Category for fraud/fake news?

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sueyoung

December 06, 2016 01:15

Fake news sites are prominent now with the election news and I've started tracking them. I've run into a number of them that are variations of legitimate news sites such as ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC. I'd like to mark them as fraudulent on this site, I've marked them as frauds on Web of Trust.

If you look up the whois on abcnews.com.co, cnn.com.de, or nbc.com.co you'll see what I mean. They all go back to one person, Paul Horner. 

People are entitled to different political opinions but I'm concerned with serious misrepresentation and copyright violation.

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  mattwilson9090 December 06, 2016 01:20

  The big thing to know is, how are you defining "fake news site"? Would it include sites such as The Onion? How about Breitbart or the Huffington Post?

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  gotcha- January 11, 2017 18:31

  I don't think "fake news" is doable, however I could imagine that a general "Fraud" or "Trademark impersonation" category could be good to have unless that type of page is already defined somewere else. 

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  stan.forrest September 11, 2018 16:04

  I’m also seeing a need to mark sites that promote debunked or absurd conspiracy theories, e.g. InfoWars. Alex Jones presents himself as a journalist, and his stories as genuine news. But it took social media years to realize that he demonstrates a reckless disregard for objective truth, if not deliberate intent to undermine it altogether. OTOH, he doesn’t quite meet the standard for the Hate/Discrimination category, as most of his performances don’t target protected groups. There are many, many such sites at all the fringes of the political & social landscape; and we can only expect more to pop up as the social media giants wake up to their shenanigans and ban them.

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