NewsGuard Technologies

25/07/2023

TikTok has become a hotbed of brand misinformation, with major companies like Hobby Lobby and Target falling victim. NewsGuard’s analysis found videos advancing false claims about brands garnered 57 million views.

Read our latest Misinformation Monitor:

Target is “satanic,” Hobby Lobby sells “demon” merchandise, Barilla pasta is “made with insect flour”: Videos on TikTok advancing false and misleading claims about prominent brands garnered 57 million views in a NewsGuard analysis

26/06/2023

New: Some of the world’s largest blue chip brands are unintentionally supporting the spread of unreliable AI-generated news websites, a NewsGuard analysis finds

Read NewsGuard’s exclusive report:

Welcome back to NewsGuard’s Misinformation Monitor, our newsletter tracking misinformation with exclusive data from nine countries. Sign up to get the Misinformation Monitor in your inbox or download NewsGuard for your browser.

13/06/2023

On NewsGuard’s recently launched tracking center, we’ve IDed more sites that are powered by AI, operating with no human oversight, and pumping out low-quality ‘news.’

As of now, our tally stands at 166 ‘Unreliable AI-Generated News’ (UAIN) sites.

Coverage by McKenzie Sadeghi, Lorenzo Arvanitis, Madeline Roache, Macrina Wang, Andie Slomka, Sara Badilini, Leonie Pfaller, and Louise Vallee | Last Updated: June 12, 2023

02/05/2023

NewsGuard identified dozens of websites with articles containing error messages commonly found in AI-generated texts, such as “my cutoff date in September 2021,” “as an AI language model,” and “I cannot complete this prompt.”

Read more about the tactics AI-generated content farms are using in our latest special report:

Artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content farms, referring to low-quality websites around the world that churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to optimize advertising revenue, NewsGuard found.

01/05/2023

New: A NewsGuard analysis found that artificial intelligence tools are being used by content farms to generate vast amounts of news content with little to no human oversight. Read our special report here:

Artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content farms, referring to low-quality websites around the world that churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to optimize advertising revenue, NewsGuard found.

26/04/2023

Exclusive: NewsGuard analysts tested GPT-3.5 with known China-related falsehoods in two languages, and found the system repeatedly produced more false claims in Chinese than in English.

Read our report

NewsGuard Exclusive: ChatGPT-3.5 Generates More Disinformation in Chinese than in English

13/04/2023

The Chinese government-controlled publication China Daily utilized ChatGPT to advance the unsubstantiated narrative that a lab in Kazakhstan is run by the U.S. and is conducting secret research on the transmission of viruses with the goal of harming China.

Read the latest scoop from our China Disinformation Risk Briefing

NewsGuard Exclusive: Beijing Deploys ChatGPT to Advance 'Biolabs' Disinformation Narrative

11/04/2023

Axios covered our scoop about a new Twitter disinfo campaign targeting Chinese activists.

The exclusive originally appeared in our weekly China Disinformation Risk Briefing for clients.

NewsGuard has detected 18 coordinated Chinese-language Twitter accounts that are sharing disparaging messages about two activists.

06/04/2023

Twitter’s “blue check” used to signal author authenticity. Now, it's a way for peddlers of misinformation to appear trustworthy.

Read NewsGuard’s exclusive new report on Twitter Blue:

Welcome back to NewsGuard’s Misinformation Monitor, our newsletter tracking misinformation with exclusive data from nine countries. Sign up to get the Misinformation Monitor in your inbox or download NewsGuard for your browser.

04/04/2023

Bloomberg reports on the propensity for Google's Bard to generate misinformation, after NewsGuard analysts fed 100 false narratives to the AI platform. This experiment yielded returns of "misinformation-laden essays" from Bard for 76 of these claims, demonstrating the chatbot's support for well-known, debunked conspiracy theories despite Google's commitment to user safety.

As Bloomberg reporter Davey Alba wrote, one of these was “a detailed, 13-paragraph explanation of the convoluted conspiracy about global elites plotting to reduce the global population using economic measures and vaccines.”

NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill said that the researchers’ tests showed that Bard, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “can be used by bad actors as a massive force multiplier to spread misinformation, at a scale even the Russians have never achieved — yet.”

Read more here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-04/google-s-bard-writes-convincingly-about-known-conspiracy-theories?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTY4MDYyMzU3OCwiZXhwIjoxNjgxMjI4Mzc4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJSU0xER1pEV1gyUFMwMSIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFNzAxNENGQzIzNTI0MzU0QTVENUY2QkREMDAxOEU3NiJ9.Odn8lGbFzIufan19kvqfUUcpmUTTBpSmnQYe8E5a374

When prompted to write about lies, the search company’s AI tool usually complied with the request, researchers found

06/03/2023

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/feb/22/rt-ban-youtube-videos-google-disinformation

The platform banned the Russia-controlled publication last year for its Ukraine falsehoods, but its content is still posted on various channels

06/03/2023

https://www.vanityfair.it/article/guerra-ucraina-fake-news-propaganda-russa

Lo spiega l’ultimo report del Centro di monitoraggio della disinformazione sul conflitto Russia-Ucraina di NewsGuard: a un anno dallo scoppio del conflitto sono state diffuse ben 105 fake news da 358 siti

05/03/2023

Nearly a year after YouTube banned Russian state media, the platform continues to host documentaries produced by Kremlin propaganda outlet RT.

NewsGuard found 250 uploads of films repeating egregious falsehoods about the war, spread across 100 channels.

Full-length Russian propaganda films justifying the war proliferate on YouTube, despite the platform’s ban on Russian state-funded media

04/03/2023

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-disinformation-sites-powered-by-google-ads-have-doubled-according-to-a-newsguard-study-2023-2

The number of sites that use Google to power ads has grown from 18 last year to 42 this year, according to research from NewsGuard.

03/03/2023

https://www.grid.news/story/global/2023/02/24/one-year-later-russias-misinformation-war-is-still-getting-help-from-western-companies/

Why you'll find ads for western companies next to Russia disinformation.

28/02/2023

You're invited to an interactive webinar on Misinformation and Older Populations: What are the risks and how can we tackle them?

🔸March 1 at 12 PM Eastern🔸

Join experts and journalists from NewsGuard Technologies to learn how misinformation spreads online and what you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones from online threats. Attendees will all receive free access to NewsGuard's browser extension, which provides greater context for online browsing on social media platforms and search engines.

28/02/2023

2022 was a busy year for misinformation purveyors, with their work reaching many aspects of life, ranging from health claims on TikTok, to partisan-funded websites posing as independent local news sites during the U.S. midterms, and Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine.

But NewsGuard has been boldly leading the fight against it. In 2022, we launched in four new countries—Canada, Austria, Australia, and New Zealand—providing source credibility ratings to millions of additional people.

Moreover, we tracked and reported on 1,000+ false narratives on topics such as politics, health, and the war in Ukraine, helping that government and other agencies counter Russian propaganda and falsehoods.

Our work continues to fortify the online news landscape, with thousands of sites improving their editorial practices after engaging with us. And researchers, educators, and libraries continue to recognize NewsGuard as the best-in-class solution to combating misinformation online.

Read about how NewsGuard helped provide online safety for readers, brands, and democracies in our 2022 Social Impact Report:

In 2022, the stakes of online misinformation were higher than ever. Europeans witnessed the beginning of a war premised on disinformation, as Russia’s state propaganda outlets used false claims about N***s running Ukraine’s government. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, purveyors of health misi...

24/02/2023

NewsGuard analysts found advertisements for 79 Western brands on three times as many Russian disinformation sites as at the beginning of the war against Ukraine, all placed by Google and other Western ad tech services

As the Russia-Ukraine war reaches the one-year mark, the revenue-generating machine supporting sites spreading Russian disinformation is thriving.

22/02/2023

Russian propaganda documentaries are proliferating on YouTube despite the platform’s ban on Russian state-funded media, a new report by NewsGuard reveals

Full-length Russian propaganda films justifying the war proliferate on YouTube, despite the platform’s ban on Russian state-funded media

10/02/2023

ChatGPT is the incredible AI chatbot that's taken the internet by storm, but could it unwittingly help to spread misinformation online?

08/02/2023

The New York Times writes about NewsGuard’s recent report: Our analysts posed prompts with known falsehoods to ChatGPT, and the service turned around and presented patently false answers 80% of the time.

Researchers used ChatGPT to produce clean, convincing text that repeated conspiracy theories and misleading narratives.

30/01/2023

“When we asked ChatGPT to create disinformation, it did so,” writes NewsGuard's Jim Warren in a new Chicago Tribune op-ed about how the much-talked-about AI system has the potential to write conspiracy theories and other false info without much prodding

Incentives for online skullduggery have always existed, but it is hard to doubt the potential impact of ChatGPT simplifying fraud.

25/01/2023

NewsGuard tempted ChatGPT with 100 false narratives from our catalog of Misinformation Fingerprints™. 80% of the time, the AI chatbot delivered eloquent, false and misleading claims about significant topics in the news

In 80% of the cases, the AI chatbot advanced false and misleading claims when we asked leading questions about significant topics in the news, including COVID-19, Ukraine, and school shootings

24/01/2023

As an exercise, NewsGuard attempted to get ChatGPT to advance false information.

The results confirm fears: For 80% of NewsGuard’s prompts, ChatGPT provided narratives containing false information.

Read NewsGuard’s January Misinformation Monitor:

In 80% of the cases, the AI chatbot advanced false and misleading claims when we asked leading questions about significant topics in the news, including COVID-19, Ukraine, and school shootings

04/01/2023

“It just really fits in with the narrative that was already circulating that any collapse of a person may be vaccine related, no matter lack of evidence,” NewsGuard's health editor John Gregory explains to the Washington Post about how vaccine can spread when seemingly unrelated events happen in public settings.

It only a took a few hours for misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to sweep social media after Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field.

03/01/2023

The Best and Worst of 2022: NewsGuard has identified the sites with the most engagement in 2022 in the U.S.

We also have highlighted trustworthy sites serving local and niche markets.

NewsGuard explores the top straight shooters and misinformers — plus sites we all would have wanted to know about before they made waves this past year.

29/12/2022

In this year’s Nieman Lab prediction, NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz writes that in the new year, CMOs, ad buyers, and others will put a premium on supporting reputable news sources after learning that doing good can also be good for business.

"When brands stop advertising on misinformation sites and instead advertise on quality news sites, their CPM price for ads goes down and engagement with their ads goes up."

28/12/2022

NewsGuard’s collection of the most widely read trustworthy sites in the U.S., the most popular sources of misinformation, and the good and bad sites that you wish you had heard of…

Read NewsGuard’s year-end report:

NewsGuard explores the top straight shooters and misinformers — plus sites we all would have wanted to know about before they made waves this past year.

13/12/2022

NewsGuard is looking for interns and reporters to join our team and help fight dis/misinfo with trust ratings for thousands of news sites.

https://www.newsguardtech.com/careers/

01/12/2022

The Globe and Mail write about NewsGuard's latest Misinformation Monitor, which shows that hundreds of TikTok videos celebrating violence & the Wagner Group appear on the platform

Study finds hundreds of videos on TikTok depicting members of the Wagner Group

01/12/2022

Videos promoting Russian mercenary group Wagner—a private military company fighting in Ukraine—are flooding TikTok, reaching hundreds of thousands of users, NewsGuard finds

NewsGuard found that TikTok hosts hundreds of videos using violence and music to celebrate the Wagner Group, a notorious Russian mercenary outfit. These videos have been viewed more than 1 billion times.

01/12/2022

NewsGuard found that is hosting hundreds of videos using violence and music to celebrate the Wagner Group, a notorious Russian mercenary outfit.

Read our exclusive report:

NewsGuard found that TikTok hosts hundreds of videos using violence and music to celebrate the Wagner Group, a notorious Russian mercenary outfit. These videos have been viewed more than 1 billion times.

22/11/2022

NEW: Rishad Tobaccowala speaks with NewsGuard Technologies about ways brands can have more confidence their ad buys go to reliable and responsible news sites via NewsGuard’s trust and credibility reporting.

‎Show What Next?, Ep The Misinformation Problem With Programmatic - Nov 18, 2022

17/11/2022

We’re continuing to track the top falsehoods about the U.S. midterms. Check out the list of 23 myths we’ve seen promoted on 41 websites.

Our most recent myth involves debunked allegations about vote count irregularities in New York’s U.S. Senate race.

https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/2022-midterm-election-misinformation-tracking-center/

14/11/2022

https://the-media-leader.com/misinformation-spreaders-surge-on-twitter-after-musk-takeover/

In the week following Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter late last month, popular misinformation-spreading Twitter accounts saw a 57.04% increase in engagement on the platform in the form of likes and retweets.

14/11/2022

NewsGuard has published two additional myths, and their debunks, to our Midterm Election Misinformation Tracking Center, tackling topics about how votes are counted, and allegations about “unverified” voters in Pennsylvania.

Follow NewsGuard’s Midterm Election Misinformation Tracking Center as we explain debunks to myths on a rolling basis.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/2022-midterm-election-misinformation-tracking-center/

14/11/2022

I più popolari account su Twitter hanno ottenuto un aumento di engagement del 57,04% nella settimana successiva al cambio di proprietà

11/11/2022

Election Day may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean misinfo trying to sway public opinion or sow confusion has ended.

In the past week, we’ve spotted and debunked 9 additional myths about the election, reaching a total of 20 myths about the midterm races.

Keep tabs on our election reporting, and read debunks as we publish them, via our site.

By Sam Howard, Lorenzo Arvanitis, Jack Brewster, Valerie Pavilonis, McKenzie Sadeghi, Andie Slomka, and Macrina Wang | Last updated: Nov. 10, 2022

09/03/2022

NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill speaks with Digital Planet about our latest work tracking and countering the top false narratives being published about the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1lth

Tracking Russian disinformation and propaganda sites by NewsGuard

08/03/2022

A new NewsGuard report found independent sites that spread disinformation about the Russia-Ukraine war continue to be monetized by tech companies including Google.