conspiracy theories

Alex Jones and Infowars finally face the music for sowing Sandy Hook conspiracies

Infowars founder Alex Jones took the stand today in a trial that will determine what he owes to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Last year, Jones was found liable in a se

House punishes Republican lawmaker who promoted violent conspiracy theories

Democrats in the House voted to strip freshman Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of some of her responsibilities Thursday, citing her penchant for violent, anti-democratic and at times ant

Facebook blocks hashtags for #sharpiegate, #stopthesteal election conspiracies

Facebook today began to block select hashtags that were being used to share misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Now, searches for the hashtags #sharpiegate are being blocked

A QAnon supporter is headed to Congress

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s win in a Georgia House race means that QAnon is headed to Capitol Hill. Greene openly supports the complex, outlandish conspiracy theory, which posits that President Tru

Facebook says it will ban QAnon across its platforms

Facebook expanded a ban on QAnon-related content on its various social platforms Tuesday, deepening a previous prohibition on QAnon-related groups that had “discussed potential violence,”

Author and former professional poker player Annie Duke on how conspiracy theories gain ground

Earlier today, Facebook said it had removed hundreds of QAnon groups from its site, and that it’s restricting many more groups, along with hundreds of pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accoun

Twitter cracks down on QAnon conspiracy theory, banning 7,000 accounts

Twitter announced Tuesday that many accounts spreading the pervasive right-wing conspiracy theory known as QAnon would no longer be welcome on its platform. Citing concerns about “offline harm,&

Twitter starts putting fact-checking labels on tweets about 5G and COVID-19

Conspiracy theories claiming a connection between 5G technology and the coronavirus have been around since the pandemic’s early days, and apparently they’re still going strong. So strong,

Coronavirus conspiracies like that bogus 5G claim are racing across the internet

As the U.S. and much of the world hunkers down to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, some virus-related conspiracy theories are having a heyday. Specifically, a conspiratorial false claim that

YouTube to reduce conspiracy theory recommendations in the UK

YouTube is expanding an experimental tweak to its recommendation engine that’s intended to reduce the amplification of conspiracy theories to the UK market. In January, the video-sharing platfor

Facebook’s handling of Alex Jones is a microcosm of its content policy problem

A revealing cluster of emails reviewed by Business Insider and Channel 4 News offers a glimpse at the fairly chaotic process of how Facebook decides which content crosses the line. In this instance, a

YouTube demonetizes anti-vaccination videos

YouTube will demonetize channels that promote anti-vaccination views, after a report by BuzzFeed News found ads, including from health companies, running before anti-vax videos. The platform will also

New WordPress.com policy allows it to shut down blogs of Sandy Hook deniers

WordPress.com has taken down a handful of blogs, according to several complaints from affected blog owners and readers who claim the sites were removed from WordPress.com, despite not being in violati

Here’s Twitter’s position on Alex Jones (and hate-peddling anti-truthers) — hint: It’s a fudge

The number of tech platforms taking action against Alex Jones, the far right InfoWars conspiracy theorist and hate speech preacher, has been rising in recent weeks — with bans or partial bans in

Dems and GOP unite, slamming Facebook for allowing violent Pages

In a rare moment of agreement, members of the House Judiciary Committee from both major political parties agreed that Facebook needed to take down Pages that bullied shooting survivors or called for m

YouTube is reportedly introducing your kids to conspiracy theories, too

In a recent appearance by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki at the South by Southwest Festival, she suggested that YouTube is countering the conspiracy-related videos that have been spreading like wildfire o

Benchmarks contradict ‘Apple slowed down my iPhone’ claims

It's a refrain we all hear every year around September: "I swear, whenever they release a new iPhone, Apple makes all the old ones run worse to make you upgrade." But thousands of performance tests co

Trump fires a member of his transition team for tweeting fake news

So-called fake news has real consequences, and everyone in the U.S. keeps learning that the hard way. Not just executives at social networks like Facebook, Reddit and Twitter. Or disgruntled and bri