Analysis

Welcome to the all-new and improved leadstories.com. After five years of the same old design, we decided it was time for a new look. We will, of course, continue to debunk and fact check the latest rumors, falsehoods and questionable memes making the rounds on the internet. But we will be doing it on a new and shiny website. Don't…

Facebook users have been seeing some strange headlines lately, thanks largely to a clickbaiter from Pakistan. "It's Official: Fox Information Terminates Decide Pirro's Contract" There is a large network of websites using political content to draw an audience to the sites where some dubious advertising techniques are being employed. All of the content published on these websites is lifted from…

Editor's Note by Lead Stories Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke: Three days after a virtual apocalypse wiped out hundreds of fake people used to run a foreign pro-Trump network on Facebook, we found signs of life among a few dozen surviving profiles. Their creators in Vietnam appeared to be revising their identities and assigning them new duties to support a handful of…

Just days after Lead Stories revealed hundreds of "fake faces" used to mask a Vietnamese-based network of Facebook profiles and groups promoting political content on American timelines, those "people who do not exist" vanished from the social platform. Facebook announced on December 20, 2019, that it took TheBL.com network down for "engaging in foreign and government interference." Hours after they…

EDITORS NOTE: Meet Carolina Chaney. Take a good look at her Facebook profile photo. Maybe she looks like your kid's math teacher or your doctor. Privacy settings block us from seeing anything about her, but we do see she is one of 11 administrators of the "Trump - 2020 KAG!#" Facebook group. Carolina started in that role on Monday,…

Earlier this week Lead Stories already reported that Clint Eastwood was NOT dead, despite what a YouTube video was claiming: Fake News: Clint Eastwood is NOT Dead | Lead Stories Hoax Alert Did Clint Eastwood recently die? No, that is not true: It is a celebrity death hoax. The "Dirty Harry" actor is alive and well as of September 1,…

A viral video that was digitally altered to make it appear that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slurring her words and drunk has raised questions about what social platforms can do to limit fake content's spread. Since Lead Stories was the first of Facebook's 3rd-party fact checkers to flag the faked video, we can now share how effective our…

Lead Stories is happy to support Fact-Checking Day 2019! ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (April 2, 2019) - In most of the world, April 1 is a day for fools. April 2is a day for facts. Today is International Fact-Checking Day, and the Poynter Institute'sInternational Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) will once again coordinate activities and amplifyresources that empower global citizens of all ages…

Update: Yes, of course this was an April Fools joke :-) For years we here at Lead Stories have put the term "F*ke N*ws" in every headline but it is time to put a stop to the practice. For a long time academic experts like Claire Wardle have argued against using the phrase because it simply covers too many meanings…

Hoaxes know no borders, especially in Europe. That's why the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) is proud to announce the launch of FactCheckEU, a collaborative effort from 19 European fact-checking outlets to tackle disinformation and hoaxes, ahead of the 2019 European parliamentary elections in May. FactCheckEU is available at factcheckeu.info. Our work will be shared in 10 different languages, and everything…

Things used to be very simple and clear-cut here at Lead Stories. We used our Trendolizer engine to look for things that were trending online that were not true (but which seemed to be believed by many people anyway). Then we would write an article explaining why that thing was not true and we would publish it. People wondering if…

It appears the feud between Snopes and self-described internet troll Christopher Blair keeps on going: earlier this week he took to Facebook to announce a new parody website that explicitly takes aim at fact checking website Snopes by using a similar color and logo and which also mimics their article format. The new site is named Sdopes (archived here) and…

COLORADO SPRINGS - Lead Stories is happy to announce we are now part of Facebook's partnership with various fact checking organisations around the world which aims to fight misinformation on the platform. Lead Stories will continue using its Trendolizer engine to detect viral content from known fake news, satire and prank websites but will now also get access to lists…

One of the Macedonians identified by Nieuwscheckers and Lead Stories to be behind a network of sites publishing hate-mongering fake news turns out to be a major in the military intelligence service of Macedonia. Another one is an active-duty soldier. Their activities are currently being investigated by the Ministry of Defense. A third one is still employed as a police…

Back in November of 2018 fact checking sites Lead Stories and Nieuwscheckers collaborated to map a network of Macedonian fake news websites that had published thousands and thousands of articles since 2016, mostly stolen from other places, many of them fake and often promoting hate, racism or conspiracy theories. The stories racked up at least 7.1 million engagements on various…

The joint investigation by Lead Stories and Nieuwscheckers into a network of Macedonian fake news sites reached a dead end last month: we knew most of the sites involved and had a pretty good idea how their posts were being spread via fake Twitter accounts but we had no idea who was behind it all. Until we noticed the tattoo...…

A Macedonian military man appears to be one of the driving forces behind a network of fake news websites that reached millions of people with articles often inciting hatred against muslims and migrants. Together with friends and family he has been spreading his messages via Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes under their own names, sometimes using fake identities. A look behind…

Sherlock Holmes had his magnifying glass. Hercule Poirot relied on his "little grey cells". But the 21st century internet detective needs more than that to catch the bad guys. In this article we present some of the tools and tricks we used to figure out who was behind a large network of websites endlessly reposting fake, sensationalized or outdated stories…

Although Macedonian fake news merchants still generate thousands of Facebook likes and shares, the platform's recent measures against bad actors have drastically reduced their reach. The next step in the arms race takes the battle to Twitter. An investigation by Lead Stories and Nieuwscheckers into a network of fake news websites run by several Macedonians revealed a sprawling network of…

A few days ago BuzzFeed's Craig Silverman published his annual overview of the top 50 biggest on-line hoaxes of the previous year. Just like last year we used this list as a basis to do some analysis to see how Lead Stories did compared to other fact checking websites. But this year we used the full top 50 instead of…