In the landscape of the past twelve months, we have not been short on surprises. But if we are forced to crown the definitive , one event rises above the noise—not because it was the biggest explosion, but because it violated the most assumptions about how the modern world is supposed to work.
A video surfaced of a US Senator accepting a bribe in a hotel room. It was fake. But by the time fact-checkers identified a microscopic artifact in the lighting (a process that took 11 hours), the video had been viewed 400 million times. The retraction received 4 million views. black swan story of the year