Macedonia, Home Of Fake News

Between August and November of last year, an 18-year-old Macedonian man earned 16,000 USD from two pro-Trump websites he’d made in his free time.

And he’s not the only one: others in his small post-industrial town of Veles are raking in money from the same tactic: at least 100 pro-Trump sites are registered to that location. High traffic equals ad revenues, wherever you are in the world, and regardless of whether you know anything about the person you’re creating propaganda in service of.

The websites assembled in Veles, like many around the world, have no native content. They’re assemblages of articles pumped out by the right-wing media and endlessly recycled for clicks. In fact, the same tactics led the same 18-year-old and his friend to make thousands of dollars on a health and beauty site they had equally little interest in the content of.

Through the story of a few young men and how they made “fake news pay”, this essay highlights the massive imbalance between large political shifts and seemingly miniscule actions on the part of disenfranchised people far removed from the politics they are influencing. As the author writes:

This is the arrhythmic, disturbing heart of the affair: that the internet made it so simple for these young men to finance their material whims and that their actions helped deliver such momentous consequences.