Fake news is surging in local Ashton in Makerfield Facebook groups and misinformation has quadrupled as a share of news posts
Analysis by the Social Market Foundation found that one in six news items shared in the groups during the campaign is false, with misinformation heavily targeting Andy Burnham
Their analysis found that all of the misinformation in local Facebook was anti-Labour or pro-Reform in nature (except for one piece that related to 5G conspiracies).
There were several reshares of conspiratorial stories relating to Burnham’s supposed intentional coverup of the grooming gangs scandal, and false accusations that his wife benefited from Manchester’s EV infrastructure procurement.
There were also erroneous accusations that Ed Miliband was banning tumble dryers, Shabana Mahmood took part in a violent pro-Palestine protest and that Burnham lost his seat in 2017 (he stood down).
AI generated imagery is playing a role in Makerfield Facebook groups, with some members posting faked images of council blocks and streets lined with Reform flags, and Labour and Green hot air balloons flying over the constituency.
Some comments called it out as being ‘AI slop’ but some group members appeared to believe it. As the quality of AI imagery and video continues to improve, it will become increasingly challenging for humans to recognise deep fakes from the real thing.
This flood of misinformation is, at least in part, being driven by what seemed to be fake accounts and fake news organisations.
Some of the accounts sharing fake news had very few friends, no profile picture, and were marked as ‘new accounts’ when you looked at the profiles. There were reshares of posts from supposed news organisations who didn’t even fill in their profile description correctly (“Briefly , about the most important”) or have any presence beyond their pages.
