Economic desperation drove Macedonian youth to fabricate US election news
Evidence
Veles, a city in Macedonia with around forty thousand people, was once known for its delicate porcelain ceramics. By the 2010s, the economy was in ruins, with youth unemployment just under 50 percent. But in 2016, the champagne began to flow at local dance clubs, fueled by an unexpected new industry: fabricating and plagiarizing news articles about the US presidential election. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 480
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: A potential essay angle: the Veles news farms as the purest case study of how collapsed local economies monetize global attention, and whether the ‘sellout’ framework applies to people who never had anything to sell.
Related
- A collapsed Macedonian town pivoted to fake news as its new economy (similarity 0.92)
- Macedonian teens out-earned neighbors enormously via targeted fraud (similarity 0.78)