[1][2][3] Fake news sites deliberately publish hoaxes and disinformation to drive web traffic inflamed by social media.
[7] The New York Times pointed out that within a strict definition, "fake news" on the Internet referred to a fictitious article which was fabricated with the deliberate motivation to defraud readers, generally with the goal of profiting through clickbait.
[8] PolitiFact described fake news as fabricated content designed to fool readers and subsequently made viral through the Internet to crowds that increase its dissemination.
[9] The New York Times noted in a December 2016 article that fake news had previously maintained a presence on the Internet and within tabloid journalism in the years prior to the 2016 U.S.
[70][71] Examples of countries with political actors that have been confirmed or suspected to be involved with fake news website networks include Brazil,[72] India,[73] Iran,[3] Italy,[74] the People's Republic of China,[75] the Philippines,[76] Russia,[77] Ukraine (Luhansk),[78] and the United States.
[98] The following table lists websites that have been both considered by fact-checkers as distributing false news and are run by organizations that have been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.
Warned by the US Food and Drug Administration for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 for "claims on videos posted on your websites that establish the intended use of your products and misleadingly represent them as safe and/or effective for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19."
Many of those viral articles have been debunked with official, medically supported explanations that include sudden infant death syndrome, pneumonia and accidental asphyxiation.
Examples of countries with troll farms that have been confirmed or suspected to be involved with fake news website networks include Cambodia,[287] Ghana,[288] North Macedonia,[289] the Republic of Georgia,[290] and Russia.
While the stated purpose is for users to prank their friends, many of the resulting false stories have spread on social media and have led to harassment.
[292] Many fake news websites can be assessed as likely being part of the same network campaign if some combination of the following are true: Republished a hoax about worldwide blackout, a false claim that had been spreading since 2012.