Christopher Blair, a renowned “liberal troll” who posts falsehoods to Facebook, is having a banner year despite crackdowns by Facebook and growing competition from A.I.
It’s their business model.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Robert De Niro appeared outside a Manhattan courthouse last month to criticize former President Donald J. Trump, for example, Mr. Blair dashed off a false post claiming that a conservative actor had called him “horrible” and “ungodly.” It received nearly 20,000 shares.
Many writers like him — who publish falsehoods to fringe websites and social media accounts in a bid for clicks that can translate into profitable ad revenue — have also leaned into culture war topics.
The pivot has been so successful that Mr. Blair has seen an array of competitors spring up, many also calling their posts “satire.” They have copied his content and used artificial intelligence tools to supercharge their work.
A spokeswoman for Meta, which owns Facebook, responded by highlighting the company’s misinformation policy and its efforts to combat falsehoods by limiting the spread of certain low-quality content.
“We used to kill Hillary Clinton every Saturday in the most ridiculous ways,” said Joe LaForm, a 48-year-old truck driver who identifies as a liberal and has contributed to Mr. Blair’s Facebook page.
Those pivots have rippled through the industry, with similar falsehoods appearing on Facebook pages with even larger audiences, like “Donald Trump Is My President,” which has more than 1.8 million followers.
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