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In mid-December 2018, social media users shared an article reporting that a Burger King employee in Elgin, Illinois, had impregnated 17 local women in a bid to break the (allegedly) existing world record of 16 simultaneous pregnancies by one father. The story appeared on the website NBCNews6.com, where it was reported that: If you're thinking this scenario sounds preposterous, you're right. We checked around and found no evidence that such a world record exists anywhere, or that an Elgin, Illinois, man (conveniently unnamed in the article) recently laid claim to beating it. We also examined the domain name data for NBCNews6.com. It was registered anonymously a mere three weeks before the article was published. And although it purports to be an NBC affiliate website, it doesn't sport an official NBC logo or include any contact information. Like a host of similar fly-by-night websites that spoof the URLs of real news organizations, NBCNews6.com is a junk news purveyor publishing fabricated content with clickbait headlines to attract likes, shares, and advertising revenue. We found a number of links on the site that redirected users to pages promoting health and beauty scams, such as alternative cancer cures and anti-aging creams. Although this article is reminiscent of others we've encountered on sites that explicitly label their fictional offerings as satire, NBCNews6.com carries no such disclaimer.
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