How a 'firm' shared, retracted fake poll numbers in US

Trump-era political misinformation concerns resurface as fake polls spread online, raising questions over how fabricated data can influence election campaigns NEW YORK: Locked in a competitive re-election race, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass declared on social media last week that a new poll was evidence that her campaign was "gaining momentum". Just a few days later, the truth emerged: The poll was fabricated. The California results were among at least three "polls" across three states posted online this month by Median Strategies, a previously unknown organisation that admitted to Los Angeles Times Monday that the purported results were fake.Before shuttering its website this week, the company wrote that it "was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification". The post did not explain who was behind the "experiment" or for what purpose.The Guardian reported Thursday that a 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind the website. "I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily," Rahil Prakash told the Guardian w...