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Images posted on Twitter by a marketer in Austin, Tex., the day after the presidential election. Credit...

Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old co-founder of a marketing company in Austin, Tex., had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory - one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting.

Mr. Tucker's post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong. There were no such buses packed with paid protesters.

But that didn't matter.

While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.

Here, The New York Times deconstructs how Mr. Tucker's now-deleted declaration on Twitter the night after the election turned into a fake-news phenomenon. It is an example of how, in an ever-connected world where speed often takes precedence over truth, an observation by a private citizen can quickly become a talking point, even as it is being proved false.

Mr. Tucker, who had taken photos of a large group of buses he saw near downtown Austin earlier in the day because he thought it was unusual, saw reports of protests against Mr. Trump in the city and decided the two were connected. He posted three of the images with the declaration: "Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in. #fakeprotests #trump2016 #austin"

Mr. Tucker said he had performed a Google search to see if any conferences were being held in the area but did not find anything. (The buses were, in fact, hired by a company called Tableau Software, which was holding a conference that drew more than 13,000 people.)

"I did think in the back of my mind there could be other explanations, but it just didn't seem plausible," he said in an interview, noting that he had posted as a "private citizen who had a tiny Twitter following."

He added, "I'm also a very busy businessman and I don't have time to fact-check everything that I put out there, especially when I don't think it's going out there for wide consumption."

Several hours later, the first important step occurred. Mr. Tucker's tweet was posted to the main Reddit community for Mr. Trump under the heading: "BREAKING: They found the buses! Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests." It quickly generated more than 300 comments, some of which blamed the protests on George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist, who is a frequent target of the group.

The next morning, the frenzy began. A user on Free Republic, a conservative discussion forum, linked to the Reddit thread about Mr. Tucker's post, increasing the attention and spreading it further into the online world. Later, Facebook pages like Robertson Family Values, which is named for but not affiliated with the stars of "Duck Dynasty," and Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020, linked to the Free Republic discussion. Those posts were shared more than 5,000 times each, and more than 300,000 Facebook users have linked to the Free Republic thread.

Sean Hughes, the director of corporate affairs for the bus company Coach USA North America, said he learned about the rumor involving its vehicles after receiving a couple of curious emails and hearing from a friend in New Jersey who had seen the claim on Facebook and wanted to know if it was true.

A reporter at the Fox television station in Austin contacted Mr. Hughes later that day, and he responded with a statement noting that "at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests." But that did little to stem the online furor.

"That reporter said, 'You're probably going to get a lot more phone calls because it's all over the place,'" Mr. Hughes said in an interview on Thursday.

"You're the second journalist to actually call me to see what was going on, no bloggers or anything, and we're easily accessible on our website," Mr. Hughes said.

He added, "I just kind of wish people looked into facts before they go ahead and do something like that, because it could be easily debunked based on a quick phone call or two, or a couple emails."

During this time, Mr. Tucker was replying to queries on Twitter about whether he had proof to support his claim. He confirmed in a post that he "did not see loading or unloading" but that the buses were "quite near protests at right timing." That admitted lack of evidence, however, had little effect. By about noon, Mr. Tucker's initial post had been retweeted and liked more than 5,000 times. There was more to come.

Around 6 p.m., the conservative blog Gateway Pundit posted a story using Mr. Tucker's images under the headline "Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests." The post, which included a mention of "Soros money," has been shared on Facebook more than 44,000 times, according to statistics on the website.

The story line became a prominent one throughout the conservative blogosphere, with other sites incorporating Mr. Tucker's tweet into posts about paid protesters, referring to him as an eyewitness in Austin.

Then, shortly after 9 p.m., Mr. Trump sent this tweet:

Mr. Tucker considered deleting his tweet about the buses, but Mr. Trump's message emboldened him. "I figured if he were to say something like that, I might be barking up the same tree," Mr. Tucker said.

When asked if Mr. Trump might have been relying, at least tangentially, on the erroneous message he had sent about the buses, Mr. Tucker said, "I don't want to say why Trump tweeted when he tweeted. I just don't know and I truthfully don't think any of us will ever know."

Doreen Jarman, a spokeswoman for Tableau, said the company issued a statement to the local television station KVUE and The Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 11, saying that the buses were connected to the company's conference.

The American-Statesman posted an article online shortly after noon, said Asher Price, the article's author. Around 2 p.m., Mr. Tucker tweeted a link to his blog, where he acknowledged that he could have been "flat wrong," and mentioned that he had voted for Gary Johnson. The rumor-checking website Snopes also debunked the claim that the buses were connected to any protests. None of this seemed to have much impact.

Mr. Tucker's initial tweet continued to generate thousands of shares on Facebook through Free Republic and pages like Right Wing News and Joe the Plumber.

After midnight, Mr. Tucker deleted his original tweet, then posted an image of it stamped with the word "false" for posterity. It did not receive much attention.

After a week, that message had 29 retweets and 27 likes. The Snopes article has been shared about 5,800 times according to its website, a fraction of the number for the fake version of the news. Faced with the impact of his initial tweet, Mr. Tucker, who now has about 960 Twitter followers, allowed himself a moment of reflection.

"Anytime you see me in the future going out there where I think there's going to be a big audience, I can assure you I'm going to try my best to be balanced with the facts and be very clear about what is opinion and what is not," Mr. Tucker said.

If he could go back, he said, "I might have still tweeted it but very differently. I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement."

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Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old co-founder of a marketing company in Austin, Tex., had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory - one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting.

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It turns out the Chinese have a problem with fake news too.

From Facebook's Alex Stamos to Steve Ballmer, American tech executives have sought in recent days to dispel the notion there's a swift solution to the proliferation of spurious or insidious information on the internet, a phenomenon critics say wields an outsized and unhealthy influence on public discourse and elections. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Baidu Inc. President Zhang Yaqin says China faces similar challenges, despite operating one of the world's largest and most sophisticated online surveillance machines.

Companies in China, where freedom of speech is curtailed by censorship programs, have long used a mix of advanced technologies and human cybercops to police the internet. Baidu, China's largest search engine, employs technology to spot potentially false information before turning to local agencies such as the cyberspace administration to verify items. One of the country's three largest internet players, it checks out 3 billion claims of fake news every year -- an issue it calls a global challenge.

"Every year we see somewhere around 3 billion claims, requests that we need to verify that might turn out to be fake news," Zhang said. "We're using a combination of technology and content authorization to minimize the fake news."

From Tencent Holdings Ltd. to Sina Corp.'s Weibo, the country's social media employ technology and armies of vetters to scour its services for undesirable content, which in China's case goes beyond rumors and unsubstantiated claims to include any and all information deemed harmful to social stability. Yet even the best-funded online operators have difficulty keeping up: the nation's cybercops fined Tencent, Weibo and Baidu as recently as September for carrying illegal content. Days later, Weibo -- China's answer to Twitter -- began recruiting and rewarding " supervisors " from among its own users to report problems.

"We have an obligation to make sure the user gets good content, but it continues to be a challenge for us, for other companies in China, and companies in the U.S.," Zhang said.

Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

The problem persists despite China having some of the strictest rules aimed at preventing the spread of "false news." It recently established regulations forcing forum-posters to register with their real identities, and its laws threaten jail time for posting defamatory false information, according to Weibo's latest annual report.

But Zhang said fixing the problem required the use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and even closer cooperation with relevant government regulators.

Pressure is building on social media services from Google to Twitter to try and curb the proliferation of fake news and targeted ads. Facebook's chief security officer, Stamos, said last week it was very difficult to spot fake news and propaganda using computer programs. That's a view echoed by Ballmer, the former Microsoft Corp. chief executive.

Executives from Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. are scheduled to testify before Congress on Nov. 1 about Russian use of their sites to influence the 2016 U.S. election -- a hot-button topic that the social media and internet services are under pressure to address. Stamos, who's handling Facebook's investigation, warned about hoping for technical solutions that could have unintended consequences of ideological bias.

"I'm not sure you can say that is Facebook's job, they're not in the news business, they pass along other people's news," Ballmer told Bloomberg Television. "Same thing with Google. That's part of the issue here is things can look authentic."

Baidu itself has spent much of the past year fighting one category of misleading information in particular. In 2016, regulators cracked down on medical ads after accusations they may have contributed to the much-publicized death of a student. Subsequent sanctions nearly derailed the company's core search advertising business, and Baidu has since promised to tighten vetting.
- With assistance by David Ramli, Emily Chang, Selina Wang, and Candy Cheng

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Fake News Isn't Just for U.S. as China Gets Billions of Claims

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It turns out the Chinese have a problem with fake news too. From Facebook's Alex Stamos to Steve Ballmer, American tech executives have sought in recent days to dispel the notion there's a swift solution to the proliferation of spurious or insidious information on the internet, a phenomenon critics say wields an outsized and unhealthy influence on public discourse and elections.

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CLOSE

First came fake news. And now there's something called fake financial news. And if you're not careful, this sort of news could affect your ability to make retirement, investment and health-care decisions.

Or at least so says a recent survey for the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) by Harris Poll. "The risk of making an impulsive financial decision in reaction to a headline or article that may be designed to mislead has the potential to cause serious problems," the AICPA noted in its release.

Despite that risk, more than 3 in 4 (77%) Americans feel it's important to act fast to make financial decisions when breaking financial news becomes available. "But acting hastily does not allow the proper time to think a decision through and weigh the long and short-term financial implications," the AICPA noted. The good news: Almost three in five Americans (58%) believe that fake news is a serious threat to their financial decision making, with more than half of those (33%) saying the threat is very serious.

So what advice do experts have for those saving for/living in retirement? How can they tell fake financial news from real financial news? What can they do to protect themselves against falling prey to fake financial news? Here's what they had to say.

Gassman (Photo: Handout)

Create a plan and stick to it. Anyone saving for retirement or any other goal should have a plan and that plan should evaluate where you are vs. where you want to be, says Jonathan Gassman, the CEO of Gassman Financial Group. Plus, the plan should lay out strategies or steps to bridge whatever gap there may be.

Stop reading financial porn. Financial television programs and news outlets "not going to give you specific tailored advice for your circumstance, says Gassman.

Too good to be true? "Remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is, and this definitely applies to fake financial news," says Kelley Long, a resident financial planner with Financial Finesse. "Whether it's your colleague bragging about the performance of his 401(k) or your neighbor telling you about the amazing guaranteed income annuity she just bought, you have to consider the facts behind these stories before you act on this news with your own retirement savings."

Kelley Long (Photo: Handout)

For his part, Gassman suggests that you remember former president Ronald Reagan's saying: trust but verify. "If you are unclear about something, whether it's mentioned in the news, magazine or heard from a friend, ask questions so you can learn," he says. "Don't be shy."

Find yourself a good teacher. One of the classic Jewish texts suggests that you "find yourself a teacher and acquire yourself a friend." Well, when it comes to financial news, Gassman suggests taking a similar approach. "Find yourself a goof financial professional or adviser who is conflict free of selling you financial products that make them money and don't help you get to where you need to go," he says. "This way they will help you achieve your goals as well as talk you off the ledge when there is market volatility or some sort of crises that rocks the markets."

Gassman recommends talking to a certified public accountant (CPA) who holds the personal financial specialist (PFS) credential as "they adhere to standards." Consider too a certified financial planner or CFP; they too adhere to standards.

People are different. Is your colleague much younger or more aggressive than you? "If so, then it would make sense that his portfolio would outperform yours during a bull market," says Long. "However, changing your investments to match his if you have a shorter timeline or don't have the stomach for market drops could have you both singing a different song when a bear market inevitably hits."

Gassman concurs with this advice. "Don't abandon your plan because you heard some golf buddies talking about a tip or hot stock," he says. "Stick to the plan you created and check in with your adviser."

In life, nothing - except death and taxes - is guaranteed. "When it comes to anyone who uses the term 'guarantee' around a financial product and that guarantee is something you can't find anywhere else, either someone is being misled or they're not fully understanding the terms," says Long.

Her advice: Learn the facts about the annuity including the fees, surrender charges and any upside limits before you buy into any promises of guaranteed income that far exceed current interest rates.

Invest for the long term. There have been a couple instances in the past few years where markets took a temporary hit due to an errant tweet or news story about a stock that turned out to be false, says Long.

"Unless you are a high-speed day-trader whose only job is to take advantage of market volatility, it's best to ignore such news, even if it turns out to be true," she says. "The best long-term investing strategy is still to set your investments according to your timeline and risk tolerance, then ignore the interim ups and downs."

More: Powell: How to manage the risk of inflation in retirement

More: Start college off on the right financial foot

More: Powell: Best ways to save money with a health savings account

Also, remind yourself that a down market is a buying opportunity, says Long. And, if you're five years or less out from retirement, make sure you've secured an adequate bucket of your savings in short-term bonds or cash so that any market crash won't affect your plans, while allowing the rest of your portfolio to continue to grow for the long-term, she says.
Robert Powell is editor of Retirement Weekly, contributes regularly to USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet and MarketWatch. Got questions about money? Email Bob at rpowell@allthingsretirement.com.

Retirement columnist Robert Powell (Photo: USA TODAY, USA TODAY)

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How to prevent fake financial news from wrecking your retirement

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CLOSE First came fake news. And now there's something called fake financial news. And if you're not careful, this sort of news could affect your ability to make retirement, investment and health-care decisions. Or at least so says a recent survey for the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) by Harris Poll.

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https://www.finance-monthly.com/2017/07/heres-why-fake-news-is-killing-the-economy/