Citogenesis is the creation of false information through circular reporting where inaccurate Wikipedia entries are copied by media outlets, then those media sources are cited back in Wikipedia as proof. The article documents well-known cases including fake deities, fabricated names, false biographical claims, and invented historical facts that persisted for years after being amplified through mainstream sources.
New Mexico seeks $35-40 billion in penalties against Meta after a jury found the company misled consumers about Facebook data privacy in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a political consulting firm harvested data from 87 million users without consent. The jury found 26 of 29 company statements misleading and identified over 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection laws. Judge Francis Mathew will decide the final penalty amount, with Meta arguing for a $3.45 billion cap.
Meta shuttered CrowdTangle in 2024, eliminating a critical tool journalists and researchers used to track viral content and misinformation across Facebook and Instagram. Arbiter, an AI-powered platform by nonprofit SimPPL, aims to fill the void by using large language models to analyze posts across multiple social media platforms and identify emerging narratives before they spread widely.
A Wikipedia editor named Jagged_85 made over 87,000 edits between 2005 and 2012, inserting thousands of false claims crediting Islamic scholars with inventions actually developed in antiquity or by others. These fabricated attributions, often based on misrepresented sources, have since spread through the internet and infiltrated scholarly literature, perpetuating misinformation about the Islamic Golden Age.