The lucrative market behind viral fake news


Public debate is increasingly disrupted by viral misinformation circulating on social media. Behind this sensationalist content regularly lie actors driven by pure profit. To truly understand the spread of online misinformation, author and academic Carlos Diaz Ruiz suggests it must be analysed as the outcome of a market system in its own right.


Issued on: 02/06/2026 -
By:  The FRANCE 24 Observers/
Aurélia ABDELBOST

Behind viral misinformation content regularly lie actors driven by pure profit.

 © Observers



In December 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that an African head of state had contacted him, believing a coup d'état was under way in France. The confusion was caused by an AI-generated video posted on Facebook by a Burkinabe teen.

The creator of the video, which garnered more than ten million views, told French daily Le Monde that his sole motivation was to make money.

More recently, in late April, CBC News and Radio-Canada revealed that a network of disinformation YouTube channels campaigning for Alberta's independence was actually being run by creators based in the Netherlands.

To produce their sensationalist and misleading videos, the creators hired actors and used AI, all while keeping their own faces entirely off-camera. The network amassed 40 million views. Once again, their sole motivation appeared to be profit, driven by YouTube monetisation.

The market of misinformation

The proliferation of fake news on social media is driven by more than just actors with geopolitical or ideological agendas – sometimes, the motives are purely financial. Carlos Diaz Ruiz, author of “Market-Oriented Disinformation Research”, argues that to better combat fake news, we must view this ecosystem as a market "rather than an occasional aberration caused by some evil person out there".

“If we think about it as a system that makes money for a lot of actors, then it becomes much easier to fix.”

‘A system that rewards attention’

The social media ecosystem is designed in a way that pressures influencers to produce increasingly extreme content just to maintain their viewership – and their income – week after week.

“When we pay creators to come up with highly engaging content, we create a system that rewards attention,” Diaz Ruiz says. “And we know that this attention is driven either by sensational content, but also by anxiety and fear.”

In fact, publishing sensationalist or anxiety-inducing misinformation is actively rewarded by algorithms, according to a recent report by the SIMODS research project, which tracks online disinformation across major platforms.

For instance, the study estimates that a YouTube account that frequently posts false or misleading content receives 11 times more engagement than a credible source with the same subscriber count. On X, engagement is roughly ten times higher, and on Facebook, nine times higher. While Instagram and TikTok perform slightly better – with engagement multipliers of four and two, respectively – LinkedIn is the only platform that appears to avoid the trap.

Opaque distribution of advertisements

For influencers, every view, click, and interaction translates into more revenue from advertisers. “Most influencers don't make a lot of money, but a few influencers make a lot of money from that,” Diaz Ruiz says.

This attention economy is fueled by advertising, which drives platform profits.

“We call them ‘big tech’ because we view them as technology firms, a neutral term,” Diaz Ruiz says. “But if you actually study how they make money, they are advertising firms. They make money from advertising, and from brands, companies and people who use their services.”

On major platforms, advertisements are distributed automatically through ad networks such as Meta Ads, which serve as intermediaries.

Algorithms deliver these ads to user accounts based on targeting criteria such as location or age group. As a result, a legitimate brand's advertisement can end up on an account that matches the advertiser's target demographics but happens to spread misinformation. Diaz Ruiz says:


“You give money for social media advertising, and then it goes to some provocative, incendiary influencer. The influencer says, ‘I'm just putting content – free speech.’ The platform says, ‘I'm just a platform’, and the advertiser says, ‘I don't know where my money goes’. So no one is responsible in the end.”
A system benefiting platforms

In some cases, advertisers themselves are violating platform policies. According to Reuters, Meta anticipated that it would bring in roughly 10% of its total annual revenue – around $16 billion – from illicit ads and scams in late 2024.

“If 10% of your income comes from scam ads – not counting fraud and not counting all the other categories that we discussed before – we are talking about a non-insignificant amount of money that platforms benefit from,” Diaz Ruiz says. “Of course, they can always say that they did something against these scams, but they did not return the money.”

How can we regulate better?

To prevent ads from legitimate companies from ending up funding disinformation accounts, Diaz Ruiz calls for better regulation of the platform advertising market:

“If marketers had a duty of due diligence over where their money is going and what exactly they are funding, then they would be more cautious. We have done that with banks, for instance.”

This refers to “Know Your Customer” (KYC) regulations, which require banks to verify their clients' identities to prevent activities such as terrorist financing and money laundering.

“The idea is that the bank, even though it’s only a bank, has the responsibility to know where the money goes, who the client is, and what the purpose of this money is. We don't have that for digital advertising in any way,” Diaz Ruiz says.

This type of regulation, for instance, would establish traceability and hold digital players accountable.

This article has been translated from the original in French.