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In general, the news sites included in the sample outperformed the false news outlets with well over one million interactions per month. In addition, La Repubblica outperformed all of the news sites we considered in the sample. However, eight of the 20 false news outlets in this sample generated more interactions per month than the news website of the Italian public broadcaster, Rainews.

The best performing outlet was Meteo Giornale—ostensibly a weather site, but also one that has been shown to publish false information about supposedly imminent asteroid strikes and the like. Again, this is roughly half the equivalent figure for Rainews, but very far behind the figures for La Repubblica (443.5 million minutes) and Il Corriere della Sera (296.6 million minutes).

In summary, 83% of Italian investors believe the legal environment has the most negative impact on their investing activities with a significant majority of 83% concerned about investing in digital content intermediaries that are today confronted by ambiguity and uncertain outcomes, potentially large damages, and the risks of secondary liability if new anti-piracy regulations are introduced.