Viral hoax writer almost feels bad for helping Trump get elected
In the wake of the horrifying presidential election, a lot of people have been pinning the blame for Trump’s rise to power on the proliferation of completely fabricated news stories that casually play into readers’ worst fears about political candidates and their supporters. Normally, someone being stupid and falling for a hoax isn’t a big deal, but thanks to changes Facebook made to how its “Trending” section works over the summer, these fake stories were able to spread significantly further than they probably would’ve otherwise. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t convinced that it’s a problem, but now that both Facebook and Google are changing the way advertising works for fake news sties, it’s clear that whatever they were doing before wasn’t working.
Other than Trump and his cohorts, though, the one guy who has benefited from this spread of fake news more than anyone is Paul Horner, a man who seems to consider himself a master of satirical wit but is more like a huckster selling the Facebook-equivalent of snake oil to your gullible friends and relatives. He’s the visionary behind a whole swarm of fake news sites that all have names like ABCNews.com.co, and you might remember him from last year when NBC sent him a cease-and-desist order over his NBC.com.co website—which helped spread such bullshit as “Yelp Sues South Park for $10 million” and “Obama Endorses Donald Trump For President.”