In this blog post I decided to research how fake news is produced. My mission was not to discover websites that spit out misleading information for public consumption, but to instead get inside the mind of someone that produces fake news. Where do they start? What do they gain from fake news? And how do they get away with it? All of my questions were answered by CITS.edu, and educational website that published an article titled “Where Does Fake News Come From?” People can create their own website for as little as 1 dollar a month. These sites have names that blend in with regular, real news sites so it is hard to catch if the link you are clicking is going to send you to a fake news site. These sites can create their own news, but that takes time and energy, it is much easier to steal their content. This is bad because they could steal from a site like TheOnion, which is a purely satirical website and try to pass it off as real news. My final question was what do they gain from it. Money. These sites sell a lot of ad space so they can boost there revenue to the skies. This includes regular banner ads and side bars to ridiculous pop ups that fill up the screen. These ads are very efficient because they use cookies to track your browser history and show ads that you are more likely to click on. More clicks=More money. “Using these data, advertising companies can build a consumer profile that allows them to target the ads that are most likely to get you, or at least people like you, to click on them” (9).
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