We tend to think of misinformation as a new problem; but in reality, information manipulation has been happening for thousands of years. According to Izabella Kaminska's "A Lesson in Fake News from the Info-Wars of Ancient Rome," one of the first recorded uses of political fake news was by the Roman ruler Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar who eventually became the first leader of the Roman Empire. The Twitter timeline of events you see here imagines what the first information war might look like in the context of today's internet.
Sourced from and inspired by Izabella Kaminska's "A Lesson in Fake News from the Info-Wars of Ancient Rome." Dates referenced from Wikipedia. Twitter feed code from Hassan Dj on Codepen.