Meeting Kosovo's clickbait merchants

One clickbait merchant chose to remain anonymous

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in a dark bar in a small town an hour's drive from Kosovo's capital, Pristina. In front of me, a man was nervously hunched over, his face turned away from the camera.

He was a fake news merchant and he agreed - eventually - to talk about how he earned his living.
I first came to Kosovo over a year ago when researching a book about how power was changing in the digital age.
I'd heard about shadowy Russian influence campaigns and militaries fighting warfare with information.
But the people I met there showed me there was another, very simple reason why people sent false and sensationalist news to Western audiences. It was for the money - they share it because we click on it.
Clickbait and "fake news" are terms sometimes used interchangeably to describe false or sensationalist material circulating on the web.
A year ago, "Burim" showed me that misinformation was a flourishing industry. Some of what he described was political, far more of it was gore.
"Dog Groomer Who Kicked Dog till its Ribs Broke Remains Jail-Free" was one story. "Boy Comes out of Coma after 12 Years, Whispers Dark Secret to Parents [video]" was another.
Much of it was false. And while some of it looked like news, this was content for one reason alone: clicks.
Making money from the internet means capturing audiences and the merchant I spoke to owned about a dozen Facebook pages, dedicated to anything from evangelical Christianity to holiday destinations.
Whatever their theme, the audiences were huge: 90,000 likes; 240,000 likes; 26,000 likes.
Burim could get his content to nearly a million pairs of eyeballs and he turned those clicks into ad revenue - both within the social media platform and on external sites. He earned about 600 euros (£520) a day.
It's far more money than any of the legitimate jobs he could take would offer him.
Carl Miller has documented the clickbait industry in Kosovo
Since I met Burim, the tech giants have vowed to shut this industry down. Fake news is what Mark Zuckerberg calls his "personal challenge".
In 2018, Facebook doubled its security team to 20,000 and closed down many groups and pages that shared clickbait, squeezing their content towards near invisibility.
So, last month, I went back, this time with the BBC. I wanted to see if anything had changed and what Facebook's anti-fake news drive really looked like in the eyes of the people who peddled the stuff.
"The audience on that page is mainly UK," the man said, grinning, hunched over his phone so that the camera couldn't catch his face.
It is difficult to tell exactly how large this illicit economy had become in the past. But Facebook's reforms, I heard again and again, have had some effect. Page after page had been shut down. Income had fallen from 600 euros a day to about 100.
Spreading false news, then, has become less profitable - and possibly also less political. It has apparently morphed into celebrity hype, false stories of footballers breaking legs or lurid sexual gore. The content creators were sharing trivia, not Trump.

Comments

Post a Comment

What's Popular

Luke Perry's daughter Sophie hits out at online 'grief-shamers'

Image
The daughter of late Riverdale actor Luke Perry has hit back at people who have criticised her grieving process. Sophie Perry explained  on Instagram  how she's "received a lot of attention online" following her father's death. "Yes I am hurt and sad and crying and beside myself with what happened to my dad," she wrote. "But I'm not going to sit in my room and cry day in and day out until the internet has deemed it appropriate for me to do otherwise," she continued. "And if you knew my dad you would know he wouldn't want me to. So you shouldn't either." The US actor  died in California at the age of 52 , less than a week after suffering a massive stroke. Perry rose to fame for playing Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills, 90210 and gained a new generation of fans through his role as Fred Andrews on Netflix's Riverdale. Luke Perry fans remember 'nicest guy'                        Luke Perry with c...
Read more

Professor Stephen Hawking's nurse struck off over his care

Image
Stephen Hawking died in March last year Professor Stephen Hawking's nurse has been struck off for failures over his care and financial misconduct. Patricia Dowdy, 61, who worked for the renowned scientist for 15 years, was handed an interim suspension in 2016,  it emerged at the weekend. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has now found she did not "provide the standards of good, professional care we expect and Professor Hawking deserved". Mrs Dowdy told The Mail on Sunday  she was upset and did not want to comment. The NMC made its decision to remove Mrs Dowdy, from Ipswich, from the nursing register at a private hearing in London. A fitness to practise panel said Mrs Dowdy's behaviour amounted to financial misconduct, dishonesty, not providing appropriate care, failing to cooperate with the NMC and not having the correct qualifications.
Read more

DR Congo: Violence may be crime against humanity, UN says

Image
A mass grave in the Bongende is thought to contain 100 bodies A UN investigation says violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year may amount to crimes against humanity. It says at least 500 people were killed, including families burnt alive in their homes and a two-year-old who was thrown into a septic tank. Ethnic violence broke out when one community wanted to bury one of their traditional chiefs on another community's land. The investigation adds that violence could flare up again at any time. Africa Live: More on this and others from the continent Five things to know about DR Congo What is the International Criminal Court Investigators say the violence between 16 and 18 December was "planned and executed with the support of customary chiefs". Members of the Batende community attacked Banunu villages "with extreme violence and speed, allowing little time to escape". It adds that the provincial authorities in Yumbi, in Mai-N...
Read more

North Korea election: Surprise as leader Kim Jong-un 'not on ballot'

Image
MP or not, Kim Jong-un retains an iron grip over North Korea North Korea's election has resulted in the expected landslide win for its authoritarian leadership - but in a big first for the country, Kim Jong-un does not appear to have been on the ballot. If confirmed, it would be the first time a North Korean leader has not run for its rubberstamp parliament. The vote did see his sister, Kim Yo-jong, elected to the body, however. The leader's younger sibling has been gradually moving into a more influential role. What it's like to 'vote' in North Korea Kim's hiding sister and other unreal moments North Korean sister with a 'tomboy streak' North Korea's parliamentary election is used by Pyongyang to legitimise its rule, but is condemned internationally as a meaningless exercise. Each voting slip has only one state-approved candidate on it. State media announced the names of the 687 deputies elected to the Supreme People's Assem...
Read more