At the end of 2016, BuzzFeed analyzed the year’s political stories—the twenty most viral articles from publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and the twenty most viral published by false-news peddlers. During the last three months of the presidential campaign, the top fictional articles—“Pope Francis Endorses Donald Trump,” “Wikileaks Confirms Hillary Sold Weapons to ISIS”—were much more widely shared and commented on than the top genuine ones.
