Teenagers In Macedonia Launch Fake Pro-Trump Sites To Earn Money (buzzfeed.com)

"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," one 17-year-old told BuzzFeed News, which reports on a "strange hub" of over 140 political sites, all being run in the same small town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. 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 U.S... The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don't care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives... The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of U.S. 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... Most of the posts on these sites are aggregated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the U.S...
Earlier this year they experimented with fake sites supporting Bernie Sanders, "but nothing performed as well on Facebook as Trump content," according to the 16-year-old who operates BVANews.com. The largest Macedonian sites now have hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, and sources close to one site say it earns $5,000 per month, and has even earned $3,000 in a single day.

Comments

I could have told you that.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fastest way to make a buck if you don't care about anything in the way of integrity, is to tell people what they want to hear.

It's an almost guaranteed way to enrich yourself, and if there are no consequences, some people will do it.

And let's face it, the Pro-Trump crowd wants to hear what they've been told, and hear it more, and more, and nothing else.

That is how he got their votes. No surprise somebody else is skimming off the chum.

Re:I could have told you that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. Don't even try to make that false equivalency.
Hillary's lies are typical politician fudging of the truth. Trump's lies are so stratospheric that we've all become numb to it. He gets away with such a constant avalanche of falsehoods because everybody who cares about truth has given up keeping track.

smart people have adblockers

[Anonymous Coward]

But who is smart and supports Trump. Only the dumb people support him, that's why these teenagers can make so much money.

Re:Just stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually run into sites from Veles, Macedonia already, from people posting links to their bullshit on reddit. So stfu.

Hardly surprising

[whoever57]

The base of Trump support is poorly educated white men.

They believe lots of easily disproven lies.

It's hardly surprising that they would click on more false clickbait.

Re:Hardly surprising

[MightyMartian]

There are a lot of Trump supporters with mod points on Slashdot. I mean, a lot.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your view from inside the fishbowl.

But from the outside... between the two the anti-trump people are way more stupid. and violent. and abusive. and will be the first to insult while claming victim status for social credit.

I hope he wins just to piss those people off. They seem to deserve it.

Re:Thank you.

[DNS-and-BIND]

DAMN that is a horrifying indictment of the Hillary campaign. She's been exposed repeatedly as a corrupt pol, her top aide Huma has turned against her to save her own skin from jail, and Wikileaks, hero of the Left, has been ceaselessly attacking her for well over a year. Who could possibly vote for her at this point?

Trump is like an emetic for the American republic. He's the best thing that could happen. Just think of all the positive effects. Under Hillary, the press will remain a government lapdog, submitting their stories for vetting before publication. Under Trump, investigative journalism will wake form its odd 8 year slumber that started under Obama. Under Hillary, the Constitution will be further shredded by her Supreme Court appointees until it means nothing. Under Trump, the Left will bizarrely find meaning in this document drafted by whites and use it to bash the government by whatever means necessary. We really don't realize just how destructive it is to our Republic for the press to be working hand in glove with the government like it has been for the past 8 years. It's high time they were in opposition again.