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.

[JimMcc]

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.” - CBS CEO Les Moonves
http://www.newsweek.com/blame-...

Nothing spreads as well as anger

[guises]

There's a rule that anger is the most effective way to spread a meme - people are more likely to talk about something which makes them mad than something which makes them happy.

Re:Nothing spreads as well as anger

[0100010001010011]

This Video Will Make You Angry - CGP Grey

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

[whoever57]

Butt-hut Trump supporters with mod points here?

My posting was on-topic. I can find citations to show the proof about who Trump's support comes from.

I'll probably get modded down for this also, but it won't change the facts.

Re:Hardly surprising

[MightyMartian]

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

Re:Hardly surprising

[penguinoid]

Your statement was probably modded down for being misleading. I too can show where Trump's support comes from:

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don't have any say about what the government does” were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.

Trump's support comes from people who feel they are disenfranchised. It should be no surprise that poorly educated white men feel disenfranchised; poor education has always reduced one's influence, and currently being white and male each mean you are openly discriminated against.

Re:It's FYROM

[MightyMartian]

I would imagine that they are as genetically "Macedonian" as ancient Macedonians (who were viewed as a sort non-Greek fringe Hellenic group before they began gaining significant power under Alexander's ancestors). Language isn't bound by genetic barriers, as is evidenced by the fact that most of the English are still essentially "Celtic" in molecular terms, despite speaking a West Germanic language with heavy admixtures of Norman French.

Re:List of domains?

[TheRealMindChild]

So an AC posted above 36 Domains: https://politics.slashdot.org/...

365lifetimenews.co.uk, allforusa.com, americafans.com, angryamericanpatriots.com, berniemyhero.com, bigbluedimension.com, bigbluevision.com, bigbluevision.org, bluevisionnews.com, bvanews.com, christiantimesnewspaper.com, conservativestate.com, daily-politics.com, hardnfasttruth.com, globalnews4u.com, helping-mothers.com, magseriesusa.com, newscenterusa.com, openmedianews.com, press24.us, politicsbreaking.com, politicsintheusa.com, politicsinusa.com, spinzon.com, theamericanrevenant.com, usconservativetoday.com, usadailyinfo.com, usafreshnews.us, usalibertynews.com, usanewsflash.com, usanewslive365.com, usapoliticsnow.com, usapoliticstoday.com, usapowernews.com, usatodaypolitics.com, worldpoliticus.com

Google searching for at least these domains only brings up this post and a reddit post with the same 36 domains: https://www.reddit.com/r/polit...

Buzzfeed said "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" and "BuzzFeed News also identified another 40 US politics domains registered by people in Veles that are no longer active"

But the list seems nowhere to be found.

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.

Nah, #spiritcooking started with /r/The_Donald

[Xenographic]

Has anyone ever heard of these sites before? The real news is all on /r/wikileaks.

Sounds like they make clickbait sites they want people to share and make money off the ad revenue. There's no actual indication that people take these any more seriously than the other clickbait, so it doesn't surprise me that Buzzfeed doesn't like competition.

People used to be able to go to Reddit, but /r/politics now bans anyone who mentions their paid "Correct The Record" campaigns, so .... yeah.