Master of false news gives right-wing Americans headlines they believe

WASHINGTON: Christopher Blair produces false stories he insists are easily identifiable as satire rather than news. His pages can rack up millions of views, and at least part of that audience believes the material is true.

Blair, 48, runs eight websites and five Facebook pages from his home in the northeastern US state of Maine. He says the claims his articles make are “ridiculous,” such as that President Donald Trump´s current term could be extended by three years. But his content is widely shared by people who take it as fact, contributing to the spread of false information online. Blair — a self-described “liberal troll” and political activist — says he knows what to write for his right-wing “target audience” through years of “being embedded in their world. He does not hold that audience in high regard. “They live on... fear and hate and misinformation and very specific storylines that everybody knows aren´t true except for them,” he told AFP. His content is rife with disclaimers: Satire.

Fake news fact-check. Nothing on this page is real. If someone clicks through to Blair´s articles, instead of instantly sharing them based on a headline, the warnings are visible. But often, it appears that people do not. Asked why people believe and share the articles, Blair answers: “Confirmation bias. “These people are told that they´re sharing satire, and it doesn´t matter,” he says. “The truth is no longer important to them. All they care about is holding on to their hate and fear. The spread of false information is a significant problem in the run-up to the 2020 US elections, but Blair says his readers´ minds are already made up, and that his content is “not going to impact the vote.

Blair says he previously tried to debate conservatives online, with little success. “You just get called names and told that you hate America,” he says. So he turned to his current approach. It started out as “trolling for a good laugh,” but evolved into an effort to “to teach the truth to those who are otherwise unteachable. “The people who share our content don´t care about the truth. They share 500 things a day, most of which are hate-filled lies. When they share something of ours, there´s a chance at accountability,” he says. According to Blair, this takes the form of “a group of a couple hundred trolls” who “patrol the pages,” make sure there is “accountability for the people commenting” and tell people they are sharing satire. “These people, they absolutely do not respond to logic and reason, but they do respond to shame if they´re embarrassed by what they´ve done, by the fact that they´ve shared” it, he says. Not everyone agrees that approach is helpful, or harmless. “This type of content has a pervasive and eroding effect on our shared set of facts, and without that, it´s hard to remain a society that can come together and make collective decisions,” says Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council´s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which focuses on identifying and exposing disinformation.