Was George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Banned in the United States and the USSR for Conflicting Reasons? A September 2021 Facebook post suggested that George Orwell's '1984' was banned in the US for being pro-communist, but banned in the USSR for being anti-communist.
Foreign Influence Agents Goaded Trump Forums After U.S. Elections, Researchers Say Graphika's report finds that suspected Russian agents pushed 'Stop the Steal,' other anti-democratic narratives.
Is This a Chinese ‘Luckiest Birthday’ List? Popular social media posts purportedly show rankings of Chinese "luckiest people" based on their birthdate.
Did Quarantined Kids in in Wuhan Defeat a Homework App by Spamming it With One-Star Reviews? A viral tweet claims that quarantined children from Wuhan, China gave an app assigning them homework so many bad reviews that the app store removed it.
Conspiracy Theorists Help Spread Video Pushing Coronavirus ‘Live Cremation’ Claim Both the Epoch Times and an outlet connected to disinformation purveyor Steve Bannon promoted the video.
Chinese Media Walks Back Reports Linking Doctor’s Death to Coronavirus News organizations and social media users said Dr. Liang Wudong died "at the front line" of the fight against the disease.
Can You Get Coronavirus from Wish.com Products? As fears of coronavirus spread on social media, so too did warnings about contracting it from Wish.com products.
Does an X-Ray Show Hundreds of Undigested Boba Pearls in a Young Chinese Patient? In June 2019, a number of websites and news outlets reported that a young girl in China was treated for symptoms related to the discovery of “hundreds” of undigested boba pearls in her digestive tract via x-ray. Notably, headlines for the story often indicated that elements of it were mostly likely unedited and unvetted: Doctor […]
Did a Barber Mistakenly Shave a ‘Play’ Button on a Client’s Head Because of a Paused Video? In January 2019, 9Gag shared a post titled “Barber Mistakenly Shaves A Play Button Into Client’s Hair After Being Shown A Paused Video.” It was light on details and included several amusing images: 9Gag had very little to say about the circumstance purportedly shown in the photographs and didn’t include any links to substantiate its […]
Has a Scientist Who Claimed He Created the First ‘Gene-Edited Babies’ Disappeared? In November 2018, a scientist from China named He Jankui appeared to have ushered in a new era in humanity — and re-ignited an already heated international conversation about the ethics of editing genes to make “designer babies” — by announcing that he had successfully used gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to modify the DNA of two embryos before birth: […]
