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Disclose.tv
Homepage in April 2023
Available inEnglish
Founded2007[1]
HeadquartersPassau, Germany[2]
OwnerFuturebytes GmbH & Co. KG[2]
URLdisclose.tv

Disclose.tv is a disinformation outlet[8] based in Germany that presents itself as a news aggregator.[2][6] It is known for promoting conspiracy theories[13] and fake news,[19] including COVID-19 misinformation[3][2][6] and anti-vaccine narratives.[22]

The website was created in 2007 as a conspiracy forum focused around content such as UFOs and paranormal phenomena. In 2021, it rebranded itself as a news aggregator on its social media platforms and website. Disclose.tv pushes far-right content, conspiracy theories and misleading information together with real news taken from other sources frequently without attribution, and platforms hate speech, including Holocaust denial and neo-Nazism, on its message groups.[2][6][23]

History

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Disclose.tv in November 2015

Archived versions of Disclose.tv were found as far back as March 2007 by Logically, a British anti-disinformation organisation. In its initial form, the website operated as a forum focusing on user-generated content discussing topics such as UFOs, paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories.[2][6] The website's name references the concept of "disclosure" in the UFO community, referring to the time they believe the government will confirm the existence of aliens and release information about them.[2]

In April 2012, Disclose.tv announced a redesign of its website.[24] During the 2010s, Disclose.tv's content became more political, with users' posts on the site casting doubt on the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and criticising "social justice warriors",[2][6] which Logically said was indicative of "the right-wing undercurrent of the community".[2]

In 2019, Disclose.tv removed its user-written articles and switched to primarily hosting forums; the website presented some of the forum posts as news articles on its social media accounts.[2] In September 2021, it removed its old versions and cleared out its Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, and announced to its users that it would be operating exclusively as a news website. Around the same time, the website published news articles that were backdated to September 2020, and many of which were plagiarised from a combination of reliable sources and other conspiracy theory websites.[2][6]

In January 2022, after Logically sent a request for comment during its investigation of the website, Disclose.tv published an unsigned statement[25] claiming to have never heard of Logically, stating it had "lost sight" of the hateful content being posted on its Discord channel despite claiming to have moderators and bots searching for such posts, and apologising for the examples of plagiarism listed in the investigation. The statement also targeted Logically reporter Ernie Piper by name.[2][6] Logically noted that Disclose.tv had blocked many members of its editorial team on Twitter prior to the request for comment, despite claiming to have never heard of Logically.[2] Piper said that the statement, part of which was described as being "ironic and mocking in tone", was "not a normal way for a media organization to respond to critical coverage", and added that it was "alarming" and "in and of itself a threat" that Disclose.tv had published his name to its followers.[6]

Influence

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As of January 2022, Disclose.tv has social media accounts on Twitter (1 million followers as of 5 November 2022[26]), Telegram (438,000 followers), YouTube (12,000 followers) and Facebook (3 million followers), as well as the far-right platforms Gettr (612,000 followers) and Gab (199,000 followers). Between September 2021 and January 2022, Disclose.tv also maintained a Discord server.[2][6] Disclose.tv's content has been promoted by QAnon conspiracy theorists[27] and shared on COVID-19 misinformation groups on Telegram.[28]

Miro Dittrich, a senior researcher for the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), a German extremism monitoring agency, said that Disclose.tv "is an exception in terms of its reach" in relation to other fringe websites, and in how it is "trying to portray itself as not being a German outlet" and reusing American far-right sources' talking points. Dittrich and Stephan Mündges, the head of the Technical University of Dortmund's Journalism Institute, said that the biggest threat from outlets like Disclose.tv is their ability to present conspiracy theories, disinformation and misleading stories as factual news. Mündges noted, "They call themselves 'alternative media.' And not everything they publish is completely false, there can be a true story that is then given a strong slant in a certain direction."[6]

In January 2022, Logically reported that Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism and other forms of hate speech were flourishing on Disclose.tv's Discord and Telegram groups, which included users displaying the swastika and sharing the neo-Nazi propaganda film Europa: The Last Battle on its Telegram group.[2][23] Logically reporter Ernie Piper explained, "They had a disclaimer saying 'no Nazi BS,' but were at best negligent and at worst freely allowing extreme anti-Semitism on their channels."[6] Promoting or platforming Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, with a punishment of up to five years in prison. Following Logically's request for comment, Disclose.tv closed its Discord server.[2][6] Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said that Disclose.tv was "known" to them, but did not comment further on the extent to which they were monitoring its channels.[6]

Content

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Disclose.tv in June 2021

Disclose.tv presents itself as a news aggregator on its social media platforms, promoting conspiracy theories and misleading information together with real news taken from other sources frequently without attribution. It has misrepresented past events as having taken place in the present, such as reporting on a March 2020 curfew in Bavaria in October 2021.[2][6] Logically noted that over half of Disclose.tv's eight most popular tweets featured no attribution as of January 2022, and stated that the website's continued uncritical coverage of conspiracy narratives and UFOs since its September 2021 relaunch revealed its links to pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.[2]

Dittrich stated that the website often creates content "that doesn't look like it's conspiracy-driven" and is occasionally shared by "apolitical people or people on the left who don't know its true purpose". Mündges said that it was not very common for a Germany-based website to be producing content in another language for an international audience, adding: "It is more common that items from the English-language media, for example the 'Stop the steal' narrative, are taken and translated into German".[6]

Prior to 2021 relaunch

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In 2012, Disclose.tv published a story titled "List of All FEMA Concentration Camps in America Revealed", which was shared by American far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.[29] In 2015, skeptic Brian Dunning listed Disclose.tv at #6 on his "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" list, calling it "the National Enquirer of the 21st century. Aliens, UFOs, mermaids, Planet X, ghosts, ancient mysteries... anything you'd expect to find in a supermarket tabloid, you can find on the pages of Disclose.tv."[30]

In August 2016, Disclose.tv published an article falsely claiming that Edward Snowden was pronounced dead by his girlfriend in Russia.[16] In September, Disclose.tv claimed that NASA had admitted to being in contact with aliens and had not formally announced the information due to believing that everyone was already aware of it; Snopes traced the source of the claim to Waterford Whispers News, an Irish satirical news website.[31]

In 2017, PolitiFact included Disclose.tv in its list of fake news websites.[18][32]

In May 2018, Disclose.tv published an article claiming that vaccines contain "cancer enzymes". The fact-checking website Health Feedback noted that the "enzymes" referred to in the article seemed to be nagalase, which is not in any vaccine. The claim was repeated on websites such as GlobalResearch.ca and Natural News.[33]

In October 2018, Disclose.tv published a story claiming that a Zimbabwean man had created an electric car that did not require charging. PolitiFact rated the claim "Pants on Fire", noting that the man's claims had already been reported on in 2015, and that the Zimbabwean technology news website TechZim had noted that the car was outside of the Law of Conservation of Energy.[9]

COVID-19 misinformation

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Further information: COVID-19 misinformation

Disclose.tv promotes anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown narratives, and misrepresents developments related to COVID-19.[2][6] A study published in March 2021 in the Online Social Networks and Media journal identified Disclose.tv as a purveyor of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.[3]

In March 2021, Disclose.tv misrepresented a report on vaccine passports published by The Washington Post[34] to falsely claim that the Biden administration would both mandate the use of a passport and maintain the system that runs it.[20]

In July 2021, Disclose.tv tweeted that 60% of people being admitted to hospitals in the United Kingdom had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The claim was based on an incorrect statistic given by Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Advisor for the UK; Vallance issued a statement on Twitter with the correct statistic, which was that 60% of people being hospitalized were unvaccinated.[35][21] Disclose.tv subsequently deleted its tweet.[21]

In October 2021, Disclose.tv published an article titled "German court declares Corona curfew unconstitutional", which referred to a March 2020 curfew in Bavaria that was retroactively ruled unconstitutional by the State Court.[2][6]

In February 2022, Disclose.tv shared on Twitter a Reuters article with the incorrect headline "Japan's Kowa says that ivermectin effective against Omicron in phase III trial".[36][5] The tweet was reshared by podcaster Joe Rogan.[36][37] Reuters subsequently corrected its headline and article to note that the research conducted by Kowa was non-clinical research;[36][5] the correction was shared by Disclose.tv, which still falsely stated that ivermectin was "effective against Omicron in phase III trial".[5]

In March 2024, Disclose.tv republished an op-ed by Paul Marik and Pierre Kory in The Hill claiming that long COVID was caused by COVID-19 vaccination instead of COVID-19 infection. The fact-checking website Health Feedback found that the op-ed relied on anecdotes that did not provide evidence to support the claim.[32]

Operation

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Disclose.tv is owned by Futurebytes GmbH & Co. KG, which describes itself as a "private equity company" and is based in Passau.[2] Futurebytes is registered with the District Court of Passau and its described purpose is e-commerce, marketing and advertising.[38] Futurebytes is owned by Uwe Braun, a Cologne-based entrepreneur who has made money in Internet hosting businesses,[2] with his company Host Europe being sold to GoDaddy for €1.69 billion ($1.82 billion) in 2016.[39][2] Braun has not publicly acknowledged his connection to Disclose.tv.[6] In the website's imprint, Braun is named as the legally responsible person.[40]

In January 2022, Logically reported that all of the website's articles were attributed to only four writers, none of whom had links to personal websites, social media or bios, and their profile pictures were fakes generated by artificial intelligence. The writers' articles also appeared to have been written by a native German speaker.[2][6]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Disclose.tv". whois.domaintools.com. Archived from the original on 27 October 2022. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Thomas, W. F. (12 January 2022). "Disclose.tv: Conspiracy Forum Turned Disinformation Factory". Logically. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. Disclose.tv, a disinformation outlet based in Germany, is bringing fake news to a timeline near you... On the Discord and Telegram group message for Disclose.tv, anti-vax conspiracies, antisemitism, racism, and transphobia are easy to find. On these platforms, messages run the gamut from moderate political beliefs and chatting about aliens to outright Holocaust denial and Nazism.
  3. ^ a b c Guarino, Stefano; Pierri, Francesco; Di Giovanni, Marco; Celestini, Alessandro (1 March 2021). "Information disorders during the COVID-19 infodemic: The case of Italian Facebook". Online Social Networks and Media. 22: 100124. doi:10.1016/j.osnem.2021.100124. ISSN 2468-6964. PMC 8479410. PMID 34604611.
  4. ^ Jemielniak, D.; Krempovych, Y. (30 August 2021). "An analysis of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and fear mongering on Twitter". Public Health. 200: 4–6. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2021.08.019. ISSN 0033-3506. PMC 8494632. PMID 34628307. The most retweeted (2015 retweets as of 26 March 2021) tweet from the second period was one by Disclose.tv, a site described as involved in disinformation.
  5. ^ a b c d "Claims that a phase 3 clinical trial showed that ivermectin is effective against Omicron are inaccurate and based on a now-corrected Reuters article". Health Feedback. 2 February 2022. Archived from the original on 10 November 2022. Retrieved 8 November 2022. ...the news agency's incorrect article and headline were shared a number of times on Twitter, including by podcaster Joe Rogan (who has since deleted his tweet), Germany-based disinformation outlet Disclose.tv...
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Schumacher, Elizabeth (8 February 2022). "Disclose.TV: English disinformation made in Germany". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 26 October 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. Disclose.TV uses grains of truth and English content to mask the way it operates, delivering far-right and conspiracy content to its millions of followers.
  7. ^ Manhire, Toby (8 June 2022). "Conspiracy theorists are losing their shit over a clip of Jacinda Ardern in New York". The Spinoff. Archived from the original on 26 October 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. A similar clip was posted by Disclose.tv, the Germany-based disinformation firehose...
  8. ^ Sources describing Disclose.tv as a disinformation outlet: [3][4][2][5][6][7]
  9. ^ a b Haas, Kyra (29 October 2018). "Zimbabwean inventor did not create an electric car that never needs charging". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on 7 November 2022. Retrieved 7 November 2022. The initial blog post was published in April 2018 on the conspiracy-fueled website Disclose.tv.
  10. ^ a b Caplan, David (6 December 2019). "Facebook refuses to take down anti-Semitic post". Audacy. Archived from the original on 8 November 2022. Retrieved 8 November 2022. Disclose.TV is a website notoriously known for publishing conspiracy theories and fake news, with a particular interest in publishing UFO-related stories.
  11. ^ Rothschild, Mike (20 December 2021). "Switzerland's viral 'suicide pod' reignites conspiratorial claims of 'med beds'". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 23 November 2022. Retrieved 23 November 2022. And a post on the Telegram channel of conspiracy theory account Disclose TV...
  12. ^ a b Palma, Bethania (5 January 2022). "No, 95% of Omicron Cases Are Not in Vaccinated People". Snopes. Archived from the original on 26 October 2022. Retrieved 26 October 2022. The post above was published on Twitter on Dec. 30, 2021, by the conspiratorial network Disclose TV.
  13. ^ Sources describing Disclose.tv's promotion of conspiracy theories: [9][10][11][12][2][6]
  14. ^ Allcott, Hunt; Gentzkow, Matthew; Yu, Chuan (1 April 2019). "Trends in the diffusion of misinformation on social media" (PDF). Research & Politics. 6 (2). SAGE Publishing. arXiv:1809.05901. doi:10.1177/2053168019848554. ISSN 2053-1680. S2CID 52291737. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 December 2021. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
  15. ^ Haenschen, Katherine; Shu, Mia X.; Gilliland, Jacob A. (12 June 2023). "Curated Misinformation: Liking Facebook Pages for Fake News Sites". American Behavioral Scientist. doi:10.1177/00027642231175638. ISSN 0002-7642. S2CID 259408676. Archived from the original on 17 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
  16. ^ a b LaCapria, Kim (10 August 2016). "Snowden Pronounced Dead by His Girlfriend in Russia". Snopes. Archived from the original on 17 November 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022. Disclose.tv and Get Off the BS are sites known for publishing outlandish fabrications and fake news in order to attract readers.
  17. ^ Dicker, Rachel (14 November 2016). "Avoid These Fake News Sites at All Costs". U.S. News and World Report. Archived from the original on 6 October 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
  18. ^ a b "PolitiFact's guide to fake news websites and what they peddle". PolitiFact. 20 April 2017. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  19. ^ Sources describing Disclose.tv's promotion of fake news: [14][15][16][17][18][10][2]
  20. ^ a b Kasprak, Alex (31 March 2021). "Is the Biden Administration Creating or Mandating Vaccine Passports?". Snopes. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  21. ^ a b c "The majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.K. are among unvaccinated people". Health Feedback. 24 July 2021. Archived from the original on 3 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  22. ^ Sources describing Disclose.tv's promotion of anti-vaccine narratives: [20][21][12][2][6]
  23. ^ a b Thomas, W. F. (11 February 2022). "Telegram: The Social Network Where Conspiracies Meet". Logically. Archived from the original on 14 January 2024. Retrieved 14 January 2024. Similarly, in the group for Disclose.tv, a sketchy news aggregator site that began as a paranormal and conspiracy theory forum, users shared links to other channels filled with neo-Nazi propaganda.
  24. ^ "Conspiracy multimedia hub Disclose.tv gets a makeover: New design, new features". PR Web. 16 April 2012. Archived from the original on 20 April 2012. Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  25. ^ "UK-based investigative reporter wants to "unmask" Disclose.tv". Disclose.tv. 11 January 2022. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  26. ^ "Disclose.tv". Twitter. Archived from the original on 3 November 2022. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
  27. ^ Marland, Tori; Piper, Ernie; Backovic, Nick (28 June 2022). "QAnon Crypto Trading Scheme Lost Investors Millions". Logically. Archived from the original on 28 January 2024. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
  28. ^ Wildon, Jordan; Ondrak, Joe (15 February 2022). "Assessing the State of U.K. COVID Conspiracy Telegram". Logically. Archived from the original on 26 January 2024. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
  29. ^ Potok, Mark; Terry, Don (27 October 2015). "Margins to the Mainstream". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
  30. ^ Dunning, Brian. "Updated: Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Web Sites". Skeptoid. Archived from the original on 18 January 2021. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
  31. ^ LaCapria, Kim (19 September 2016). "NASA Admits It Is in Contact with Alien Species and Just Forgot to Mention It". Snopes. Archived from the original on 23 November 2022. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  32. ^ a b "No evidence that persistent symptoms are more frequent after COVID-19 vaccination than after infection, contrary to an op-ed in The Hill". Health Feedback. 15 March 2024. Archived from the original on 9 April 2024. Retrieved 9 April 2024.
  33. ^ "Claims that vaccines contain "cancer enzymes" are unfounded, also misleads with one-sided explanation of nagalase function". Health Feedback. 6 August 2019. Archived from the original on 5 September 2022. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
  34. ^ Diamond, Dan; Sun, Lena H.; Stanley-Becker, Isaac (29 March 2021). "'Vaccine passports' are on the way, but developing them won't be easy". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 28 March 2021. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  35. ^ Fraser, Terrence (20 July 2021). "Inaccurate data spreads about COVID hospitalizations in the UK". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 13 December 2022. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  36. ^ a b c Settles, Gabrielle (2 February 2022). "Ivermectin study showed 'antiviral effect,' which is not the same as being effective against omicron". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
  37. ^ Gore, D'Angelo (2 February 2022). "Social Media Posts Repeat Inaccurate Reporting on Ivermectin and Omicron". FactCheck.org. Archived from the original on 19 March 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  38. ^ "Futurebytes GMBH & Co. KG, Passau, Germany". northdata.com. Archived from the original on 25 March 2023. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  39. ^ Medhora, Narottam (6 December 2016). "GoDaddy to buy Host Europe for US$1.82 billion". BNN Bloomberg. Reuters. Archived from the original on 9 July 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
  40. ^ "About". Disclose.tv. Archived from the original on 24 February 2023. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
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