The political events in the last two years including the results of the Brexit referendum and the American presidential elections illustrate the serious problem of the post-truth era. This is truly scary.

The proliferation of fake news has made it hard to differentiate facts from fiction, and truth from lies. In this context, fake or alternative news refer to stories that look real but are intentionally misleading and false, which deliberately spread misinformation and fabricate events to manipulate public opinion and instigate activities and reactions for political or economic gain. These are seriously creating concerns over its impact on governance and democracy.

Not all alternative news sites are equal. While some news sites are spoof news or gossip news offering satirical commentary for entertainment, and do not pretend to present real news (e.g. www.theonion.com or www.thedailymash.co.uk), or sites that offer possible scenarios to forecast the risks and consequences of events, or other alternative historical what-ifs, or even sites speculating historic stories and report pseudo-scientific sensational stories,  others do whatever they can to fool unsuspected folks, and the creators and distributors can earn thousands of dollars/pounds a day mostly from advertisement revenue.

Social media provided a platform to spread all kinds of alternative news, both innocent and malicious types, without proper verification or checks or balances. Also advances in technology made creating fake images, audio or video material not only possible but easy and cheap.

Currently, major social media companies such as Google and Facebook are scrambling to alert users about this problem, and many websites (e.g. www.fakenewswatch.com) provided updated lists of them.

Twisting the truth is an eternal phenomenon. Even though the majority of us are becoming aware of this problem only recently, the fact is that the problem existed for thousands of years. We know that historical figures dating back to the Egyptian Pharos had engaged in this behaviour.

I started this website as my contribution to combating this plague and publicise my opinion

Here is some of my diverse research. I have opened the platform to others who share the same principles, even with very different ideas, to contribute. As such, while this website is new, the dates of some of the earlier posts refer to the original dates when the articles were authored.

While initial coverage has some bias towards the Middle East, my objective is to include all geographical regions.