# 1. Fake news is not new

#### Fake is not new

The distortion of truth and the spreading of lies, propaganda and fabricted stories has been an age-old problem.

For example, in the first century A.D., the great Roman orator Dio of Prusa claimed that Troy was not conquered by the Greeks at all, as described in detail in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. the famous Horse of Troy, according to him, was not a ruse to conquer the city, but simply a gift from the Greeks, intended as reparation for all the damage done.

Detail of 'The fin de siècle newspaper proprietor' by F. Opper.

Around 1900, the phenomenon of 'Yellow journalism' emerged in America, in which thorough journalistic research was forced to take a back seat in order to boost the newspaper sales through the use of sensational headlines and exaggerated stories about crime and scandals.
The term 'fake news' was coined in 2014 by Canadian journalist Craig Silverman. Silverman began by collecting media mistakes and posting them in a blog called ‘regret the error’. In his search for misinformation, however, he also encountered much more serious cases in addition to these innocent, unintentional errors. Like a company that creates fake profiles on social media in exchange for payment in order to spread negative information about competitors.