Week 6 : EOC Fake News

Can Facebook Solve Its Macedonian Fake-News Problem?

Last night, BuzzFeed , building on reports in the Guardian and an English-language Macedonian news site called Meta, described a “digital gold rush” in Veles, a small city in central Macedonia: Locals, mostly teenagers and college students, have “launched at least 140 US politics websites” with “American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, US ConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com.” These sites mostly publish plagiarized conservative news and made-up conservative “news,” and sometimes, best of all, conservative “news” that is both made up and plagiarized.

A young Boys sit's in the coffee house and looks amused as he laugh's

about fake New? Is it a epidemic? Could this be damaging?

"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?"

Goran - not his real name by the way, he's not confident enough to reveal that - is one of scores, or probably hundreds of Macedonian teenagers who are behind a cottage industry in the small city of Veles which churned out fake pro-Trump news during the US election campaign.

After copying and pasting various articles, he packaged them under a catchy new headline, paid Facebook to share it with a target US audience hungry for Trump news and then when those Americans clicked on his stories and began to like and share them, he began earning revenue from advertising on the site.

Goran says he worked on the fakery for only a month and earned about 1,800 euros (£1,500) - but his mates, he claims, have been earning thousands of euros a day. When I ask him if he worries that his false news might have unfairly influenced voters in America, he scoffs.

"Teenagers in our city don't care how Americans vote," he laughs. "They are only satisfied that they make money and can buy expensive clothes and drinks!"

"I worry for young people's morality in Veles," she tells me. "Since the US elections, all they think about is lies and making a fast buck from lies." She fumbles with her cigarette packet. "We have parliamentary elections here in Macedonia in December," she adds. "And I have traced three false domains registered in Serbia or Croatia. Those sites are already putting out lies about the opposition party which could really damage the campaign's

Fake news is it damaging? How can we stop it ? People love to get thing's started.

Fake news is ridiculous but, people make money off of other people's life's and issues. 

"Do you think if your kid had made 30,000 euros a month you'd make a problem?" he asks incredulously. "Come on! You'd be so happy... you'd be... " he searches for his words.

"Made up?" I offer.

Young kid's in Veles getting paid for making up fake stores.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281