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Aims to deceive, confuse and mislead.

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Readers submitted more than 4,000 examples of misinformation. Here are the different types being spread this election season.

Two months ago, The New York Times asked readers to send in examples of election-related misinformation they saw online.

Readers responded. In all, more than 4,000 examples of misinformation were submitted to The Times from social media feeds, text-messaging apps and email accounts.

Each legitimate submission was vetted by reporters and editors at The Times, and many have influenced our journalism in the lead-up to the midterm elections. We are grateful for readers' submissions, and dedicated to continuing the work of fighting digital misinformation.

Here is a review of some of the major types of misinformation submitted by readers, as well as some discovered in our own reporting.

Some election-related misinformation is about specific candidates and races. Other misinformation coalesces around major news events in what could be called "hoax floods," often adding to highly charged partisan conversations.

Two news events in particular inspired floods of misinformation in recent months: the confirmation hearings of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the caravan of Honduran migrants moving through Guatemala and Mexico on its way to the United States border.

During Mr. Kavanaugh's confirmation process, many false claims, mislabeled images and unfounded rumors were used to attack the credibility of the multiple women who accused Mr. Kavanaugh of sexual assault. The Times debunked many of those rumors.

One typical piece of misinformation was a graphic that was found by readers on right-wing Facebook pages. The graphic claimed that Christine Blasey Ford, one of Mr. Kavanaugh's accusers, had been photographed with George Soros, the liberal philanthropist and frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories. The photograph, shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook, was actually of Mr. Soros posing with Lyudmyla Kozlovska, a Ukranian human rights activist.

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The migrant caravan also inspired a number of deceptive, mislabeled and out-of-context posts on social media. The Times debunked several of these, but more have continued to spread.

One typical example is a post found on numerous right-wing Facebook groups. The post used old and mislabeled photos of injured police officers in order to claim that caravan migrants were behaving violently toward law enforcement. The false post was shared thousands of times.

Since 2016, major social media platforms have tried to make themselves less vulnerable to exploitation by bringing more transparency to political ads on their platforms.

But the ad transparency push has not always gone smoothly. Investigations by The Times and other news organizations have found numerous problems with social networks' ad transparency policies. These include a loophole in Facebook's ad policy that allows advertisers, once they have verified their identities and are approved to run political ads, to fill the "paid for by" field in their ads with whatever text they want, essentially letting them disguise their identity.

The extent of this loophole was explored by news organizations reporting on the policy, such as Vice News, which bought ads "paid for by" all 100 United States senators, as well as fictitious groups like "Ninja Turtles PAC."

The Times also found an example of this loophole in action. An anonymous critic of Jennifer Wexton, a Democrat running for Congress in Virginia's 10th Congressional District, bought negative ads on Facebook that accused Ms. Wexton of being an "evil socialist" and superimposed her next to Nazis. The disclaimer on the ads read "paid for by a freedom loving American Citizen exercising my natural law right, protected by the 1st Amendment and protected by the 2nd Amendment." Facebook knows who the advertiser is, but the public does not.

Readers submitted many examples of confusing and poorly labeled ads in their home districts. One example was an ad placed on Google that took aim at Jared Polis, a Democrat running for Colorado governor. The ad, sponsored by a group called "Save Our State Colorado," falsely claimed that Mr. Polis supported placing Colorado schools under Islamic Shariah law. No committee under the name "Save Our State Colorado" is registered with the Federal Election Commission, and it is unclear who is behind the ad.

Dozens of readers sent in tips about a Russian manipulation campaign playing out on Reddit, the popular online message board.

Many of the tips referred to an investigation by a Reddit moderator into suspicious activity on r/the_donald, Reddit's largest pro-Trump forum. The moderator found that links to USAReally, a site operated by Russian nationals and funded by Russia's Federal News Agency, were being submitted to r/the_donald under misleading web addresses. The links appeared to be from sites like geotus.army and geotus.band, but in fact, they took readers directly to the Russian website.

After the investigation, Reddit banned several of these web addresses. USAReally's founder called the bans "just another illustration of censorship in America."

Several readers submitted examples of social media misinformation with the ostensible goal of suppressing voter turnout.

One Twitter misinformation campaign appears to have originated among right-wing trolls on 4chan, the notorious message board. The campaign used a Democratic Party logo on an image that encouraged Democratic men to stay home on Election Day, in order to make Democratic women's votes more valuable. Twitter subsequently shut down accounts that were promoting the images.

Readers also submitted examples of local and statewide voter suppression misinformation. One Facebook ad, run by North Dakota Democrats under a page titled "Hunter Alerts," warned North Dakotans that they could lose their out-of-state hunting licenses if they voted in the midterm elections. The ad, whose claims are unsupported, was condemned by Republicans.

Many readers submitted tips about deceptive or exaggerated claims targeting individual candidates. Deliberate misinformation about candidates long precedes the internet. (In 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote anonymous articles about his rival, John Adams, in partisan newspapers.) But social media has supercharged the distribution of politically motivated smears.

A manipulated photo of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, was shared thousands of times on Facebook. The image, which was originally posted to Ms. Abrams's Twitter feed, was doctored to show Ms. Abrams holding a sign that said "Communist Stacey Abrams" and to falsely claim that she had been supported by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Several readers submitted a video ad attacking Anthony Delgado, a Democratic congressional candidate in New York's 19th District. The ad, which portrays Mr. Delgado, an African-American who was a Rhodes Scholar and who attended Harvard Law School, as an "extreme" rapper, was sponsored by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican PAC. And while it was more of a conventional negative ad than a piece of deliberate misinformation, the ad was fact-checked by The Washington Post, which called it "grossly misleading."

False claims were sent to voters offline, too. One reader in Texas sent us a scan of a mailer that falsely warned that Texans displaying lawn signs supporting Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic Senate candidate, would be subject to $500 fines.

Dozens of readers sent in screenshots of text messages they received from political campaigns, some of which contained misleading and exaggerated claims.

Several readers in Texas reported receiving suspicious text messages purportedly from the O'Rourke campaign. The messages claimed that the campaign was looking for volunteers to drive undocumented immigrants to the polls.

But reporting by The Times revealed that the texts were actually sent by an impostor, who volunteered for Mr. O'Rourke's campaign under false pretenses and was given access to the campaign's texting software.

Supporters of Andrew Gillum, the Democrat running for governor of Florida, also reported receiving suspicious text messages claiming that Mr. Gillum was under an "active criminal investigation," along with other negative messages. These messages were not labeled with the name of a sponsoring organization or campaign.

In recent days, readers also submitted many examples of misleading texts that appeared to be from President Trump. One Indiana resident submitted a text claiming that the recipient's early ballot had not been received. The texts, which have reportedly been sent to residents of several states, appear to be part of a Republican get-out-the-vote operation.

Many readers submitted examples of what could be called "attack pages" - social media pages labeled with the name and picture of a candidate, but actually operated by a group backing the candidate's opponent. These pages are then used to buy ads opposing the candidate whose picture appears on the page, usually with a mocking nickname.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has started several Facebook pages mimicking Democratic candidates. A page called "The Real Heidi Heitkamp" was used to buy negative ads attacking the Democratic senator from North Dakota. "Millionaire Claire," a page impersonating Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, was also used as a vehicle to attack her and promote her Republican opponent, Josh Hawley. "Radical Kyrsten," another page operated by the N.R.S.C., was used to go after Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat running for Senate in Arizona.

Democrats operated attack pages as well. For Our Future, a liberal PAC, sponsored an attack page for Mike DeWine, the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio. The page, called "The Real Mike DeWine," was used to promote articles criticizing Mr. DeWine's political record.

Attack pages don't technically violate Facebook's rules, since they are labeled in fine print with the name of the sponsoring organization. But they can be confusing to the casual Facebook user scrolling through his or her feed, which led many readers to submit their own examples.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misidentified Thomas Jefferson's rival in the 1800 presidential election. It was John Adams, not James Madison.

Kevin Roose is a columnist for Business Day and a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. His column, "The Shift," examines the intersection of technology, business, and culture. @kevinroose * Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Reviewing Misinformation: What Reporters and Readers Found. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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We Asked for Examples of Election Misinformation. You Delivered.

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Readers submitted more than 4,000 examples of misinformation. Here are the different types being spread this election season. Two months ago, The New York Times asked readers to send in examples of election-related misinformation they saw online. Readers responded. In all, more than 4,000 examples of misinformation were submitted to The Times from social media feeds, text-messaging apps and email accounts.

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Aims to entertain with a comical, often exaggerated spin, and provide commentary.

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Introducing a new version of Shazam that recognizes every sound on Earth.

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Aims to trick readers/viewers; similar to a practical joke.

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It is the most talked about viral scare story of the year so far, blamed for child suicides and violent attacks - but experts and charities have warned that the "Momo challenge" is nothing but a "moral panic" spread by adults.

Warnings about the supposed Momo challenge suggest that children are being encouraged to kill themselves or commit violent acts after receiving messages on messaging service WhatsApp from users with a profile picture of a distorted image of woman with bulging eyes.

News stories about the Momo challenge have also attracted hundreds of thousands of shares on Facebook in a 24-hour period, dominating the list of UK news stories ranked by number of interactions on the social network.

There have also been claims that the material has appeared in a video featuring Peppa Pig among YouTube's content aimed at children.
Parents: don't panic about Momo - worry about YouTube Kids instead | Keza MacDonald
But the Samaritans and the NSPCC have dismissed the claims, saying that while there is no evidence that the Momo challenge has initially caused any harm itself, the ensuing media hysteria could now be putting vulnerable people at risk by encouraging them to think of self-harm.

The UK Safer Internet Centre called the claims "fake news". And YouTube said it had seen no evidence of videos showing or promoting the Momo challenge on its platform.

The NSPCC said there is no confirmed evidence that the phenomenon is actually posing a threat to British children and said they have received more phone calls about it from members of the media than concerned parents.

A Samaritans spokesperson was similarly sceptical, saying: "These stories being highly publicised and starting a panic means vulnerable people get to know about it and that creates a risk." They recommended media outlets read their guidelines on reporting suicide and suggested press coverage is "raising the risk of harm".

"Currently we're not aware of any verified evidence in this country or beyond linking Momo to suicide," said the Samaritans spokesperson. "What's more important is parents and people who work with children concentrate on broad online safety guidelines."

Child safety campaigners say the story has spread due to legitimate concerns about online child safety, the sharing of unverified material on local Facebook groups, and official comments from British police forces and schools which are based on little hard evidence.

While some concerned members of the public have rushed to share posts warning of the suicide risk, there are fears that they have exacerbated the situation by scaring children and spreading the images and the association with self-harm.

"Even though it's done with best intentions, publicising this issue has only piqued curiosity among young people," said Kat Tremlett, harmful content manager at the UK Safer Internet Centre.

The rumour mill appears to have created a feedback loop, where news coverage of the Momo challenge is prompting schools or the police to warn about the supposed risks posed by the Momo challenge, which has in turn produced more news stories warning about the challenge.

Tremlett said she was now hearing of children who are "white with worry" as a result of media coverage about a supposed threat that did not previously exist.

"It's a myth that is perpetuated into being some kind of reality," she said.

Although the Momo challenge has been circulating on social media and among schoolchildren in various forms since last year, the recent coverage appears to have started with a single warning posted by a mother on a Facebook group for residents of Westhoughton, a small Lancashire town on the edge of Bolton. This post, based on an anecdote she had heard from her son at school, went viral before being picked up by her local newspaper and then covered by outlets from around the world.

The supernatural "Momo" image, originally from an artwork made for a Japanese horror show exhibition, has been circulating on the internet for several years but last summer became attached to unverified claims that teenagers were being prompted to kill or harm themselves by messages on WhatsApp.

Many campaigners in the child safety sector have been reluctant to issue statements for fear of fanning the flames of the story but are changing direction after seeing the sheer number of dubious stories written to attract clicks on the issue.

Hundreds of separate articles have been written on the topic by British news websites in the last three days, dominating the most-read lists on tabloid news sites. These include explainers for concerned parents on how to protect children from the supposed risks of the challenge and claims about the acts that children are supposedly committing after seeing the images. Celebrities such as Stacey Solomon have weighed in and expressed their concerns, creating even more justifications for headlines.

Multiple police forces have issued formal warnings about the supposed risks of the Momo challenge, in addition to hundreds of schools. In one example, a Hull primary school posted on its Facebook page an unsourced claim that clips of the Momo challenge image are "hacking into children's programmes", with no evidence of what is meant by this claim.

A YouTube spokesperson said the claims were completely false: "Contrary to press reports, we have not received any evidence of videos showing or promoting the Momo challenge on YouTube. Content of this kind would be in violation of our policies and removed immediately."

Several outlets, including the Mirror and many local newspapers, have also claimed that the Momo game has been linked to 130 teen suicides in Russia, with no supporting evidence.

An identical claim was made in 2017 about a similar supposed viral suicide craze called Blue Whale, which was also linked to exactly 130 teen suicides in Russia. This figures came from a much-criticised single report in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, with later reporting suggesting that not a single death could be conclusively linked to the game.

"We almost need to stop talking about the issue for it to not be an issue any more," said Tremlett.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
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Viral 'Momo challenge' is a malicious hoax, say charities

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It is the most talked about viral scare story of the year so far, blamed for child suicides and violent attacks - but experts and charities have warned that the "Momo challenge" is nothing but a "moral panic" spread by adults.

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Aims to inform but mistakes are made in vetted the research; usually unintentional and retracted and/or corrected.

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Congressman Adam Schiff is putting pressure on Amazon to curb the spread of vaccine misinformation in its online store. Misinformation around vaccines - like the debunked myth that it causes autism - has led to some children in the United States not getting vaccinated, and is seen by experts as a 'major contributor' to recent measles outbreaks.

Schiff's letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos follows two others letters Schiff sent to Google head Sundar Pichai and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. In all three, Schiff criticized the platforms for serving up anti-vaccine propaganda where people look for information about vaccines. He also criticized Amazon for accepting paid advertising for anti-vaccine media. "Every online platform, including Amazon, must act responsibly and ensure that they do not contribute to this growing public-health catastrophe," Schiff wrote.

"Every online platform, including Amazon, must act responsibly."

The letter references a recent report from CNN that revealed that the vast majority of top search results for "vaccine" on Amazon provide anti-vaccination misinformation. CNN also reported that Amazon accepts paid advertisements for promoting anti-vaccine media. Right at the top of the "vaccine" search results is an ad for the free Kindle e-book Vaccines on Trial that fear-mongers about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. (To be fair, there's also an ad for the $259.19 Kindle edition of the massive, authoritative, evidence-based textbook Plotkin's Vaccines.)

Scrolling down the search results turns up a mix of ardently anti-vax misinformation and more subtle books that nevertheless encourage doubt about vaccines. The film Vaxxed falls into the first category and on Thursday evening sat right at the top of the list. It's directed by the disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield, who is responsible for the thoroughly debunked misconception that vaccines cause autism. (By Friday afternoon, Buzzfeed News reporter Caroline O'Donovan discovered that Vaxxed no longer ranked at the top of the search results, and appears to no longer be available for streaming on Amazon.)

"When we're making decisions about medicine, we typically look to the light of science."

In the more subtle category are books like The Vaccine-Friendly Plan that advocate for parental choice around vaccines - a euphemism for parents delaying or opting out of vaccinating their kids. Changing or delaying a kid's vaccine schedule is not recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics unless medically necessary. "You can go to Amazon and ask any question and get led to a bunch of different ideas," says Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician, vaccine expert, and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "But when we're making decisions about medicine, we typically look to the light of science." (Her book, Mama Doc Medicine, does not appear on the first page of search results.)

Similar results also crop up when you search "vaccination," The Verge discovered - and these search results don't include an ad for a vaccine textbook at the top. Presented with these titles, it can be difficult to separate fact from fear-mongering, particularly when fact is buried so far down the page. "Most parents are genuinely trying to do the right thing for their kids, and many are misinformed, frightened, or (more often) both," wrote science journalist Tara Haelle in an email to The Verge.

"Most parents are genuinely trying to do the right thing for their kids."

Haelle's own, evidence-based book for young adults, Vaccination Investigation: The History and Science of Vaccines, comes up ninth in the "vaccination" search results. Though Haelle is not particularly concerned about her own book's placement, she is concerned that non-evidence-based books are burying ones containing accurate data. "While I realize Amazon's algorithms are based on popularity and other user characteristics, the end result of the algorithm is to lead parents astray with more misinformation," she says.

The lists are particularly jarring since Amazon has been moving into the health space with a joint healthcare venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase and its purchase of online pharmacy PillPack. Yet when it comes to the algorithm that serves up search results about vaccinations for the retail arm of the company, Amazon has nothing to say on the record. Instead, Amazon suggested The Verge might find its content guidelines helpful: "As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content."

"The end result of the algorithm is to lead parents astray with more misinformation."

For experts, the issue isn't that anti-vax books and films are objectionable: it's that they could be harmful for public health. People who are too young or too sick to be vaccinated rely on everyone aroundthem being vaccinated to prevent the spread of potentially deadly disease. Parental fears around vaccines that are stoked by misinformation can erode that protection. "Amazon has to take some responsibility of selling products that are dangerous to child health, which is what they're doing," says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism.

Diseases targeted by vaccines are dangerous - especially for children. During an outbreak in 1964 and 1965, the rubella virus killed 2,000 babies and caused 11,000 miscarriages, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These days, thanks to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the CDC is only notified about 10 cases in the US each year. Measles used to hospitalize 48,000 people and kill between 400 and 500 people in the US annually. Now, it's theoretically eliminated in the US, but crops up and spreads in pockets of unvaccinated people - like right now, in Washington state.

"Amazon has to take some responsibility of selling products that are dangerous to child health."

Amazon's search results aren't the only part of the site serving up vaccine misinformation; its bestseller list for "vaccinations" is, too. Hotez noticed this when he was looking at the page for his own book, which is about being both a vaccine researcher and the parent of an autistic child. A link underneath the product details for Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism connected to Amazon's "Vaccination" bestsellers list. (After The Verge asked about it, the link looks to have disappeared from the book's page - but it's still possible to find the "Vaccinations" bestseller list.)

When Hotez clicked to see how his book ranked, he saw a few evidence-based books, including his own. But there were also books peddling fears about vaccines. An Amazon spokesperson tells The Verge that this bestseller list isn't curated. "It simply reflects the books customers are purchasing."

"Stop being the enabler."

Kathryn Edwards, a professor of pediatrics at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, is one of the editors of the authoritative textbook Plotkin's Vaccines. She isn't certain that policing Amazon's offerings is the way to go. "That's not my place to decide what their business is," she says. "If it's not on Amazon, it will be at a bookstore." She sees her role as helping people learn what's fact and what's fear-mongering. "I just want to make sure that people know how to choose and how to interpret legitimate and authoritative research and publications that are not," she says.

Amazon isn't alone. Other tech giants like Facebook and Google have also recently been called out after The Guardian reported that anti-vaccine misinformation was proliferating on the platforms. And Hotez, for one, told The Verge that they and Amazon should hire chief scientific officers who can evaluate the content these sites offer up. "Stop being the enabler," he says. People can still find anti-vax content online. They can still rent or buy the film Vaxxed, for instance, on the Vaxxed website, he says. "They don't need to use Amazon for it."
Updated 3:20PM Friday March 1st, 2019: Updated with a quote from Tara Haelle and to include the news that Vaxxed no longer appears in Amazon's search results for "vaccines" or "vaccination", and is not available for streaming on Amazon.

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Influential Democrat asks Amazon to explain why it promotes vaccine misinformation

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Congressman Adam Schiff is putting pressure on Amazon to curb the spread of vaccine misinformation in its online store. Misinformation around vaccines - like the debunked myth that it causes autism - has led to some children in the United States not getting vaccinated, and is seen by experts as a 'major contributor' to recent measles outbreaks.

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Aims to explain real events with false information.

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Aims to persuade an audience with selective facts. Can be both beneficial and detrimental.