Disinformation

A study released Sunday by The Global Disinformation Index, a UK nonprofit that rates sites’ trustworthiness, found that 70% of roughly 1,700 disinformation sites it analyzed were getting so-called “programmatic ads” — ads placed automatically — from Google, putting brand names such as Audi and Sprint next to junk content.

This is what we're up against

Bad actors spreading disinformation online to fuel intolerance.

Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.

Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.

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Sophisticated fake news attacks targeting financial markets have become increasingly common. In 2016, fraudsters created an exact replica of a reputable news site and published false allegations about French construction giant Vinci SA's accounting practices. The result was immediate—a staggering 18% drop in the company's share price, erasing 6... See more

Throughout media history, media technologies and services have evolved to serve functions that are ultimately very different from those for which they were created. Radio was created to facilitate ship-to-shore communication. The VCR was created to facilitate home video recording, with its creators having no idea of the massive video rental/sales

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Bots Riding the Waves of a Trending Hashtag

19% of the profiles in the conversation were identified as fake accounts . On January 28, the most active day in the conversation, when #BoycottRipCurl was on X’s top trending hashtags, inauthentic profiles were responsible for over 30% of the discourse .

“There has always been good placements of ads and bad placements of ads and media buying companies have always prided themselves on trying to get the context right,” said Charlie Crowe, chairman of the media and marketing publisher C Squared. “The difference in the online world is that it’s all done by an algorithm. The human element is taken out... See more

Where has the Wayfair conspiracy spread?Although it began in the US, the conspiracy theory soon became a global trend.According to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool, the term Wayfair has generated 4.4 million engagements on Instagram. It also spread rapidly on public groups and pages on Facebook, resulting in more... See more