A cura di @Perodatrent.

Ely Saslow sul Washington Post racconta la storia di Christopher Blair, che da un paio di anni ha scelto come lavoro quello di inventare e diffondere notizie false su una pagina Facebook. In un mese buono, le sue entrate pubblicitarie possono arrivare a 15.000 dollari, ed ha un seguito di appassionati estimatori.

“Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share”. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among [people] over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how … offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

Immagine da Wikimedia.