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Poynter – Facebook at critical intersection of public and fake news

Alexios Mantzarlis- Poynter Fact Checking: “Facebook is an important source of traffic for virtually all news outlets in the United States. New data, however, indicates that the social network is a far more important channel for some of the largest hyperpartisan and fake news sites in the country. Analytics company Jumpshot tracked Facebook referrals to 20-plus websites between September 11th and November 15th. It then calculated the share of unique visitors that figure represented. The data, seen by Poynter, refer to PC traffic only. Almost 80 percent of unique visitors to hyperpartisan news pages Occupy Democrats and American News came from Facebook, according to Jumpshot. Both of these websites have Facebook followings in the seven figures, and both have had several run-ins with the fact-checkers. American News, for one, peddled a Megyn Kelly hoax that fooled Facebook’s Trending section — even several weeks after it was exposed as a fake…”

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