A slew of fake news sites have once more copied an article (this time titled "Anthony Weiner Placed In Protective Custody-Will Turn State's Evidence Against Hillary") from satirical fake news website The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense.
The story opens:
Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democrat who can't seem to go a year without texting some unsuspecting young girl a picture of his penis, has disappeared from his daily life. According to the US Marshal's Service, Weiner has been taken into protective custody and placed in a safe house until he can testify against Hillary Clinton and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin.
Weiner, whose laptop was seized over a sex scandal last year, was found to be in possession of eleventy thousand top-secret emails that could have brought America to its knees had they fallen into enemy hands. The emails were found to have been copied directly from Hillary Clinton's private server.
Furthermore it claims Weiner was threatened by the Clinton camp or he would be "joining Vince Foster" and that congressman Trey Gowdy is spending a further $11 million on the investigation.
It also says that Weiner will enter the witness protection program after extensive plastic surgery.
All these claims are not true for one simple reason: The Resistance: The Last Line of Defense is a fake news website that carries following disclaimer on its about page:
DISCLAIMER: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don't necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real.
The site also tends to include nonsensical phrases or insults hints in the list of "categories" under the article titles:
According to Buzzfeed the site was originally meant to troll conservatives with over the top satirical articles but now appears to be used as a 'source' by a large network of actual fake news sites (not related to the original creator) that all repost the same articles mentioning it as the source but not acknowlediging the satire disclaimer. This causes many people to believe the fake stories especially when they are being shared on social media where all context is removed and only the title, image and description remain. Sites in the network appear to include:
- American News
- Newsbreakshere
- Amposts
- Conservative Info corner
- Conservative Army
- Open Magazines
- True Trumpers
- Blue Vision News
- Conservative Flash News
- Red Country
- Newsfeedhunter
Still, many people apparently remain unaware of the satirical nature of these stories as you can see in the Trendolizer graph at the end of this article. If you notice anyone spreading the fake story around you can help by pointing them to this article here because nobody likes being duped by satire repackaged as fake news.
