Also known as false news, hoax news, junk news, pseudo-news, alternative facts, fake-news media
false or misleading information presented as news
"Fake news" refers to false or misleading information that is presented and spread as if it were factual news reporting. It matters because it can deceive people about important events and issues, potentially influencing their beliefs and decisions based on inaccurate information.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Reporters with various forms of "fake news" from an 1894 illustration by Frederick Burr Opper
Fake news is false or misleading information (misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and hoaxes) claiming the aesthetics and legitimacy of news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term. It can spread through fake news websites.
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Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).