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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disclose.tv | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclose.tv | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:47.580504+00:00 | kb-cron |
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. 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. 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".
=== Prior to 2021 relaunch === 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. 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." In August 2016, Disclose.tv published an article falsely claiming that Edward Snowden was pronounced dead by his girlfriend in Russia. 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. In 2017, PolitiFact included Disclose.tv in its list of fake news websites. 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. 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.
=== COVID-19 misinformation ===
Disclose.tv promotes anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown narratives, and misrepresents developments related to COVID-19. 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. In March 2021, Disclose.tv misrepresented a report on vaccine passports published by The Washington Post to falsely claim that the Biden administration would both mandate the use of a passport and maintain the system that runs it. 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. Disclose.tv subsequently deleted its tweet. 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. 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". The tweet was reshared by podcaster Joe Rogan. Reuters subsequently corrected its headline and article to note that the research conducted by Kowa was non-clinical research; the correction was shared by Disclose.tv, which still falsely stated that ivermectin was "effective against Omicron in phase III trial". 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.
== Operation == Disclose.tv is owned by Futurebytes GmbH & Co. KG, which describes itself as a "private equity company" and is based in Passau. Futurebytes is registered with the District Court of Passau and its described purpose is e-commerce, marketing and advertising. Futurebytes is owned by Uwe Braun, a Cologne-based entrepreneur who has made money in Internet hosting businesses, with his company Host Europe being sold to GoDaddy for €1.69 billion ($1.82 billion) in 2016. Braun has not publicly acknowledged his connection to Disclose.tv. In the website's imprint, Braun is named as the legally responsible person. 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 biographies, and their profile pictures were fakes generated by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). The writers' articles also appeared to have been written by a native German speaker.
== See also == List of fake news websites
== References ==
== External links == Official website Robert Evans (28 January 2022). "DiscloseTV & the Cultic Milieu". It Could Happen Here (Podcast). iHeart. Retrieved 20 August 2023.