Analysis

Macedonian Fake News Network Shuts Down Dozens Of Websites After Joint Investigation By Lead Stories & Nieuwscheckers

Back in November of 2018 fact checking sites Lead Stories and Nieuwscheckers collaborated to map a network of Macedonian fake news websites that had published thousands and thousands of articles... [Read the full story]
How A Tattoo Led Us To The Macedonian Trucker Delivering Loads of Fake News To The Internet

The joint investigation by Lead Stories and Nieuwscheckers into a network of Macedonian fake news sites reached a dead end last month: we knew most of the sites involved and... [Read the full story]
The Kumanovo-connection: Macedonian Spam Clans Still Make Money With Fake News About Muslims and Migrants

A Macedonian military man appears to be one of the driving forces behind a network of fake news websites that reached millions of people with articles often inciting hatred against... [Read the full story]
Here Are The Tools And Methods We Used To Map A Macedonian Fake News Network And The People Behind It

Sherlock Holmes had his magnifying glass. Hercule Poirot relied on his "little grey cells". But the 21st century internet detective needs more than that to catch the bad guys. In... [Read the full story]
Decline and Fall Of A Macedonian Fake News Network: Numbers Indicate Facebook's Measures Forced Desperate Move To Twitter

Although Macedonian fake news merchants still generate thousands of Facebook likes and shares, the platform's recent measures against bad actors have drastically reduced their reach. The next step in the... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories Fastest At Debunking 2018 Top Hoaxes Identified By BuzzFeed News

A few days ago BuzzFeed's Craig Silverman published his annual overview of the top 50 biggest on-line hoaxes of the previous year. Just like last year we used this list... [Read the full story]
Fake News: James Woods Hit By Death Hoax, First Victim of New Christopher Blair Site

Did actor and conservative commentator James Woods pass away? No, that's not true: his obituary was published by a new liberal satire website run by Christopher Blair on which he... [Read the full story]
Old Network of Anti-Islam Fake News Websites Turns To Twitter Trolling

Tara, Jesica, Ana, Lora: since a few weeks dozens of trolls on Twitter are dangling bait in front of American Trump supporters. Their goal: bring in as many clicks as... [Read the full story]
The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List

Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and... [Read the full story]
Fake News Website YourNewsWire Renamed NewsPunch (Again) -- Possibly To Avoid Filters

YourNewsWire used to be one of the most notorious websites spreading fake news, often by using bits and pieces of real news articles from other websites to create new articles... [Read the full story]
BBC Interviews Christopher Blair And Maarten Schenk in "The Faker and The Fact Checker"

Recently the BBC World Service's "Trending" programme did a two part story about Christopher Blair, the liberal troll and internet hoaxer well known to anybody who has been following Lead... [Read the full story]
Satirical Fake News Writer Christopher Blair Announces Midterm Election Moratorium

Readers of this site are probably aware that some of the content found on Macedonian fake news websites is often copied directly from the satirical sites and Facebook pages of... [Read the full story]
Fake ABC News Website Taken Down After DMCA Complaint -- Already Replaced One Day Later By New Fake News Site

A story about protesters vandalizing Brett Kavanaugh's house to the tune of $11,000 in damages went viral about four days ago and was first debunked by Lead Stories. It originated... [Read the full story]
Is The Fake News Generator Back In Business? -- It Took a Single Dash and $12 To Evade Filters

Less than two weeks ago we reported on a network of prank websites centered around thefakenewsgenerator.com being blocked as spam by Facebook. But now it seems the site is gearing... [Read the full story]
Reign of "New Fake News King" Already At An End? The Fake News Generator Blocked By Facebook

Recently a rash of new viral fake news stories started turning up on Facebook, all from sites associated with thefakenewsgenerator.com, a site run by a man named Justin Hook. He... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories and Factmata Announce Collaboration In Fight Against Fake News

COLORADO SPRINGS/BRUSSELS/LONDON -- Fact checking website Lead Stories (leadstories.com) and artificial intelligence startup Factmata (factmata.com) are happy to announce they will be collaborating in the fight against fake news by... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories and Unfakery Announce Collaboration In Fight Against Fake News

COLORADO SPRINGS/BRUSSELS/HOUSTON -- Fact checking website Lead Stories (leadstories.com) and the fakery education and debunking Facebook page Unfakery (Facebook.com/Unfakery) are happy to announce they will be collaborating in the fight... [Read the full story]
Is Fake News Website YourNewsWire Being Throttled To Death By Facebook?

Regular readers of this site are doubtlessly familiar with notorious fake news website YourNewsWire.com. Over the years we have debunked countless stories from it, and we are not the only... [Read the full story]
UPDATE: Now Restored - Christopher Blair's Satirical Fake News Website America's Last Line of Defense Blocked For Spamming By Facebook

Another one of Christopher Blair's websites bites the dust. Lead Stories just learned that links to any article on the website "America's Last Line of Defense" are now considered "spam"... [Read the full story]
Exclusive: Fake News Website Owner Responsible For Michael J. Fox Death Hoax Denies Phishing Allegations

On Sunday August 5, 2018 a fake news website using the URL yahoonews-us.com and a logo from Yahoo! News ran a death hoax about actor Michael J. Fox. Lead Stories... [Read the full story]
Fake News Site Pushing Michael J. Fox Death Hoax Marked As Unsafe By Google (Along With Lead Stories Debunk!)

Yesterday Lead Stories reported on a death hoax involving actor Michael J. Fox which was published by a site pretending to be Yahoo! News: Fake News: Beloved Actor And Back... [Read the full story]
Fake News: Infowars And Alex Jones Have NOT Been Permanently Banned From Facebook (Yet?)

Were Infowars and Alex Jones permanently banned from Facebook? That remains to be seen. Infowars writer Paul Joseph Watson claimed on Twitter the ban that took down their pages on... [Read the full story]
Not Fake News: Facebook suspends conspiracy theorist & InfoWars host Alex Jones

From the "about damn time" department" comes this trending report that is not fake. Facebook moved against the personal page of InfoWars creator Alex Jones. We know it is true... [Read the full story]
Lead Stories Launches YouTube Channel With Automatically Generated Videos Of All Fact Checks

If you have ever visited YouTube you may have noticed news articles are being stolen by shady YouTube channels uploading videos in which a robot voice reads out the text... [Read the full story]
The Inside Scoop On How Lead Stories Got Serial Plagiarist Shawn Rice Busted By BuzzFeed

Earlier today Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed broke the news that business and marketing website Bussiness2Community had deleted over 6000 articles written by Shawn Rice (brother of the site's founder Brian... [Read the full story]
Newest Site From 'Ghana' Fake News Network Copies Christopher Blair's Footer

About three weeks ago Lead Stories reported on a network of fake news websites apparently centered around Ghana in Africa that was responsible for several huge death hoaxes. After our... [Read the full story]
Paul Horner's Old Website Taken Over By Vietnamese Spammer Stealing Fact Checks From Snopes

Newsexaminer.net, a website that used to be run by Paul Horner before the fake news superstar died last year has apparently been taken over by a spammer from Vietnam who... [Read the full story]
Global Fake News Network Responsible For Dozens of Death Hoaxes Shuts Down After Ghana Connections Revealed

Forget Macedonia, the real capital of fake news might just be Accra in Ghana On April 17, 2018 former First Lady Barbara Bush passed away but a full day earlier... [Read the full story]
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]

Analysis

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Macedonian Fake News Network Shuts Down Dozens Of Websites After Joint Investigation By Lead Stories & Nieuwscheckers

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Macedonian Fake News Network Shuts Down Dozens Of Websites After Joint Investigation By Lead Stories & Nieuwscheckers

How A Tattoo Led Us To The Macedonian Trucker Delivering Loads of Fake News To The Internet

The Kumanovo-connection: Macedonian Spam Clans Still Make Money With Fake News About Muslims and Migrants

Here Are The Tools And Methods We Used To Map A Macedonian Fake News Network And The People Behind It

Decline and Fall Of A Macedonian Fake News Network: Numbers Indicate Facebook's Measures Forced Desperate Move To Twitter

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