How one publisher is faring after Facebook crackdown
“President Donald Trump signs an executive order allowing the hunting of bald eagles,” a headline from the St. George Gazette blared last month.
The headline was fake — as is the St. George Gazette, a pseudo local news organization that’s one of a handful of spoofgenerating sites run by entrepreneur Paul Horner from his home in Arizona. Yet the Trump story was widely shared, following the life cycle of inflammatory fake news stories frequently shared during the run-up to last year’s election.
But this time something different happened.
About a week after the story posted, fact checkers at Snopes.com and FactCheck.org saw the story was being flagged by users and debunked it. After that, any time the link was posted or shared on Facebook, the social network showed this message beneath the headline: “Disputed by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.”
“There’s definitely been a huge change, a dramatic change,” Horner told USA TODAY last month. “It’s hurt my wallet for sure with how difficult it is now to get something to go viral and people so quick to call things fake news.”
Facebook and Google came under fire late last year for allowing their networks and advertising programs to distribute and amplify fake news stories during the U.S. presidential election. In response, they said they’ve been cracking down on false stories and hoaxes, inking deals with fact-checking organizations, making it easier for users to report fake stories and choking economic incentives for fake news producers.
The snowball effect of these measures has been felt by Horner, the owner of ABCNews .com.co, CNN.com.de, the St. George Gazette and about 13 additional fake news domains. He told The Washington Post after the election he was making nearly $10,000 a month from fake news alone. After authoring widely shared fake stories about the entire Amish population voting for Trump and Twitter deleting Trump’s account, he told The
Post he felt Trump was elected because of him — a sentiment he now disavows.
Horner said these days almost all of his stories that go viral on Facebook get disputed, and his most popular sites get marked as spam. Three of his sites were removed from Google’s ad network. He would not provide USA TODAY with exactly how many shares, views and dollars he has
lost since Facebook and Google started cracking down on fake news. But Horner, who lures readers to his websites with a salacious headline, then pockets ad revenue from the page views, did say all have slightly decreased.
Business is tougher now for everyone else too. Jestin Coler, named the “king ” of fake news by NPR, has “retired” from the business and took the widely popular NationalReport.net and the Denver Guardian with him. In total, 28 fake news sites have shut down in the months following the election, BuzzFeed News says.
Still, fake news remains a lucrative business, as digital advertising networks find it difficult to enforce their policies, allowing fake news producers to monetize. Plus, fact-checking organizations tasked with debunking fake news may at times be too slow to react. Four fact-checking organizations partnered with Facebook told USA TODAY they debunk one or two fake stories a day at most.
“It’s like playing whack-a-mole, as soon as a fake news site is identified and threatened, it can just refashion itself,” said Melissa Zimdars, a communications professor at Merrimack College in northern Massachusetts. “They (Facebook and Google) have a huge role in this — and it’s one where we’re only seeing the beginning of them acknowledging.”
Facebook and Google have tried a combination of humans, algorithms and partnerships to flag fake news — without stepping into the controversial arena of censorship.
In early December, Facebook announced it would link up with third-party fact-checkers: Snopes .com, FactCheck.org, Politifact, ABC News and The Associated Press to visibly debunk fake stories flagged by users. Stories deemed fake by these fact check- ers then appear lower in the News Feed. The social media giant has also limited fake sites from buying ads and upped its detection of fake profiles that help fake news spread.
Google in January said it had removed some 200 sites from using its AdSense program. Website owners using AdSense pick which kind of ads they want displayed and where. Google’s software then does the grunt work of populating available website space with those ads.
Other advertising networks have similar policies against deception. But the sheer number of fake news sites is difficult to keep up with, advertising networks say.
Revcontent, an advertisement service used by Forbes, Newsweek and Reuters, according to its website, took similar action when notified the St. George Gazette was using its services. It’s also the most popular ad service used by fake news creators, according to an April BuzzFeed News analysis.
In a statement to USA TODAY, Katherine McDermott, Revcontent’s brand manager, said it’s a challenge to keep up with violations when content can be changed without the company knowing, explaining why some fake news sites end up with Revcontent ads. She compared Revcontent to YouTube, saying, “If YouTube was to fact-check every video on its site, it would be overwhelming to say the least.”