A very interesting report released today reveals the business operations that have been set up to distribute and increase virality of fake news. The business operations cited in the report by TrendMicro are in Russia, China and in the Middle East.

The report is entitled, “The Fake News Machine: How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public.” It’s a fascinating read, with points that closely link to those made in the newly released book, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics.” In the chapter entitled, “A perfect storm for fake news,” this case study was included:

BuzzFeed.com reported in November 2016 that the town of Veles in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia became one of the global focal points for the generation of election-related fake news.

A group of digital entrepreneurs in this town of about 45,000 people launched at least 140 websites focusing on U.S. politics. The domain names were American-sounding:

• USConservativeToday.com
• WorldPoliticus.com
• TrumpVision365.com
• DonaldTrumpNews.co
• USADailyPolitics.com
• and many others.

They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the United States.

The young Macedonians who ran these sites told BuzzFeed.com they don’t care about Donald Trump; rather, they were responding to simple economic incentives: According to Facebook earnings reports, a U.S. Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the U.S. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of U.S. display advertising goes a long way in Veles.

Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic was to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook was to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters.

As a result, this strange hub of pro-Trump sites played a significant role in propagating false and misleading content. But at least in this particular case, the motivation was not political, but rather monetary. These sites open a window to the economic incentives behind producing misinformation targeted at the wealthiest advertising markets — and specifically for Facebook, the world’s largest social network, as well as within online advertising networks such as Google AdSense.

Most of the posts on these sites are curated, or completely plagiarized, from fringe and right-wing sites in the United States. The Macedonians saw a story elsewhere, wrote a sensationalized headline, and quickly posted it to their site. Then they shared it on Facebook to try and generate traffic. The more people who clicked through from Facebook, the more money they earned from ads on their website.

“Fixing Post-Truth Politics,” which is available free for your Kindle through Wednesday, frames the perfect storm of cultural, societal and technological factors that led to the explosion of “fake news” in this example and many others.