UK Election: Lies, Dammed Lies, and Political Promises

fake news

It is make your mind up time. Today is election day in the UK. Here are a few pointers to the analysis conducted by Full Fact. What was Fake News and what was actually true? We have been through a storm of political ads from all the major parties. Luckily, we also have the non-partisan … Read more

Fake News: The UK Election is unsafe #GE19

fake news in the UK election

Thursday 12th Dec is Election day in the UK. Is it a nice clean election with no evidence of any manipulation at all? Er … no. Here are a few quick examples. The Punch that was not a Punch The BBC Sockpuppets are being played as usual. For example we had the “credible” report yesterday … Read more

Does flagging Fake News work?

Fake News

One part of the Facebook “solution” is to flag Fake News as Fake. This is how they describe it … Better identifying false news through our community and third-party fact-checking organizations so that we can limit its spread, which, in turn, makes it uneconomical. This leads to an interesting question. If you permit people to … Read more

How is Facebook anti-vaccination policy doing?

Facebook anti-vaccination policy

Facebook issued an official policy regarding anti-vaccination misinformation within advertisements back last March. It reads as follows … Combatting Vaccine Misinformation We are working to tackle vaccine misinformation on Facebook by reducing its distribution and providing people with authoritative information on the topic. We are starting by taking a series of steps: We will reduce the … Read more

Harry Houdini and Abraham Lincoln

Harry Houdini and Abraham Lincoln

Did you know that Harry Houdini and Abraham Lincoln were good friends and would often meet up? For example, see the picture above. There is of course one rather glaring flaw here. Lincoln was rather famously assassinated on 15 April 1865, and Houdini was born after that in 1874. How then is a picture such … Read more