In the volatile landscape of social media Christopher Blair runs an operation of satirical “fake news”, and he has experienced a significant resurgence of profitability. Once earning up to $15,000 a month by posting fabricated stories about Democrats and elections, Blair’s operation came to an abrupt halt after the January 6th Capitol attack. Facebook’s algorithmic changes limited the spread of political content, causing Blair’s engagement to plummet. “It just kind of crashed — anything political crashed for about six months,” Blair recalled.
However, today Blair’s operation is thriving, with interactions on his posts surging to 7.2 million this year from just one million in 2021. This revival is largely due to a strategic pivot towards culture war topics, steering away from direct political commentary. When Robert De Niro criticized former President Trump outside a Manhattan courthouse, Blair’s false post claiming a conservative actor called De Niro “horrible” and “ungodly” amassed nearly 20,000 shares.
Blair, who insists his posts are satirical, has deftly adapted to Facebook’s policies by focusing on sensational culture war narratives involving Hollywood elites and social justice issues. This shift mirrors a broader trend, with nearly half of the false content on Facebook this year revolving around non-political topics. “We’re actually more vulnerable to this today than we were in spring of 2021,” said Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
Blair’s strategy includes posting dozens of false stories weekly, now populated with celebrities embroiled in fictitious feuds. A post from April, falsely claiming that Beyoncé was criticized for releasing country music, received over 50,000 shares and 28,000 comments. “If it’s somebody on the right, I reward them. If it’s somebody on the left, I punish them,” Blair explained.
But Blair’s success has attracted competition, particularly from operators leveraging AI tools to create fake news. NewsGuard has identified nearly 1,000 websites using AI for this purpose, a significant increase from the previous year. One such competitor, SpaceXMania, uses AI to churn out stories similar to Blair’s, often outperforming his posts in engagement.
Despite the competition, Blair remains committed to his unique blend of satire and social commentary. “I’m a liberal troll social justice warrior serving satirical nonsense with a mission,” Blair stated.
Original interview conducted by the New York Times
