The Fake News Files

Revelations of a Bullshit Detective Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenks’ company Lead Stories does fact-checking for Facebook and TikTok No one is more well-placed to reveal the truth behind fake news Fake news: who’s behind it? How does it go viral? And what can we do about it?

Detecting bullshit is Maarten Schenk's job. In 2015, together with a CNN journalist and a lawyer, he founded the company Lead Stories, which has since become one of the most important fact checkers in the US. Through his patented invention Trendolizer, Schenk can track in real time what goes viral. That's because Maarten knows that viral fake news is the most dangerous fake news out there. And that's when it really kicks off, because finding out whether something is actually fake and who’s behind it, isn’t something you can entrust and delegate to a computer.

Jump into the misinformation maelstrom with The Fake News Files. Against the backdrop of two Trumpian elections and a worldwide pandemic, Schenk introduces us to a motley crew of Macedonian teenagers, Pakistani spammers, QAnon and an elusive Australian troll. Along the way, he exposes the various mechanisms behind fake news: why is it so easy for fake news to go viral? What algorithms are at fault? And how can we defend ourselves against it?

140 x 210 mm | 224 pages | 60,000 words paperback | all rights available

Maarten Schenk is co-founder of the company Lead Stories, one of the most important fact checkers of the US. He’s fascinated by the psychological and technical trickery that people and organisations use to deliberately fabricate fake news and to spread it on the internet.