How a Macedonian town became focus of ‘fake news’
VELES, Macedonia: Jovan got a pair of Nike sneakers and went on holiday to Greece, his reward for having helped turn the small Macedonian t own o f Veles i nto an e picentre o f “fake n ews” during the 2 016 US pr esidential race.
“That’s what the so- called fake news s ites b ought me,” s aid the 20-year- old who did not want to reveal his last name.
“I was earning about 200 euros ( RM920) a m onth... O nly a f ew earn this kind of money,” he told AFP in Veles, home to around 50,000 people.
Once a thr iving in dustrial hub, Veles h as su ffered de cline since the break-up of the former Yugoslavia a nd, l ike t he r est of the c ountry, now g rapples with rampant yout h u nemployment and mass emigration.
But t wo y ears a go, a n ew source o f i ncome u nexpectedly opened up when investors offered money to l ocals f or p roducing news stories in support of Donald Trump who was campaigning to become the 45th president of the United States.
Hundreds of w ebsites a nd Facebook pages started to c ome out of V eles s ervers w ith t he sole a im of t arnishing T rump’s Democrat opponents like Hillary Clinton o r h is pr edecessor Barack Obama.
The sites, many of which have since disa ppeared, dis tributed articles a bout C linton’s al leged racist r emarks on B eyonce or fake st atements, i n w hich she allegedly p raising Trum p’s honesty.
Jovan, a student at the Veles’s Faculty of T echnology, w as recruited in 2016 by one of dozens of l ocal i nvestors en gaged i n a clickbait race.
His work consisted of retrieving articles p ublished m ainly o n right wing US websites, such as Fox News or Breitbart News, and then “adapting th em, c hanging them a little, putting in a catchy title”.
Jovan says he “doesn’t know”
Trump started to mean revenue. When Trump stories turned out to be profitable, they understood that conspiracy theories will always gain an audience. Igor Velkovski, IT expert
if h e co ntributed t o T rump’s victory, adding: “I don’t care.”
What m attered t o th e y oung man, wh ose p arents l ost t heir factory jobs in 2003, was that for the fi rst t ime h e m ade en ough money to afford things.
“We were writing what people wanted to read,” Jovan said.
With lo wer l iving c osts t han Skopje — t he on ly ot her ci ty t o offer a u niversity deg ree i n I T studies — st udents st arted to flock to Veles in recent years and get involved in clickbait sites.
Until 2 016, th ey p rimarily focused on c elebrities, c ars and the lucrative beauty industry.
The s ites h elped gen erate income in a country where youth unemployment is a whopping 55 per cent.
“Young peo ple u nderstood how G oogle a lgorithm w orked and th ey w ere e xperimenting for c ouple o f ye ars w ith w ays of making money from ads,” IT expert Igor Velkovski told AFP.
But a s t he US pr esidential race heated up, politics suddenly became a new attractive target.
“Trump s tarted t o m ean revenue. W hen T rump st ories turned out to be profitable, they understood t hat co nspiracy theories w ill al ways g ain an audience,” Velkovski said.
Web de signer B orce Pe jcev, 34, helped create many of the misleading pro-Trump sites that had mushroomed.
“It b ecame cl ear t hat t he conservatives we re b etter for ma king m oney, t hey li ke conspiracy theory stories, which are a lways c licked b efore b eing shared,” he told AFP.
Digital c onsultant M irko Ceselkovski m akes n o s ecret of the f act th at h e h elped a dvise people l ike P ejcev on ho w t o create fake news.
“I h elped T rump wi n,” his business card reads.
“I j ust t aught t hem h ow t o make money on internet and how to find an audience,” Ceselkovski told AFP.
“The mor e c licks, t he mor e Google Ads money... it’s a cl ickruled world.”
Even adults with steady jobs joined th e f ake n ews in dustry, including En glish t eacher Violeta who o nly g ave h er fi rst name.
During t he U S e lection campaign, sh e a lmost d oubled her 350 - euro monthly salary by working just three hours a day.
“I kn ow i t’s wr ong t o tak e a side job which consists of saying ‘ Vaccines k ill!’, ‘ The Ho locaust did not ex ist’ or pr omoting Trump,” said the mother of two.
“But when one is hungry, one doesn’t have the luxury to think about democratic progress,” she added.
Violeta s aid s ome o f her own s tudents w ere r egularly “arriving l ate a nd sl eeping i n class” b ecause t hey to o w ere writing for those websites.
While J ovan h as sto pped producing fake news, his friend Teodor continues t o work f or a company that runs hundreds of lifestyle websites.
Teodor is earning 100 to 150 euros monthly, almost a s much as his mother, a part-time worker in a textile company.
“Blame me i f y ou l ike, but between that and putting stories on internet, I choose the second option,” Teodor said. — AFP