The runup to the U.S. presidential election has been an unprecedented amount of misinformation about the voting process and mail-in ballots. It’s almost certain that misinformation and disinformation will increase, including, importantly, in the aftermath of the election. Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information, and disinformation is misinformation that is knowingly and...
Facebook Moves To Target Misinformation Before Election
Facebook is trying just two months before the U.S. election to better police political misinformation on its platform, a tacit acknowledgement that the social network is rife with falsehoods that could sway the vote. The company said Thursday it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election...
Distrust of Authority Fuels Virus Misinformation for Latinos
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When Claudia Guzman suspected she had caught the coronavirus, her friends and family were full of advice: Don’t quarantine. Don’t get tested. A homemade tea will help cure you. “They were saying, ‘Don’t go to the hospital,’ because supposedly, if you are admitted into the hospital, they...
Misinformation on Coronavirus Is Proving Highly Contagious
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — As the world races to find a vaccine and a treatment for COVID-19, there is seemingly no antidote in sight for the burgeoning outbreak of coronavirus conspiracy theories, hoaxes, anti-mask myths and sham cures. The phenomenon, unfolding largely on social media, escalated this week when President Donald...
Video Edited to Suggest Biden Made Racist Remark
A video of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that was selectively edited to falsely suggest he made racist remarks during a recent speech made the rounds Thursday on social media, raking in more than a million views on one tweet alone. Experts have been warning about the dangers of selectively...
Facebook to Tackle Efforts to Interfere With 2020 US Census
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook plans to clamp down on attempts to use its services to interfere with the 2020 U.S. census, including the posting of misleading information about when and how to participate, who can participate and what happens when people do. Facebook and other social media companies have been...
UK Voters Choose a New Government to Resolve Brexit Impasse
LONDON — Britons who have endured more than three years of wrangling over their country’s messy divorce from the European Union cast ballots Thursday in an election billed as a way out of the Brexit stalemate in the deeply divided nation. On a dank, gray day in most of the...
Facebook Launches a News Section – and Will Pay Publishers
Over the course of its 15 year history, Facebook has variously ignored news organizations while eating their advertising revenue, courted them for video projects it subsequently abandoned, and then largely cut their stories out of its newsfeeds. Now it plans to pay them for news headlines — reportedly millions of dollars...
Facebook's Zuckerberg the Focus of Latest Doctored Video
NEW YORK — Three weeks after Facebook refused to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a taste of his own medicine: fake footage showing him gloating over his one-man domination of the world. It's the latest flap over deviously altered...
Facebook Isn’t Deleting the Fake Pelosi Video. Should It?
SAN FRANCISCO — When a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — one altered to show the Democratic leader slurring her words — began making the rounds on Facebook last week, the social network didn't take it down. Instead, it "downranked" the video, a behind-the-scenes move intended to limit its spread....