Fake news websites (also referred to as hoax news websites) are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, these websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain.
Fake news websites monetize their content by exploiting the vulnerabilities of programmatic ad trading, which is a type of online advertising in which ads are traded through machine-to-machine auction in a real-time bidding system.
Fake news websites have promoted political falsehoods in India, Germany, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sweden, Mexico, Myanmar, and the United States. Many sites originate in, or are promoted by, Russia, or North Macedonia among others. Some media analysts have seen them as a threat to democracy. In 2016, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning that the Russian government was using "pseudo-news agencies" and Internet trolls as disinformation propaganda to weaken confidence in democratic values.
In 2015, the Swedish Security Service, Sweden's national security agency, issued a report concluding Russia was using fake news to inflame "splits in society" through the proliferation of propaganda. Sweden's Ministry of Defence tasked its Civil Contingencies Agency with combating fake news from Russia. Fraudulent news affected politics in Indonesia and the Philippines, where there was simultaneously widespread usage of social media and limited resources to check the veracity of political claims. German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of the societal impact of "fake sites, bots, trolls".
Fraudulent articles spread through social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and several officials within the U.S. Intelligence Community said that Russia was engaged in spreading fake news. Computer security company FireEye concluded that Russia used social media to spread fake news stories as part of a cyberwarfare campaign. Google and Facebook banned fake sites from using online advertising. Facebook launched a partnership with fact-checking websites to flag fraudulent news and hoaxes; debunking organizations that joined the initiative included: Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and PolitiFact. U.S. President Barack Obama said a disregard for facts created a "dust cloud of nonsense". Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Alex Younger called fake news propaganda online dangerous for democratic nations.
Definition
The New York Times has defined "fake news" on the internet as fictitious articles deliberately fabricated to deceive readers, generally with the goal of profiting through clickbait. PolitiFact has described fake news as fabricated content designed to fool readers and subsequently made viral through the Internet to crowds that increase its dissemination. Others have taken as constitutive the "systemic features inherent in the design of the sources and channels through which fake news proliferates", for example by playing to the audience's cognitive biases, heuristics, and partisan affiliation. Some fake news websites use website spoofing, structured to make visitors believe they are visiting mainstream media sources like ABC News or MSNBC.
Fake news maintained a presence on the internet and in tabloid journalism in the years prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Before the election campaign involving Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, fake news had not impacted the election process and subsequent events to such a high degree. Subsequent to the 2016 election, the issue of fake news turned into a political weapon, with supporters of left-wing politics saying that supporters of right-wing politics spread false news, while the latter claimed that they were being "censored". Due to these back-and-forth complaints, the definition of fake news as used for such polemics has become more vague.
Pre-Internet history Unethical journalistic practices existed in printed media for hundreds of years before the advent of the Internet. Yellow journalism, reporting from a standard which is devoid of integrity and professional ethics, was pervasive during the time period in history known as the Gilded Age, and unethical journalists would engage in fraud by fabricating stories, interviews, and made-up names for scholars. During the 1890s, the spread of this unethical news sparked violence and conflicts. Both Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst fomented yellow journalism in order to increase profits, which helped lead to misunderstandings which became partially responsible for the outset of the Spanish–American War in 1898. J.B. Montgomery-M'Govern wrote a column harshly critical of "fake news" in 1898, saying that what characterized "fake news" was sensationalism and "the publication of articles absolutely false, which tend to mislead an ignorant or unsuspecting public."
A radio broadcast from Gleiwitz by German soldier Karl Hornack, pretending to be a Polish invader who had captured the station, was taken at face value by other stations, in Germany and abroad, fueling Adolf Hitler's declaration of war on Poland the next day. According to USA Today, newspapers which have a history of commonly publishing fake news have included Globe, Weekly World News, and The National Enquirer.
Characteristics Common characteristics of fake news websites, as noted by many fact-checkers and journalists, are sorted into several categories:
Source credibility Impostor sites that appear to be legitimate news sites, newspapers, television stations or radio stations, often using spoofed URLs, typosquatting or otherwise imitating the layout and graphics of established news sites. Impersonating defunct news sources. A disclaimer stating that its content is fictitious (especially on satire sites), or alternatively, no disclaimer at all. Little to no contact information. Little to no information about the source's "mission, staff members or physical location". A site name that has been changed after being repeatedly corrected by fact-checking organizations. "A state-controlled site, a private blog or ... a site containing satirical content". No disclosure of editorial responsibility. No "legal notice for any commercial offer". Obscure or private website registration, such as using a proxy service to purchase the domain. Fabricated or incoherent domain registration metadata. Established in a news desert or otherwise has low local news coverage due to mass layoffs of journalists. The site includes both true and false content. Article headlines Clickbait headlines, with further signs of content with questionable veracity in the article text itself. Article bylines Fictitious author. Recycled photo in a different website by a different author. No byline at all. The author may have a reputation for spreading false information. A real claimed author, but who typically writes about a different topic than in the given article. Hidden byline. Article citations The article cites sources that do not support the claim(s) made. For example, "quotes are abbreviated or taken out of context". The article cites sources that are fictitious. The article fabricates quotes. The article makes a claim that is not covered in credible sources. The article contains false or out-of-context statistics. The article is a repost of a story from another site (typically a satire/parody or impostor site), "with or without attribution" and often "omitting indications the [story is] made up". The article contains out-of-context images. The article contains fabricated images. The article cites unreliable or questionable sources. The article copies content from established news outlets without proper attribution. Use of large language models to generate content, sometimes evidenced by the inclusion of text prompts, LLM output phrases and/or hallucinations in the articles themselves. Datetimes Taking a true news story out of context, for example, by reposting a story about an older event and claiming that it is directly related to an event happening currently. Reposting a story from a credible source with a different header and publication date. Psychological biases Stories are written to fit a target audience's confirmation biases. Stories contain content that appeals to emotions or is meant to stimulate psychological triggers, including anger and even violence. Story syntax The story contains misspellings or "sensational wording". Use of article spinning. Claim credibility The story contains incoherent or unrealistic claims or images. Lack of evidence to support given claim(s). Presence of scams. Website layout A "dubious" or "unprofessional-looking" layout. "Excessive advertising", especially from services such as Content.ad, RevContent.com, or AdStyle. Website logo created by text-to-image model. Presence of malware (including scripts for cryptocurrency mining). Funding "Content [is] paid for by a company or politician or other potentially biased source". Incomplete or obscured disclaimer on funding or sponsorship.
Fake news website network identification Many fake news websites can be assessed as likely being part of the same network campaign if some combination of the following are true:
They share the same Google Analytics account They share the same Google AdSense account They share the same IP address(es) They share the same Gravatar ID They share the same New Relic ID They share the same Quantcast ID They share the same Matomo ID Tracker Link spam: They refer to each other's domains They publish the exact or near-exact same content, especially content that has been plagiarized from other sources They have the same or similar designs (layouts, bylines, privacy policies, "About" pages, etc.) They have the same owner(s) or hosting provider, based on domain registration information They use a technique called "domain hopping" - repeatedly switching domain names to stay ahead of advertising blacklists on social media.
Prominent sources
Prominent among fraudulent news sites include false propaganda created by individuals in the countries of Russia, North Macedonia, Romania, and the United States.
North Macedonia
Much of the fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential election season was traced to adolescents in North Macedonia, specifically Veles. It is a town of 50,000 in the middle of the country, with high unemployment, where the average wage is $4,800. The income from fake news was characterized by NBC News as a gold rush. Adults supported this income, saying they were happy the youths were working. The mayor of Veles, Slavcho Chadiev, said he was not bothered by their actions, as they were not against Macedonian law and their finances were taxable. Chadiev said he was happy if deception from Veles influenced the results of the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Trump.
BuzzFeed News and The Guardian separately investigated and found teenagers in Veles created over 100 sites spreading fake news stories supportive of Donald Trump. The teenagers experimented with left slanted fake stories about Bernie Sanders, but found that pro-Trump fictions were more popular. Prior to the 2016 election the teenagers gained revenues from fake medical advice sites. One youth named Alex stated, in an August 2016 interview with The Guardian, that this fraud would remain profitable regardless of who won the election. Alex explained he plagiarized material for articles by copying and pasting from other websites. This could net them thousands of dollars daily, but they averaged only a few thousand per month.