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Verified Twitter Users Shared an All-Time-High Amount of Fake News in 2020

Deceptive websites received millions of shares and interactions on Twitter (and Facebook) in 2020, and verified Twitter users played a big part in that.

Verified Twitter Users Shared an All-Time-High Amount of Fake News in 2020 Image

The combination of political divisiveness and the COVID-19 pandemic led to fake news running rampant on social media in 2020. That's not really news; but you might be surprised at how fake news was shared. According to The German Marshall Fund of the United States(Opens in a new window), verified Twitter users shared a significant percentage of deceptive website news by the end of the year.

The GMF discovered that false content producers and manipulators received nearly one third (47 million) of the 155 million verified-account shares in Q4 2020. Overall, false-content-producer shares increased by over 160%, and manipulators increased by nearly 120%, while all US websites increased by a mere 14% in 2020. This has led false-content producers and manipulators to, respectively, triple and double their verified account shares since 2018.

twitter interactions

At the top of the chart is the Gateway Pundit,(Opens in a new window) which received more shares from verified Twitter users at the end of the year than The Washington Post.(Opens in a new window) Breitbart(Opens in a new window) received an equal amount of interactions, and Fox News(Opens in a new window), Just the News(Opens in a new window), and the Epoch Times(Opens in a new window) ranked higher than NBC News(Opens in a new window).

Facebook has also contributed to the spread of disinformation, with manipulators growing their interactions 165% over the last four years against just a 75% increase for all US-based sites. In total, deceptive websites received 6.4 billion interactions in 2020, twice the number seen four years ago. In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, deceptive sites received 1.2 billion interactions, nearly a fourth of the total 5.1 billion interactions for US-based sites.

facebook interactions

Many false-content producers and manipulators did see a drastic fall in interactions as a result of Facebook changing its algorithm. But RedStateObserver.com still managed to receive more interactions than the Wall Street Journal(Opens in a new window) in the fourth quarter of 2020. Newsmax(Opens in a new window) also managed to beat out the Los Angeles Times(Opens in a new window) in that same time period.

Given the results that were collected this past year, the GMF is comfortable confirming that the actions made by Facebook and Twitter to stop the spread of fake news proved to be effective. Hopefully, these platforms will continue their efforts to manage the content people publish and share. In the meantime, here are several tools to help identify what's real and what's fake news.

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About Jason Cohen

Jason Cohen

Jason is PCMag's how-to content generator. He believes tech corporations are bad, but you might as well know how to use technology in everyday life. He is a Mac owner, Android user, dark mode advocate, and tech bargain hunter. Before joining PCMag, Jason was a technical writer, copywriter, and all-around freelancer covering baseball, comics, and more at various outlets. When not writing and editing, he is either reading comic books, playing his Nintendo Switch, hanging out with his wife and two cats, or some combination of the three.

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