Macedonian Teen Claims He Made $60,000 Producing Fake News Mostly Targeted To Trump Supporters
A Macedonian teen is claiming to have made at least $60,000 producing fake news in the past six months, mostly by appealing to supporters of Donald Trump, according to a Friday report from NBC News.
The 17-year-old told NBC that he is just one of at least 300 locals from the small Macedonian town of Veles who made a fortune in ad revenue during the presidential election by publishing and promoting fake news on their websites.
Last month, Buzzfeed News reported at least 100 U.S. politics sites are being run out of Veles, most of which are “aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the U.S.”
“You see what people like and you just give it to them,” said Dimitri, who asked NBC not to publish his real name. “You see they like water, you give water, they like wine, you give wine. It’s really simple.”
The proliferation of fake news has created something of an internet mine field, often sparking hateful commentary and aggressive cyber harassment against those targeted by the stories.
One conspiracy theory perpetuated by various fake news sites inspired 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch of North Carolina to walk into a Washington, D.C., pizza place, fire an AR-15 rifle and attempt to investigate the story. Known as “Pizzagate,” the hoax connects Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chairman John Podesta to an alleged child molestation ring run out of pizza shops. The claim has been proven false numerous times, and Welch later admitted to The New York Times that “the intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/macedonian-teen-claims-trump-supporters-paid-him-60k-to-produce-fake-news-during-campaign_us_584ac403e4b0bd9c3dfc51b7