An article titled "Joe Biden Just CONFIRMED That He Is Running For President In 2020 And It Has America Applauding!" appeared on February 19th 2018 (archived here) on a website by the name "The Political Voice" on the domain name politicsfx.com. However the title was immediatedly contradicted by the first paragraph:
Continuing the months of high speculation, former Vice President Joe Biden in a new interview informed longtime policy aides that a White House campaign in 2020 is a definite possibility, The Associated Press reported Sunday.
Indicating something is a possibility is absolutely not the same thing as confirming it. It is possible you might win the lottery tomorrow. That doesn't mean you have...
The article is basically a rehash from the AP story published the day before which speculates about Biden running in 2020 but which makes no definite statements as to if it is happening or not. The misleading story managed to rack up almost 10,000 Facebook engagements in 24 hours despite contradicting itself in the first sentence.
The site "The Political Voice" appears to be published under several different domain names that all show the exact same website with the same articles. Here is just a small selection:
- multipolitics.com
- politicalpalace.com
- truthclip.com
- truthwiz.com
- politicsspot.com
- politicstool.com
- multipolitics.com
- politicsfx.com
it is unclear who is behind these websites as they are all registered anonymously and they don't appear to list any contact information. This is not the hallmark of a reliable news network and we suspect the plethora of domain names is a tactic to avoid easy blocking by social networks like Facebook or Twitter that sometimes ban domain names of fake news websites from their platforms.
