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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    The 24-year-old making sure fake news will disrupt the 2020 election too

    The 24-year-old making sure fake news will disrupt the 2020 election too


    Veles used to make porcelain for the whole of Yugoslavia. Now it makes fake news.

    This sleepy riverside town in Macedonia is home to dozens of website operators who churn out bogus stories designed to attract the attention of Americans.

    Each click adds cash to their bank accounts.


    The scale is industrial: Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump.



    Here's a look inside the city’s fake news machine as it gears up for 2020:

    One of the shadowy industry's pioneers is a soft-spoken law school dropout. Worried that his online accounts could be shut down, the 24-year-old asked to be known only as Mikhail.

    He takes on a different persona at night, prowling the internet as "Jesica," an American who frequently posts pro-Trump memes on Facebook.


    The website and Facebook page that "Jesica" runs caters to conservative readers in the U.S.


    The stories are political — and often wrong on the facts. But that doesn't concern Mikhail.






    "I don't care, because the people are reading," he said. "At 22, I was earning more than someone [in Macedonia] will ever learn in his entire life."


    He claims to have earned up to $2,500 a day from advertising on his website, while the average monthly income in Macedonia is just $426.


    The profits come primarily from ad services such as Google’s AdSense, which place targeted advertisements around the web. Each click sends a little bit of cash back to the content creator.


    Mikhail says he has used his profits to buy a house and put his younger sister through school.


    The former law student claims that he once had 15 employees — including two writers in the U.S. — churning out stories and engaging with fans. His last website had around 1.5 million Facebook followers, mostly in the U.S.


    That site was blocked a few months ago after Facebook and Google started cracking down on fake news sites. Mikhail is now retooling his operation, with his sights set firmly on the 2020 presidential election.


    "My primary goal is to prepare a site like I was having before, to be ready for the next election in America," he said.


    Mirko Ceselkoski has more than a decade of experience running websites that target American readers.

    He started with sites that specialize in dubious health tips, muscle cars and celebrity gossip. But then he discovered fake news.


    Ceselkoski now spends his days schooling Macedonians, including many young people in Veles, on the finer points of the fake news industry. He tells his students they'll earn at least €1,000 ($1,200) a month from their websites.


    "There is a large community of young people there ... and there is nothing else to do," he said. "It spread like fire."


    Ceselkoski estimates that around 100 of his pupils are now operating U.S. political news sites.


    He helps students make their websites look professional, mimicking legitimate sites with rolling tickers and "Breaking News" banners.

    They have used web addresses like usaelectionnews.com, everydaynews.us and trumpvision365.com.


    The students also learn how to pick a viral story. The trick, Ceselkoski says, is find a legit story that's already trending in the U.S., and then to "make it even more sensational."


    "The title is the most important part," he said.


    Ceselkoski boasted that at least four of his students are millionaires, and many have bought expensive German cars — Porsches, Mercedes and BMWs. Others have invested in property. CNNMoney was not able to independently verify the claims.


    Unlike its predecessor, the new Macedonian government — elected in May — is highly critical of Veles' new industry.

    "We will undertake an initiative to initiate a global coordinated effort to tackle fake news and also encourage our civil society to help the prevention of this phenomenon by creating tools for detecting fake news,” said government spokesman Mile Boshnjakovski.


    But the fake news entrepreneurs still enjoy at least one official backer: Veles Mayor Slavcho Chadiev. "That is your way of producing really quick money," he said of fake news. "We don't even try to stop them."


    It's easy to see the allure: Nearly half of young Macedonians are unemployed, and derelict factories dominate the skyline in Veles.

    Chadiev said he once offered one of the town's young fake news producers a job working on computers for the city, but the monthly salary was half what they were making in a single day online.

    Still, he is proud that Veles is now on the world map.


    "The most important thing in this situation is that the law in this country wasn't broken," he said. "Nothing is illegal."


    Chadiev says what the fake news producers do is no different from the lies other journalists write about him. "There is no morality in politics," he insisted.


    In the weeks following the 2016 presidential election, pundits, politicians and tech titans all sought to figure out whether fake news had affected the outcome.

    Hillary Clinton publicly castigated the "guys over in Macedonia who are running these fake news sites," and suggested they may have been working with Russia.

    The New Yorker reported that President Obama spent a day after Trump's victory talking "almost obsessively" with advisers about the stories coming out of Veles.


    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was initially more skeptical about Facebook's influence on the election outcome.


    He changed his tune, however, and announced a slew of measures designed to control the spread of fake news.


    Facebook says it spots fake news accounts by looking for certain patterns of activity — repeated posting of the same content, or a sudden increase in messaging. It is putting warning labels on fake stories in some countries, and the company has also taken steps to undercut the business model of fake news publishers.


    In September, Facebook told U.S. congressional investigators that it sold around $100,000 worth of political ads to a so-called Russian troll farm that was targeting American voters during the 2016 election.


    Some fake news producers in Veles said they had also paid Facebook for ads, but the company declined to answer questions from CNN on whether it had tracked sales in Macedonia.


    Google has also joined in the fight against fake news.


    Google declined to share specific data on the number of advertising accounts it has closed in Macedonia. But it said its automated system detects "bad publishers," and is evolving all the time. It also has a dedicated enforcement team that reviews sites.


    Three fake news producers in Veles said their Google ad accounts were suspended in recent months, and their Facebook fan pages have been blocked. Several others said they knew people who had experienced the same.


    Still, the fake news producers are determined to skirt the controls.

    One new tactic is buying legit Facebook accounts off young children for €2 ($2.40) before changing the names to sound more American.

    Most of the posts will be about Trump, according to Mikhail.

    "I'm posting about Hillary, Bernie Sanders maybe sometimes, but I don't get paid enough for that," Mikhail said.

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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Fake News: How a Partying Macedonian Teen Earns Thousands Publishing Lies

    by ALEXANDER SMITH and VLADIMIR BANIC




    Fake News: How This Teenager in Macedonia Is Striking It Rich3


    VELES, Macedonia — Dimitri points to a picture on his Instagram showing a bar table decked with expensive champagne and sparklers.

    It's from his 18th birthday just four months ago — a lavish party in his east European hometown that he says wouldn't have been possible without President-elect Donald Trump.

    Dimitri — who asked NBC News not to use his real name — is one of dozens of teenagers in the Macedonian town of Veles who got rich during the U.S. presidential election producing fake news for millions on social media.

    The articles, sensationalist and often baseless, were posted to Facebook, drawing in armies of readers and earning fake-news writers money from penny-per-click advertising.
    Dimitri says he's earned at least $60,000 in the past six months — far outstripping his parents' income and transforming his prospects in a town where the average annual wage is $4,800. He is one of the more successful fake news pushers in the area.

    His main source of cash? Supporters of America's president-elect.

    "Nothing can beat Trump's supporters when it comes to social media engagement," he says. "So that's why we stick with Trump."



    Dimitri looks out over the Macedonian town of Veles Alexander Smith / NBC News

    Even with the presidential contest over and Google and Facebook's plans to crack down on fake news makers, money continues to pour in.
    Posts about Hillary Clinton are also a hit — but only negative ones.

    "I have mostly written about her emails, what is contained in her emails, the Benghazi tragedy, maybe her illness that she had," Dimitri adds, but now he’s moved on to headlines like: "Trey Gowdy Revealed His EPIC Plan To Imprison Hillary Now That Election's Over, SHE IS DONE!"

    Dimitri’s sole aim is to make his stories go viral.

    His most popular headlines during the election included: "JUST IN: Obama Illegally Transferred DOJ Money To Clinton Campaign!" and "BREAKING: Obama Confirms Refusal To Leave White House, He Will Stay In Power!"





    The teenager is unrepentant about any influence his stories may have had on swaying public opinion.

    "I didn't force anyone to give me money," he says. "People sell cigarettes, they sell alcohol. That's not illegal, why is my business illegal? If you sell cigarettes, cigarettes kill people. I didn't kill anyone."

    The same weekend that NBC spent with Dimitri, a gunman opened fire in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. The shooter told police he was motivated by a fake news story. The pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, was accused online of hosting a pedophile ring run by Democratic leaders.

    Asked about the incident this week, Dimitri claimed he wasn't familiar with the story nor the people who had spread it online.

    A Modern Gold Rush



    Students arrive at their high school in Veles in November. GEORGI LICOVSKI / EPA

    The small, rust-belt town of Veles has found itself in the international spotlight after investigations by BuzzFeed and the Guardian traced more than 100 fake news domain names here.

    The fake news bonanza couldn't have come against a more jarring backdrop.

    Once part of communist Yugoslavia, the Republic of Macedonia has a population of 2.1 million in a landlocked area about the size Vermont. Blanketed by rugged mountains, parts of the country have enjoyed a tourism surge in recent years.

    But vacationers won't find Veles in many travel guides. The town of 50,000 is almost an hour's drive down a lonely, crumbling highway from the capital, Skopje.



    Macedonia is landlocked by Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania and Greece. Google Maps

    Visitors are greeted by a distressed mosaic of red-roofed buildings, densely stacked onto a steep mountainside. Industrial smokestacks add to a wintry fog settling over the valley — though even their output has diminished after several recent factory closures.

    Almost a quarter of Macedonians are currently unemployed — a rate arou
    nd five times higher than in the U.S.

    But the burdens that weigh on Veles might also explain why it's become a global hotbed for fake news.

    High unemployment and a close-knit community meant that when Dimitri and others started making money, word quickly spread and everyone wanted a piece of the action.

    Most teens here speak fluent English, allowing them to quickly navigate through reams of Western news sites and pinpoint potentially viral content.

    Dimitri estimates there are now 300 locals dabbling in fake news, with at least 50 making "decent money," and around a dozen making "a lot." He says he’s not quite at the top of the pecking order, but not far off.




    How to Outsmart Fake News 1:11


    But he is no scrappy teenager. Dimitri is bright, with an obvious aptitude for business.

    He won't show NBC News his profile on Google AdSense, an online advertising service that allows websites to make money, to protect five other teenagers who asked him not to reveal aspects of their shared interests. He's also wary of revealing his full income, worried it will make him a target for thieves, or worse.

    However, he does show NBC News a digital receipt from Google showing he earned more than $8,000 from the web giant in September. He says this was just one of several advertising accounts, and claims his most successful streak — in the run-up to the election — saw him rake in $27,000 in just one month.

    When asked for comment about the persistence of fake news even after the election, Facebook directed NBC News to a post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month in which he laid out the company's plan to tackle the phenomenon.

    In an interview with TODAY on Thursday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged "there's a lot more to do."

    Google outlined steps last month that it said would restrict advertising on websites that "misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information." The company did not respond to NBC News' requests for comment on this apparently still-flourishing industry.

    Dimitri says even after the election, while business is less brisk, his fake news is still highly profitable. Like any business, he's aware of the need to adapt.

    "This business updates every hour, every ten minutes, every minute," he says. "There are always news ideas, new types of generating new visitors and that's the thing we all want."

    So while newspapers across the globe are losing advertising revenue, Dimitri's empire of lies is thriving.

    He says he now employs three 15-year-olds, paying them the equivalent of $10 per day. As well as buying new laptops and paying cash to boost his posts on social media, he has also invested some of his earnings into real estate — a joint venture with his parents, who are more than happy with his success.

    The Anatomy of a Lie

    As with many regular journalists, Dimitri starts his day by trawling the web looking for trending topics that he can harness to drive traffic to his websites.

    He copies his posts from other fake news websites, including many in the U.S., or takes content from mainstream media organizations before peppering them with invented details. He also posts provocative online polls such as: "Should Trump Deport All Refugees?" and: "Do you consider Donald Trump, the Jesus of America?"

    Most of this content is published on websites Dimitri has built to look like NBC News, Fox News, the Huffington Post and others.



    A fake news website run from Macedonia that is made to look like Huffington Post. NBC News

    To the untrained eye, fake headlines such as: "BREAKING: Obama Confirms Refusal To Leave White House, He Will Stay In Power!" look genuine. The only giveaway is the imitation URL.

    From then on, it's a case of throwing as much mud at the wall and seeing what sticks.

    "The most-read news articles are usually the ones containing the click-bait words," Dimitri says. "The click bait words, as you know, are, 'Oh my god, breaking news, wow,' and usually something that has never been aired before. Because if the title just says, 'Today this happened, today that happened,' no one will open that."

    He and his collaborators post these stories to their Facebook pages dozens of times a day. Again, he would only show NBC News a Facebook page that he runs on his own, which has an impressive 86,000 likes. But he said the six pages run by his collective have amassed more than 3 million likes between them.

    "Say you produce ten lies a day, [the audience] is not going to believe ten lies, they are going to believe probably one or maximum two," he says. "Usually the lies about [Clinton’s] emails and the lies about Hillary. The anti-Hillary posts were really good."



    Stories from USA Daily News 24, a fake news site registered in Veles, Macedonia. An Associated Press analysis using web intelligence service Domain Tools shows that USA Daily News 24 is one of roughly 200 U.S.-oriented sites registered in Veles, which has emerged as the unlikely hub for the distribution of disinformation on Facebook. Both stories shown here are bogus. Raphael Satter / AP


    Dimitri says he has set up more than 50 domain names in six months, all in a bid to please Facebook’s algorithm and get the maximum number of eyeballs on his posts. He claims in that time his posts have achieved some 40 million page views.

    "We stay up late and we don't sleep that much — I haven't slept good for a couple of months now," he says. "I have to go to school and then at night I have to work."
    He and his colleagues see the process as an art. At first they worked on a basis of trial-and-error. Now it comes naturally.

    "You see what people like and you just give it to them," he explains. "You see they like water, you give water, they like wine, you give wine. It's really simple."

    The challenge of engaging readers on social media is one familiar to most journalists. They have a formidable opponent in Dimitri and his peers; analysis by BuzzFeed after the election showed that fake news websites actually performed better than conventional press and television.

    Dimitri is unequivocal about why the mainstream couldn't compete: "They're not allowed to lie."

    Partying to the Tune of Fake News

    The influx of money has created a thriving party culture in Veles.

    On Saturday, one local nightclub was barely keeping up with demand, as dozens of teens and young adults ordered ice buckets filled with large $35 bottles of vodka.

    In this new era, the purveyors of fake news are the coolest kids in the schoolyard.

    "Since fake news started, girls are more interested in geeks than macho guys," says one 17-year-old girl standing at the bar.

    The most successful fake-news publishers have "bought themselves houses, apartments, maybe invested in some real estate or in some businesses," according to Dimitri. "They have bought themselves cars, they have bought ... their girlfriends better cars, better places to live," he says.

    Keen to feed off this gold rush, the nightclub even plans to organize a club night on the same day that Google pays out its advertising money.



    A nightclub in the Macedonian town of Veles where teenagers dabbling in fake news go to party. NBC News

    Following Google and Facebook's vow to clamp down on fake news, Dimitri says he knows people have lost tens of thousands after their accounts were shuttered.

    "When they started to shut down webpages, business went down," says 20-year-old Kiko, a bartender at the nightclub.

    The impact appears to have been short lived, however, judging by the healthy flow of local currency, the Macedonian denar, being shoved into the club's cash registers.

    Most people are cagey about admitting any direct involvement in fake news. But Tony, a 40-year-old taxi driver, says that every young person he knows — including his own son — is in on the act.

    "I've been doing this job for 18 years and I know everyone in the city," he says. "I know kids who are minors, 16 or 17 years old, and they bought BMWs after running these websites."

    Is he worried about his son making money from selling hoaxes online? "It's better to do this job than to go into the drug business," he says.

    Also unperturbed is Veles' mayor, Slavcho Chadiev.donia," he says during an interview in his office. "All that money went through the state system and everyone paid their taxes."

    He isn't bothered by accusations that Veles' teens swayed the U.S. election. In fact, he welcomes the idea.

    "Not as a mayor, but as a man and as a citizen, I'm glad if Veles contributed to the Republicans' victory and Trump’s victory," he says.


    A view of Veles in November. GEORGI LICOVSKI / EPA

    Like many Macedonians, he blames recent Democratic administrations in Washington for not doing more to help their country's attempts to join the European Union and NATO. (Greece has blocked these efforts in a dispute over Macedonia’s name — the country's official title at the United Nations is the cumbersome Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.)

    On the flip side, the mayor still remembers fondly when Republican President George W. Bush recognized his country’s new title in 2004.

    What would he do if he encountered one of these fake news tycoons?

    "I would ask him, 'Are you looking for a job?' Because I have a lack of IT guys," he says, before admitting that the salary of less than $400 might not be attractive.

    Dimitri says his goal is to earn $1 million, and it’s no surprise the young entrepreneur sees Trump as "a small role model."

    There's only one question that sees doubt creep into Dimitri's cocksure demeanor. When he copies posts from other fake news websites, does he worry he’s being used as a pawn to spread propaganda?

    "When you buy a certain product, you don't know who created it," he says. "You don't know who creates your shoes, and there are rumors that small children in Africa create them."

    He adds: "Maybe I don’t want to find out, because if I find out maybe I’m going to feel bad. Right now I'm feeling OK."

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/f...g-lies-n692451



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  3. #3
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    LOL!!! Maybe this is the FAKE NEWS guy Mueller should be investigating, a kid in Yugoslavia. Funny!! It's like the National Inquirer on the internet.
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  4. #4
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News

    BuzzFeed News identified more than 100 pro-Trump websites being run from a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

    Posted on November 3, 2016, at 6:02 p.m
    Craig Silverman
    Lawrence Alexander


    "This is the news of the millennium!" said the story on WorldPoliticus.com. Citing unnamed FBI sources, it claimed Hillary Clinton will be indicted in 2017 for crimes related to her email scandal.

    "Your Prayers Have Been Answered," declared the headline.

    For Trump supporters, that certainly seemed to be the case. They helped the baseless story generate over 140,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.
    Meanwhile, roughly 6,000 miles away in a small town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a young man watched as money began trickling into his Google AdSense account.

    Over the past year, the Macedonian town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites. These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US.

    The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters.

    As a result, this strange hub of pro-Trump sites in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is now playing a significant role in propagating the kind of false and misleading content that was identified in a recent BuzzFeed News analysis of hyperpartisan Facebook pages. These sites open a window into the economic incentives behind producing misinformation specifically for the wealthiest advertising markets and specifically for Facebook, the world's largest social network, as well as within online advertising networks such as Google AdSense.

    "Yes, the info in the blogs is bad, false, and misleading but the rationale is that 'if it gets the people to click on it and engage, then use it,'" said a university student in Veles who started a US politics site, and who agreed to speak on the condition that BuzzFeed News not use his name.


    Sample stories from US politics sites run by Macedonians at the link

    Using domain name registration records and online searches, BuzzFeed News identified over 100 active US politics websites being run from Veles. The largest of these sites have Facebook pages that boast hundreds of thousands of followers.

    BuzzFeed News also identified another 40 US politics domains registered by people in Veles that are no longer active. (An April report from the Macedonian website Meta.mk identified six pro-Trump sites being run from Veles. A Guardian report identified 150 politics sites.)

    Their reasons for launching these sites are purely financial, according to the Macedonians with whom BuzzFeed News spoke.

    "I started the site for a easy way to make money," said a 17-year-old who runs a site with four other people. "In Macedonia the economy is very weak and teenagers are not allowed to work, so we need to find creative ways to make some money. I'm a musician but I can't afford music gear. Here in Macedonia the revenue from a small site is enough to afford many things."

    Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the US. The Macedonians see a story elsewhere, write a sensationalized headline, and quickly post it to their site. Then they share it on Facebook to try and generate traffic. The more people who click through from Facebook, the more money they earn from ads on their website.

    Earlier in the year, some in Veles experimented with left-leaning or pro–Bernie Sanderscontent, but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content.

    "People in America prefer to read news about Trump," said a Macedonian 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com.

    BuzzFeed News' research also found that the most successful stories from these sites were nearly all false or misleading.

    For example, the most successful post BuzzFeed News found from a Macedonian site is based on a story from a fake news website. The headline on the story from ConservativeState.com was "Hillary Clinton In 2013: 'I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; They’re Honest And Can’t Be Bought.'" The post is a week old and has racked up an astounding 480,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. (To put that into perspective, the New York Times' exclusive story that revealed Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns generated a little more than 175,000 Facebook interactions in a month.)

    The viral Clinton story was sourced from TheRightists.com, a site that admits it publishes both real and fake content. According to emails released by WikiLeaks, Clinton said in a private speech to Goldman Sachs that she would like to see more successful business people enter politics. But she did not mention Donald Trump in any way. The quote used in the headline is false.

    Four of the five most successful posts from the Macedonian sites BuzzFeed News identified are false. They include the false claim that the pope endorsed Trump, and the false claim that Mike Pence said Michelle Obama is the "most vulgar first lady we've ever had." Those four posts together generated more than 1 million shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. That resulted in huge traffic and significant ad revenue for the owners of these sites, with many people being misinformed along the way.

    The Macedonians BuzzFeed News spoke to said the explosion in pro-Trump sites in Veles means the market has now become crowded, making it harder to earn money. The people who launched their sites early in 2016 are making the most money, according to the university student. He said a friend of his earns $5,000 per month, "or even $3,000 per day" when he gets a hit on Facebook.

    The 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com with a partner said he also runs health websites in addition to the US politics site. They launched the site in early 2016 and it's now averaging 1 million page views a month, said his partner. (The teens declined to share revenue figures.)

    The 17-year-old and his three partners are still waiting for Google's AdSense program to approve their site for ads. As of now, they're only generating about 800 views a day and aren't earning any revenue. The university student launched his site in August and stopped updating it in order to focus on another, more successful site he has that's focused on health and well-being. He estimated there are "thousands" of health-related sites being run out of Veles. US politics is just this year's opportunity, thanks to a combination of Trump and Facebook.

    "I stopped because I didn't really enjoy doing it and we didn't actually make any money from it since there are so many people posting already," the university student said. "The people who started early are the ones reaping the rewards."

    Aside from the allure of easy money, they also have an element of pride that web-savvy people — including teenagers — in a small country like Macedonia can earn money by gaming Facebook, Google, and Americans.

    "A good chunk of the world thinks Macedonia is primitive, but that is not true," the 17-year-old said.

    The young men running these sites know the Trump traffic bonanza will soon come to an end. They expect traffic and revenue to decline significantly once the election is over.

    But they also hold out hope that a Trump win will keep their sites afloat.

    "If Trump loses I plan to redirect my site to sports," the 16-year-old's partner said. "It means that there will be no more politics [worth covering]."

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo?utm_term=.pwnj60EQL#.jvj0ObV9y
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  5. #5
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    Our huge, multi-billion dollar so called news media may be being done in by a bunch of teens.

    There are people in this country making money by posting on websites. Some are not too hard to spot if you pay attention.

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