“Hacker X” and Natural News

A recent article on the Ars Technica site details the story of a so-called ethical hacker who was employed by a company to build a pro-Trump fake news empire. (Note, this is the real fake news, as in news that isn't true - compared to the “fake news” that Trump infamously categorised unfavourable coverage of him as.)

For two years (2015 - 2017), Robert WIllis (who has a blog here) worked for a company to build a network of websites, seemingly unconnected, that would promote a bunch of dis/misinformation stories.

The original Ars Technica story didn't reveal the name of the company - instead referring to it by a fake name as Koala Media. Claiming he didn't want to be a “half assed whistleblow(er)” he's now revealed, in a blog post, that the Koala Media company is Natural News, run by Mike Adams, the “Health Ranger”.

Natural News has been around for years, and most skeptics will be familiar with Adams for promoting the most outrageous bogus health claims and profiting nicely from the sale of associated products.

One wonders how Willis can describe himself as an ethical hacker when the consequences of his work have been so devastating. It's claimed that it's likely that Trump's election as president in 2016 was due, in part, to the disinformation spread on the sites. (And the flow-on effects from that likely include the devastating COVID response and delay to action on climate change). Nevertheless, Willis describes himself as neuro-diverse, and that, I guess, is a valid excuse or reason for perhaps not seeing the larger consequences of his actions.

It's certainly good that this has been exposed, but the Natural News site continues to exist and peddle fake news, and is unlikely to go away any time soon.