“Hacker X”—the American who built a pro-Trump fake news empire—unmasks himself

[LupusDei]

“Hacker X”—the American who built a pro-Trump fake news empire—unmasks himself

It's a rather long article relatively light on technical detail and more of a human story. The guy certainly has a bit of bragging and personal aggrandizement going, but it's quite a good overview of how it's done.

I would rather trade the guy's name for the name of the company that hired him, that is referred by pseudonym as "Koala Media" although there's some breadcrumbs that may or not lead to it. (The office photo in the article can be linked to a building in Austin, Texas, currently empty and open for lease.)

The owners of Koala Media reeled in good money at the time. Koala's main site covered "health" topics and hawked supplements and alternative cures. A tiny front-page ad would bring in $30,000 a month, Willis tells me, with mailing lists enriching the Koala Media empire further. "Getting highly targeted individuals to sign up was huge for financial gain," he said. "[Koala] would advertise products directly to individuals and sell thousands of them at a time."

A former Koala Media writer who has worked with Willis told Ars, "In the beginning, the job was fine, writing regular AP-style news articles. Then, it went toward goofy stuff, like 'lemon curing cancer.' And eventually, it went to super-inaccurate stuff." That is when the writer knew it was time to call it quits. But Willis stayed on, even as one of the site owners personally contributed content that made him uncomfortable.

"That was the problem," Willis told me. "We were trying to build a more legitimate network and were reaching more and more millions weekly, but then the owner—who contributed a story once a day, during the best time for reach—would write crazy stuff." Yet Facebook, which directed plenty of traffic to Koala, never cut the site off. In the two years of the operation that Willis oversaw, Facebook banned only one of Koala's posts, Willis said.

The basic approach involved the creation of a massive syndication network of hundreds of specialty "news" websites, where articles from the main Koala website could be linked to or syndicated. But these additional websites were engineered so that they looked independent of each other. They were "a web ring where the websites didn't look like they had any real associations with each other from a technical standpoint and couldn't be traced," said Willis. "I oversaw everything and even had stacks of SIM cards purchased with cash to activate different sites on Facebook since it was needed at that point in time." Eventually, carriers started asking for Social Security numbers (SSNs) prior to issuing and activating SIM cards. But "they took anything resembling an SSN, even ones generated from dead people," Willis said. As a test, Willis once provided Elvis Presley's SSN, which he had found on Google Images. The number worked.

After carefully studying the Facebook pages maintained by Koala staff, which were reaching about 3 million people weekly, Willis began using information-warfare tactics, some inspired by young Macedonians. Willis studied the connection between Koala headlines and the emotions they triggered among readers. The next time Koala Media's owners came into the office, Willis showed them a carefully outlined posting schedule.

And then there's this simple truth:

Sources also told Ars that Koala Media owners realized the massive potential for financial gain in pushing out the pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rhetoric after analyzing Trump's voter base and their emotional reactions to the fake news articles all adding to traffic. Had Clinton's voter base earned them more money, the pro-Clinton narrative might have been their focus, claim the sources.

A good deal of current problems in US stems from the conservatives being easier and more lucrative marks for a scam on average.

 

[JohnnySavage]

A good argument to unplug the internet.

 

[Champakian]

Forum rules are that excerpts can only be five paragraphs in length.


There's a reason for that.


Please edit.


If you do it just right, it will create the desire to read more
and then people can just click on the link...

 

[LupusDei]

Forum rules are that excerpts can only be five paragraphs in length.


There's a reason for that.


Please edit.


If you do it just right, it will create the desire to read more
and then people can just click on the link...

Hmm... can you link to a relevant rule in writing?

I was only only aware of a supposed three paragraph rule for story excerpts for discussion in Story Ideas, Authors Hangout and the like, but that is treated more as a guideline than hard rule. A paragraph is rather lax measurement anyway.

It's a long article and may not be the easiest read, and wanted to be helpful in conveying certain condensed narrative through the citations. Anyways, with a bit of cut and creative editing I made it into 5 + 1 paragraphs for your pleasure.

 

[JohnnySavage]

From the "Forum Rules" link. It's at the bottom right on my skin.

3. Do not upload copyrighted images or post articles in their entirety. Fair use laws allow some posting of copyrighted material, such as excerpts from articles and screen captures from movies, under certain circumstances. Please do a Google search under "Fair Use" if you want to understand this issue better. Also, out of respect for other users, please limit your excerpts to less than 5 paragraphs.

 

[Comshaw]

From the "Forum Rules" link. It's at the bottom right on my skin.

3. Do not upload copyrighted images or post articles in their entirety. Fair use laws allow some posting of copyrighted material, such as excerpts from articles and screen captures from movies, under certain circumstances. Please do a Google search under "Fair Use" if you want to understand this issue better. Also, out of respect for other users, please limit your excerpts to less than 5 paragraphs.

I was always under the impression it was a limit of 5. Since the rules don't say ..."please limit your excerpts to 5 paragraphs or less." in actuallity that means you can only post 4 paragraphs. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Comshaw

 

[adrina]

I think the fact that the propaganda has gotten out of control of the creators is far more interesting than paragraph count. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They can't even correct their own lies - the propaganda has taken on a life of its own.

 

[LukSkyFokker]

Forum rules are that excerpts can only be five paragraphs in length.


There's a reason for that.


Please edit.


If you do it just right, it will create the desire to read more
and then people can just click on the link...

You whiny fucking cunt. You are very frustrated with life.

I was always under the impression it was a limit of 5. Since the rules don't say ..."please limit your excerpts to 5 paragraphs or less." in actuallity that means you can only post 4 paragraphs. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Comshaw

Sounds like more of a polite suggestion than a rule.

 

[ll74]

Gullible dipshits are gullible.

 

[Dribble]

Out a Fascist...and Fascists complain about "forum" rules

 

[Bud_Spencer]

Out a Fascist...and Fascists complain about "forum" rules

That's so right, rules are for your enemies only.

 

[WillJ8787]

"Sources also told Ars that Koala Media owners realized the massive potential for financial gain in pushing out the pro-Trump and anti-Clinton rhetoric after analyzing Trump's voter base and their emotional reactions to the fake news articles all adding to traffic. Had Clinton's voter base earned them more money, the pro-Clinton narrative might have been their focus, claim the sources.
A good deal of current problems in US stems from the conservatives being easier and more lucrative marks for a scam on average.
__________________"


....this is clearly not about free speech
....this is clearly not speech that should be protected speech.

 

[Comshaw]

You whiny fucking cunt. You are very frustrated with life.



Sounds like more of a polite suggestion than a rule.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick..."

Theodore Roosevelt


Comshaw

 

[pecksniff]

Does this exposure mean that Trump fake news empire goes away now?

 

[LupusDei]

Does this exposure mean that Trump fake news empire goes away now?

In said article it is said, that said particular network is mostly banned from Facebook now, and the building he worked is current empty. So, at least the particular fake news farm in question had been at least downsized if not dismantled. However, it's by far not the only one for sure. And there's a huge market of brainwashed idiots craving their daily fix of their particular views confirming "news" it would be stupid to think would be neglected by conmen.

 

[Lazaran]

I think the fact that the propaganda has gotten out of control of the creators is far more interesting than paragraph count. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They can't even correct their own lies - the propaganda has taken on a life of its own.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain......

Focus on paragraph count......

 

[Lazaran]

In said article it is said, that said particular network is mostly banned from Facebook now, and the building he worked is current empty. So, at least the particular fake news farm in question had been at least downsized if not dismantled. However, it's by far not the only one for sure. And there's a huge market of brainwashed idiots craving their daily fix of their particular views confirming "news" it would be stupid to think would be neglected by conmen.

Pud Spanker just paid some scammers to attend a "CRT workshop", so.....

Still going!!!

*chuckles*

 

[LupusDei]

There's an update

Robert Willis, the hacker who helped build a massive, US-based disinformation network and was profiled in a recent Ars Technica feature, has decided to name names. In a blog post today, Willis confirmed he worked for Mike Adams, who goes by "the Health Ranger" at the site NaturalNews.com. This matches the documentation previously seen by Ars Technica in the course of reporting the piece.

Perhaps the most interesting—and controversial—claim Willis makes is that he truly did not know what Adams was all about when he first joined his site. NaturalNews articles "were being pushed through Yahoo News not too far before," Willis wrote. "I saw lots of natural health articles. My takeaway was that he was an internet natural health guru looking to use his current viewership to explore other topics outside of natural health—which included stopping Hillary Clinton. There were already random things like ‘chemtrails’ but like I said, I thought it was entertainment."

As for all the pro-Trump, anti-Clinton "fake news" that Willis eventually helped to propagate, he claimed that the reason he "didn’t know it was fake news at the beginning is because the machine needed to be built before it could be used, so I didn’t spend time inside stories outside of overseeing social media and numbers, at which point I did not factor in the aspect of whether the articles were true or not. I was strictly breaking down stories by headlines and breaking it down into numbers. With an occasional crazy headline that seemed harmless."

 

[pecksniff]

There's an update

So, it's even worse.

NaturalNews.com[note 2] and its sister sites are run by Michael Allen "Mike" Adams, B.S.[3] (1969 or 1967–)[4] (self-labeled "The Health Ranger") which promotes alternative medicine and related conspiracy theories.[5] The site particularly specializes in vaccine denial and the alleged vaccines-autism link,[6] AIDS/HIV denialism,[7] quack cancer treatments,[8] and conspiracy theories about "Big Pharma".[9] If there's an alternative medicine or alternative medical treatment out there, you can guarantee that NaturalNews has one article singing its praises to the sky and one more bashing the stupid "skeptics". A lot of the website's growth is due to its exposure on Facebook, where it had over 3.5 million followers[note 3] until it was banned (not for any of its content, mind you, but because it was violating Facebook's policy on spamming).[10]

Reviewing NaturalNews' vast ecosystem of websites shows that Adams has way too much money and spare time and wants to attract both left-wing moonbats interested in a "natural" lifestyle and right-wing wingnuts interested in guns and survivalism. Reading through Adams' discourse on a non-NaturalNews affiliated goldbug forum shows that Adams's personal allegiances are mainly with the latter,[1] which taken in totality indicates some level of disingenuousness since he's grifting both ends but only sympathizes with one end enough to speak frankly.

On Wikipedia, NaturalNews is not merely a deprecated source, never to be used for anything ("There is a near-unanimous consensus that the site repeatedly publishes false or fabricated information, including a large number of conspiracy theories."),[11] but actually on the spam blacklist.[12]

In short: if you cite NaturalNews on any matter whatsoever, you are almost certainly wrong, as this website is so bad, so unreliable, and so dead-faced wrong that even other quacks think it's a quack site,[13] a feat of stupid that truly takes talent.

 

[ll74]

There's an update

NaturalNews...lmao....always wondered why they had so much political "news"...makes sense now