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In July 2016 (just after high-profile mass shootings in Orlando and Dallas), articles began appearing online suggesting that CBC News has reported that 21 people were killed in a shooting in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Clicking through on the CBC News header led readers to multiple versions of the same story geotargeted to various areas of Canada, all with headlines referencing 21 dead: Searching the text of the post revealed additional fly-by-night web sites using the same template and identical language to report 20 dead in various American cities and towns. Either Nicole Wilson was a bi-national law enforcement superwoman, or the attacks were all invented to drive traffic to web sites via social media: The image of police cars appended to the Peterborough version of the article was taken from a May 2016 news article about an unrelated incident in the area. The articles and their underlying site design were virtually identical to an earlier cluster of hoaxes claiming non-existent ISIS attacks occurred in a variety of locations in the United States and England. Although the headers of the articles stated that the reports had been published by CBC News, their underlying URLs were hosted under the domain cbcca.tk and not as part of the legitimate CBC News site, which is markedly different in structure and design): The fake CBC News posts were part of a trend involving geotargeted fake news items designed to drive social media shares (and traffic) by appealing to Facebook users' interest in local news. Although prior prank generators and localized fake news sites typically adhered to fairly benign falsehoods involving popular chains closing for good, celebrity moves to small towns, and stars getting nearby flat tires, claims involving ISIS attacks and mass shootings advanced fabricated claims of an alarming and disturbing nature.
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