The Report from Iron Mountain is a book published in 1967 which purports to be the report of a government panel. The book includes the claim it was authored by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret, and that it was not intended to be made public. It details the analyses of a government panel which concludes that war, or a credible substitute for war, is necessary if governments are to maintain power. The book was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into fifteen languages. Controversy still swirls over whether the book was a satiric hoax about think-tank logic and writing style or the genuine product of a secret government panel. The document is a favorite among conspiracy theorists, who reject the statement made in 1972 by satirist Leonard Lewin that the book was a spoof and that he was its author.
Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.
Steven Alexander James, FRSA is an English musician, best known as the bassist of the rock band Blur. He has also played with temporary bands Fat Les, Me Me Me, WigWam and Bad Lieutenant.
The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California, during the years 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers, covering such subjects as the anti-war movement and Civil Rights Movement, as well as the social changes advocated by youth culture.
Frédéric Pagès is a French journalist noted for his work with the satirical weekly, Le Canard enchaîné.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, authored the Bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed Bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin until December 2010.
There have been multiple accounts of people who allegedly travelled through time reported by the press or circulated on the internet. These reports have turned out either to be hoaxes or to be based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information, or interpretation of fiction as fact, many being now recognized as urban legends.
Silk Road was an online black market and the first modern darknet market. It was launched in 2011 by its American founder Ross Ulbricht under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts." As part of the dark web, Silk Road operated as a hidden service on the Tor network, allowing users to buy and sell products and services between each other anonymously. All transactions were conducted with bitcoin, a cryptocurrency which aided in protecting user identities. The website was known for its illegal drug marketplace, among other illegal and legal product listings. Between February 2011 and July 2013, the site facilitated sales amounting to 9,519,664 Bitcoins.
The Daily Currant was an American satirical news blog that focused on politics, technology, and entertainment. A number of its satirical stories have been mistaken for true news reports by the media.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The perpetrator, Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother before murdering 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and later committed suicide. A number of fringe figures have promoted conspiracy theories that doubt or dispute what occurred at Sandy Hook. Various conspiracy theorists have claimed, for example, that the massacre was actually orchestrated by the U.S. government as part of an elaborate plot to promote stricter gun control laws.
National Report is a fake news website that posts fictional articles related to world events. It is described by Snopes.com as a fake news site, by FactCheck.org as a satirical site, and by The Washington Post as part of a fake-news industry, making profits from "duping gullible Internet users with deceptively newsy headlines." The National Report describes itself as a "news and political satire web publication" and provides a disclaimer that "all news articles contained within National Report are fiction".
Students of George Mason University, as part of T. Mills Kelly's course, "Lying about the past", created two popular Internet hoaxes: the "Edward Owens hoax", and the "Reddit serial killer hoax". The goal of the course was the creation of a widespread Internet deception. As Kelly stated in the course's syllabus:
What's our goal? Buzz, of course! Viral! We want our hoax to be picked up and spread around the Internet like wildfire!
Young Living is a multi-level marketing company based in Lehi, Utah. Founded by Donald Gary Young in 1993, it sells essential oils and other related products.
Craig Steven Wright is an Australian computer scientist and businessman. He has publicly claimed to be the main part of the team that created bitcoin, and the identity behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. These claims are generally regarded as false by the media and the cryptocurrency community. In March 2024, Mr Justice James Mellor in the British High Court ruled that Wright is not Nakamoto. As of 2019, Wright lives in the United Kingdom.
GMO conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories related to the production and sale of genetically modified crops and genetically modified food. These conspiracy theories include claims that agribusinesses, especially Monsanto, have suppressed data showing that GMOs cause harm, deliberately cause food shortages to promote the use of GM food, or have co-opted government agencies such as the United States Food and Drug Administration or scientific societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The People's Voice is an American fake news website based in Los Angeles. The site was founded as Your News Wire in 2014 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and his husband, Sinclair Treadway. In November 2018, it rebranded itself as NewsPunch. Your News Wire was revived as a separate website in November 2020, and has continued publishing hoaxes similar to those in NewsPunch. In 2023, NewsPunch adopted its current name, The People's Voice.
Pablo Reyes Jr. is a Mexican writer, prankster and contributor to fake news websites. He is the founder of Huzlers, a fictional news website that attracts about 387,000 unique visitors per month, according to Comscore. That makes it the No. 1 American site tracked by Comscore in a new genre that Huzler's founder calls "fauxtire" — not quite The Onion, but not quite PBS.
