French presidential election candidate Emmanuel Macron has lately made fake news one of his campaign themes, accusing Russian state-owned propaganda outlets of spreading disinformation about him. Photo: AFPCompared with the US last year, European nations that face hotly-contested elections in 2017 aren’t seeing a major fake news explosion. Emmanuel Macron, the centre-left candidate, has lately made fake news one of his campaign themes, accusing Russian state-owned propaganda outlets of spreading disinformation about him. Catching fake news stories is like playing whack-a-mole but, in Europe today, there are plenty of people standing around with hammers waiting for something to pop up. There’s no profit in creating European fake news the way young Macedonians did for the US in 2016 to harvest an audience for ads on their sites.

Source: Mint February 19, 2017 18:01 UTC