Meet the guy who pranked Infowars into publishing fake Trump news
A Scottish man has played a prank on alt-right conspiracy site Infowars, by tricking it into publishing a totally, completely false report about president-elect Donald Trump.
Markus Muir, 27, set up a fake Twitter account in which he pretended to be working for NBC and sent direct messages to Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson, claiming BuzzFeed News and CNN were ready to publish damaging footage on Trump.
The Infowars article quotes the Muir messages in several occasions and was widely shared by right-wing pages and figureheads on Facebook. According to the messages, the footage would show Trump using the n-word in a long-lost outtake of The Apprentice.
Muir said Watson didn't ask for any details that could verify the story, or to see any evidence "to who I was or how I knew about these tapes." According to Muir, Watson didn't even ask for evidence proving that Muir worked for NBC.
Muir, who works in digital marketing in Glasgow, answering questions via email, explained how he became interested in the post-election discussion about fake news, and didn't have a plan in mind when he initially messaged Watson:
"I was watching a discussion on CNN looking at fake news and it had tied into a conversation I was having with a few friends who are journalists in Scotland," he said.
"I didn't have a plan, it was spur of the moment."
Watson had been retweeted into Muir's timeline a few times over the last couple of weeks and "everything he wrote was factually inaccurate and often downright racist," he said.
"I noticed that you could openly send a direct message to him, so it was a little spur of the moment prank," Muir said. "It took a minute to set up an account, I chose a villainous looking character as my display picture and sent him a direct message claiming that I worked for NBC."
"To my surprise, he got back to me quite quickly, and I added a few more details to the story, but not adding anything that actually proved my story was true," he said.
"He never asked to see any evidence to who I was how I knew about these tapes," Muir explained. "It's amusing because I listened to an excerpt of the Alex Jones show where he discussed the article and he says that they asked for credentials to prove who I was and that I did work for NBC (which is a total lie)."
Infowars is a conspiracy theorist website created by right-wing radio host Alex Jones. The site strongly supported Donald Trump ahead of the elections.
Many people on right-wing Facebook shared the story claiming it proved collusion between various news outlets, as part of a plot to bring down Donald Trump.
"I even saw a tweet that stated that CNN & Buzzfeed are trying to start a race war!" Muir wrote. "I think the term fake news is being weaponised and thrown at well sourced articles and good reporters in order to delegitimise journalism as a whole."
Muir said he was "just trying to shine a light on how websites like infowars create and spread these fake stories so easily" and show that people need to use critical thinking while online.
However, he admitted that the prank, which generated an Infowars article, ultimately might have contributed to the spread of fake news—the same phenomenon he was trying to fight.
"Honestly, at the end of the day, I did actually feel as if I had contributed to the multitude of fake news and I felt really disheartened by it," he said. "Hopefully, it'll help reaffirm the importance of genuine journalism and why that should be valued and treasured."
Muir got in touch with BuzzFeed after the story was published.
BuzzFeed News contacted Watson to ask why he published the DMs without verifying the information.
He replied only: “BuzzFeed is cancer. BuzzFeed is fake news.”
Topics Social Media Donald Trump
