The Project's Waleed Aly has been flung into a bizarre Twitter pile-on surrounding a false story written by right-wing satirical website XYZ.

Aly's name was trending on Twitter on Sunday as some gullible readers assumed the story,

titled "Waleed Aly applauds African gang who assaulted young girl at train station for 'courageously standing up to white privilege", was true.

"Project panellist Waleed Aly has applauded the assault of a white teenage girl at Southern Cross Train Station in Melbourne earlier in the week, lauding the attack as a 'stunning and brave assault on white privilege'," the "joke" article read, going on to detail a fictional "15-minute lecture on The Project" by Aly.

The article attributed several entirely made-up quotes to Aly and to Project co-host Lisa Wilkinson who they "reported" told Aly "that will win you another Logie for sure" after his entirely invented monologue.

Other recent "satirical" articles on the site include "ABC disappointed race riots haven't started in Australia" and "SBS name change to the "Hate White Australia Network" approved."

A small tag at the top of the article marked it as "Satire" - easily missed by many readers, it would seem:

The Project's social media team had a busy Sunday, responding to those who furiously shared the article and calling for Aly to be taken off the air.

Responding to one angry tweeter calling for Aly to be removed from the program's panel as a result of the false article, The Project's Twitter account wrote: "As you'll see at the top of the article, it says 'satire'. Incredibly poor taste, but essentially someone has written this thinking it's funny or clever. It has no basis of truth or fact whatsoever."'

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Another response read: "This article has been written under the guise of 'satire'. It's disturbing and inaccurate. Completely fake. Please take a closer look at the article before you share it as though it's true."

"There is not one ounce of truth to this report. It's a complete fabrication under the guise of 'satire' and it's abhorrent."

Others chimed in to throw their support behind the host, attempting to further clarify that the article was indeed fabricated by XYZ:

Aly, who does not have a Twitter account, has not yet responded publicly to the fake news uproar.

Originally published as Waleed hit by 'abhorrent' online lie