[The Guardian] After Truth: how ordinary people are 'radicalized' by fake news

After Truth: how ordinary people are 'radicalized' by fake news

An eye-opening documentary traces the terrifying trajectory of disinformation, from Jade Helm to Pizzagate to Russian interference in the 2016 election

James Alefantis first learned about the conspiracy theory surrounding his pizzeria from a reporter’s phone call. In the waning days of the 2016 election, Will Sommer, then of the Washington City Paper in DC, had been following a thread on the site Reddit in which leaked emails from the Clinton campaign adviser John Podesta were used to justify an elaborate, and entirely false, story of a Clinton-run child abuse ring in the back of Comet Ping Pong pizza. Alefantis had never heard of the faux online hysteria and assumed, as he recalled in HBO’s new documentary After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News, that “everybody is up about this election and passions are high – I’m sure this will go away in a couple of days”.

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