In these days, who has not been deceived by fake news a few times?
Perhaps the news that everyone talked about the first day is fake and can not be prevented from being refuted the next day. In addition to misinformation, there are still some people who specialize in making up fake news to make money. There is a small town called Veles in North Macedon, where a group of young people make up fake news as a profession.
During the 2016 US election, when Trump and Hillary Clinton were in the middle of the election, the Internet was full of all kinds of true or false news, and there were rumors that some fake news against Hillary Clinton appeared one after another on the Internet. Trump supporters will actively forward the news and spread the news out, however, at the same time, as far away as Veles., a small town in the northern Macedon of European countries. But there is a group of people, just rely on assembly line production, spread these fake news, made a lot of money.
During that period, about 140 Trump-related websites appeared, publishing content that actively supported Trump, as well as American domain names, but their operators were not Americans and were not in the United States. They're all from this Macedon town, Veles..
Veles is a small town of 45000 people, full of abandoned factories and old facilities. Economic is extremely depressed and lifeless. Salary per person is only 350 euros (about 2600 yuan) a month. It is pitifully less than in Europe's developed countries, where young people find it hard to find a job in such an economic environment.
Unable to work through formal channels to make money, they used their brains, and some people saw the timing of the water war between the candidates in the US election, fabricating news that was beneficial and inflammatory to Trump and posted it online. Trump supporters will actively spread the news, bringing traffic to websites or accounts, traffic, and advertising can make a lot of money.
Gradually, this method of making fast money has spread among the young people of Veles, and more people have joined the profession. The news often calls this phenomenon "digital gold rush," and Veles has become a distribution center for fake news. It is called a city that gets rich by fake news.
Tamara, a pseudonym, is one of these young people, who lives not far from Veles and works for Veles's fake news site.
One day in April 2017, the unemployed Tamara received a phone call from a friend who introduced her to a job. "this kind of job makes money and doesn't have to go out of the house," the friend said.
"you know a lot about politics and good English. Do you want to work on a news website?"
Tamara listened to the friend, immediately promised, and made an appointment with the person in charge of the video interview.
During the interview, Tamara met a young man who called himself Marco, her future boss. Marco was a little shy and awkward. Tamara guessed that the other person was younger than himself.
It is somewhat awkward for a young man under the age of 20 to be her boss.
To Tamara's embarrassment, Marco, her boss, told her truthfully about the job-writing fake news, and in the next few video calls, Marco introduced how to compile fake news and how to edit pictures with PS. Tamara had some doubts about how to post fake news on their website, but she was unemployed from home, in urgent need of work, and finally promised to work for Marco.
Tamara has lived like this since she became a fake news editor. Every morning, as soon as she turns on her computer, she receives an email with a link to a spreadsheet. The table includes eight story materials on the other side of the world, as well as corresponding deadlines, and her task is to finish writing the stories by the deadline and post them online.
Of course, these fake news was not fabricated out of thin air by Tamara. All the stories have their original blueprints. She will make up or piece together some misleading and inflammatory information on the basis of a real event. Integrate into a piece of fake news.
The news needs her to rewrite from beginning to end, not directly on the original basis, so as not to be detected as plagiarism, and the rewritten article is smooth and natural, and it is easier to take it seriously.
"it happened, the client was there, and the place of the incident was there," Tamara said. "apart from fabricating some false details, it's not a completely fictional story."
"so the story is propaganda and brainwashing."
Set against the background of real stories and carefully designed, such fake news is more confusing, easily deflecting readers, causing panic or anger, and being exploited by people with ulterior motives.
Once the extreme point of view works, Tamara's work will work.
Every time Tamara drives to Veles to find her boss, Marco, she gets an envelope in cash, which is the reward for her work, 3 euros per article and 24 euros a day. Can earn more than 500 euros a month (equivalent to more than 3800 yuan). This has exceeded the local average.
In an interview, Tamara said she was often shocked by what she had written, such as searching for a news and running out more than 100 pages of search results, including perhaps her masterpiece. After careful observation and comparison, we can find that there are unreliable content in online reports, including inaccurate information, pictures misappropriated from other events.
Tamara thinks a lot of this is not true.
To Tamara's surprise, many people would believe that her articles were usually not short, about a thousand words, and that there might only be two sentences in the whole article that tell the truth. Others are rumors, it is difficult to read it in a good mood.
When she said she made up fake news, she often thought, "Oh, my God, who would believe this garbage? how many people who haven't read a book, how low an IQ will read these things?"
But after working long hours, she wanted to open her mind. "if anyone believes in fake news and doesn't want to hear the truth, then they deserve to know only these things, which is a punishment."
People often say that lies repeat ten times to become true. Tamara falsifies every day, including a lot of extreme, hate content, and succeeds in giving brainwashing to a lot of people. Won't she be brainwashing herself?
Tamara thinks she's sober and never takes her fake news seriously. She separates herself from fake news and makes herself feel like she's just writing, not promoting a point of view.
Because it is clear that what is written is false, so it is not difficult. Tamara only sees it as a job, a means of making money, and usually just uses her brain and fingers to complete the work task. She says that when she works with a lot of people, I have to take over a job I don't like.
But after working long hours, some changes have taken place in Tamara's state of mind.
She made up things as far away as the United States, but if you think about it, it might happen to her one day, which scares Tamara, and Tamara's own political views run counter to those in the article, and she often doesn't feel right.
Sometimes, while the boss is not paying attention, she cuts back on inflammatory content and writes about points she really wants to make, such as writing a positively at the end of the article, such as "everyone is equal at the end of the day."
Later the false news event fermented, some websites became aware of the serious problem, began to kill false news.
In December 2017, the Facebook account that boss Marco used to post fake news was blocked, and his personal account was also blocked. Tamara called the boss and was surprised to hear that the two had not been in touch since then.
It wasn't until the summer of 2018 that boss Marco called Tamara and asked her if she was willing to write fake news to another website. Tamara, who had worked in the line for nine months, was aware of the pain of the job and categorically refused.
However, Tamara is just one of various local fake news writers.
If she knows how to get away from it, some young people in the area will find it difficult to get out of the business when they eat the sweetness of writing fake news. They slowly fell and lost their moral yardstick.
Goran, a college student in Veles, for example, was only 19 years old and a fake news writer in an interview in 2016. although he hasn't shaved for days, he doesn't look sloppy, wearing a navy coat and a white shirt. Dressed as an innocent student, but what he does is not naive and beautiful at all, and he doesn't care about it. "Americans like our stories, and we can make money from them."
"who cares if the news is true or not?"
Similar to Tamara's work, Goran often searches for information, copies, pastes and spellings an article from American political websites, embellishes it a little, has an eye-catching title, and then shares fake news on Facebook. When fake news is shared and spread, he can make money from advertising.
(schematic diagram)
There are a lot of teenagers and 20-year-old students in Veles, like Goran, who do this shameful job. They have classes during the day and spend most of the rest of their time writing fake news to earn pocket money,. Some people stay up eight hours a night to write fake news and continue to go to school during the day. They used to look like dishes for a long time, but they didn't care because it was too fast and easy to make money in this line of work.
Goran says he earns 1800 euros a month, more than five times the local average, but he doesn't earn much, and many of his peers earn thousands of euros a day.
With these fast money earned, young people can squander, drive good cars, buy expensive clothes, go to bars and play whatever they want.
They did not feel guilty about the money they made through disgraceful means.
Journalist once asked Goran, if he had considered whether his fake news would have an unfair impact on American elections, and Goran replied, "Young people in our city don't care about Americans voting."
"just make money, and they'll be satisfied if they have the money to buy good clothes and wine."
In recent years, Veles City has been reported by many media about getting rich by fake news, and everyone has a clear attitude and scoff at it, but locals have two different views on it.
In 2016, Slavco Chediev, then mayor of Veles, insisted, "Veles doesn't have any dirty money!"
He even jokingly said he would be proud if their small town, thousands of kilometers from the United States, could somehow influence the American election.
Unlike the mayor, journalist Janevska, a news website whose investigation belongs to a clear-headed group, has been very concerned about the matter, and she has been able to confirm that seven independent teams in Veles City sell fake news online, according to her estimates. Hundreds of young people may be involved.
Journalist Janevska said that since the U.S. election, young people in Veles have only wanted to make money from fake news, and her moral standards have been declining again and again, which worries her very much.
In this era, everyone can express their personal views on the Internet, the cost of rumors is too low, but the benefit is very high, which makes some people willing to abandon morality and put into the arms of money.
But the fake is false, and the facts will one day be clarified. By then, where will the young people in Veles go?