Conservative Stamp", a "real" fake news website that was stealing content from... [Read the full story]
Christopher Blair Sends DMCA Takedown To Fake News Website Conservative Stamp, Hilarity Ensues

For regular readers of Lead Stories Christopher Blair needs no more introduction. They can skip the next paragraph. Others are kindly invited to keep reading. Blair is a self-professed liberal... [Read the full story]
Fake ABC News Website Taken Down Along With Other Fake News Site

Recently a fake news website named abcnews-us.com which imitated the real ABC News posted a flurry of fake news stories: A napping morgue employee being cremated by accident Legal marijuana... [Read the full story]
Christopher Blair Launches New Satire Site Named Ladies Of Liberty

Prolific prankster and internet troll Christopher Blair just launched another website to poke fun at unsuspecting conservatives who tend to think his stories are real and who often like, share... [Read the full story]
Fake News Site Freedum Junkshun Renamed God Luvs America Most After Facebook Ban

Earlier this week we reported that fake/satire site "Freedum Junkshun" had been put on a blacklist by Facebook so it became impossible to share links to it on the social... [Read the full story]

Analysis

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