"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

I love that quote and it's attribution a 19th century British prime minister (1) illustrates how long this "trend" has been around.

So when the author of the article states

"Nobody can say exactly when the trend first started, but in 2014 we saw the first major outbreaks of bogus data distributed by private companies just so it would go viral online"

I think that's a bit hyperbolic.

Old hat, fun to write about though.