Here Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook From 2016

Hoaxes about US politics were among the top-performing fake news content on Facebook in 2016, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News.

Twenty-three of the 50 top-performing fake news hoaxes we found on Facebook were focused on US politics. Overall, fake news about US politics accounted for 10.6 million of the 21.5 million total shares, reactions, and comments these English-language stories generated on Facebook this year, according to the analysis.

The top-performing fake news story identified in the analysis is a hoax from October that claimed President Obama had banned reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. It was published by ABCNews.com.co, a fake site made to look like ABC News that scored six hits in the top 50. The Obama hoax generated more than 2.1 million shares, comments, and reactions on Facebook in just two months. (A counter on the article page suggests the story has been viewed more than 110,000 times.)

BuzzFeed News used BuzzSumo to identify the top-performing Facebook content from 96 fake news websites, including the network of more than 40 sites exposed in a recent investigation. This list of English-language fake sites has been built up over the past two years of covering this topic, and was compared to this chart from the creators of Hoaxy to compile a more comprehensive list of pure fake news sites. Click here to view the top 50 hoaxes, and to see the list of fake news sites.

In order to examine the performance of pure fake news on Facebook in 2016, this analysis focused exclusively on stories that were 100% false and that originated on fake news websites it did not include misreported news or partisan misrepresentations of real events.

Along with the Obama pledge ban hoax, other fake news about US politics that hit big on Facebook this year included Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement," "Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America," ISIS Leader Calls for American Muslim Voters to Support Hillary Clinton," and "FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide."

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Here Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook From 2016