The fake news factories from Veles that flooded the US presidential campaign in 2016 may be long gone, but “workshops” still remain on the hunt for stories about veterans or “cards that will be worth millions tomorrow.” In the latest discovery of fake pages targeting American patriots, half of them were traced right back here 

 

They flooded American conservatives with stories they were eager to read, they used social media algorithms for exactly what they were designed to do, and in doing so, they earned their city the title of “Fake News Capital of the World.” Dozens of media outlets and researchers from universities across the globe have covered the phenomenon. They have changed the way ads are priced and how social media content is shared, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro even blaming them for the results of the most recent election, in which he was barely re-elected. While they might not be as numerous, visible, or making as much money, the Veles “clickers,” who helped Trump’s campaign by spreading viral content online, are still very much active. In fact, the culture of “looking for a quick cash online” lives on.  

In September of last year, in the midst of the US presidential campaign, Forbes unveiled “click farms” and “Facebook pages for American patriots.” Forbes identified 67 fake (non-American pages that are presented as American) Facebook pages, 33 of which were based in North Macedonia. As of August 20, last year, all of the pages had a combined total of more than nine million followers, more than the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. The non-Macedonian pages, on the other hand, were from 23 other countries, including Canada, France, Morocco, Vietnam, Venezuela… Forbes found that a large part of the content was created with the help of artificial intelligence and after asking for the opinion of the owner of Facebook, “Meta,” the pages were removed. 

However, the administrators who once ran hundreds of fake news sites are now much less interested in American politics, not because of a newfound ethic against fake news, or cybersecurity measures to prevent harmful foreign influence on social networks, but because there’s been no money in that for a long time. 

Aside from the occasional pages targeting the American right-wing audience—now more of an exception than the norm—the Veles “clickers,” as they’re known in the city, are now turning to other methods of making money, once again through conservative channels.  

It is precisely military veterans, patriots, and their families who make up one of the target audiences for the “digital marketing” strategies that Mirko Cheshelkoski recommends to his students—research on the topic unanimously identify him as the founder of the “fake news industry.” 

The man who accidentally “helped” Trump win his first term 

“Self-taught social media expert,” as he is described in surveys, or “the man who accidentally helped Trump win,” as he describes himself — Mirko Cheshelkoski has been running “digital marketing” trainings since 2011. 

As for the second title, which he proudly highlights in interviews with foreign media outlets, he claims it was bestowed upon him by certain news teams. 

“It sounded powerful and interesting, so we used it in some marketing campaigns,” says Cheshelkoski.  

When asked about the Veles “fake news industry,” and the support for Trump at the time, Cheshelkoski says it was just a “momentary set of circumstances” and asserts that there were no efforts to repeat the trend in subsequent election cycles, including the most recent one. 

“Absolutely not… it was simply a moment in history, and the intention was never to influence elections, but to create viral content on any topic. There were efforts for both candidates, but the president’s audience was much larger, more powerful, loud, and eager to share all that positive information about him, most of which was true and sourced from mainstream media outlets, perhaps with a bit of emphasis” says Cheshelkoski. 

He argues that there has never been, nor is there currently, an organized “Veles industry” of fake news, particularly when it comes to political content: 

“There is no group or community that functions together. Everyone runs their own business and develops their own digital, communication, and business skills independently,” says Cheshelkoski, who still teaches “online business” courses. 

Since Trump’s first election, the rules for publishing and advertising have already been changed by the “Veles industry.” Now, the “industry” is also changing due to artificial intelligence: “AI is changing our digital marketing industry, from the ground up. For now, it is very useful and saves a lot of time. However, over time it will be dangerous for journalists like you and for entire industries,” says Cheshelkoski, adding that they now use AI as a timesaving and automation tool to speed up marketing campaigns, texts, and more. 

Mirko Cheshelkoski may have started the trend with viral content pages, but it was another young entrepreneur that brought American politics into them. 

“I had a website that hired Americans” 

If Mirko is “patient zero” of the viral content industry, then Trajche Arsov is “patient zero” of political content for American conservatives. 

In 2015, as he himself recalls, at the suggestion of his brother, the young lawyer Arsov from Veles merged his interest in American conservatism with the opportunity to make money online, creating one of the first Macedonian websites focused on American politics – usapoliticstoday.com. 

“Before my site, there were guys from Veles who had sites about other topics– healthy food, vehicles —since 2012. When that trend took off, my brother came up with the idea: ‘You know politics, let’s create a site about that,’ he said to me. I’ve always been really interested in and knowledgeable about US politics, which I believe is the most important in the world. At that time, the US had the most advertising revenue, and the site was created for profit. Trump and his support were a consequence, not a cause, of those sites,” says Arsov. 

According to Facebook’s regular financial reports, a click from an American user was then worth four times more than a non-American one. 

Thus began the first phase of creating Macedonian websites for the American right-wing audience. 

“My brother, a few acquaintances, and I began building the site more seriously, bringing in people who knew their craft—professional content creators. It was a site that employed Americans. Half of them still work for well-known conservative outlets. It wasn’t just my site—there were others that hired American writers for an American audience. The goal of all serious sites was longevity, to be long-term financial ventures. A significant portion of the earnings went to American writers because we had to pay them American royalties,” says Arsov. 

According to Arsov, while large traditional media outlets primarily focused on the Democrats, the internet was flooded with media outlets targeting conservatives and content aligned with their views— their “place under the sun.” 

“We were a threat, a competitor to American sites. My site reached the top 500 on Alexa and had two million subscribers by that time. Our shutdown actually benefited the conservatives, as it reduced their competition,” the lawyer believes. 

Soon, the young administrators of clickbait sites, a trend started by Mirko Cheshelkoski, began adopting the model launched by Arsov—political sites. In the 2016 US election year, the citizens of Veles created more than 140 political clickbait sites targeting supporters of American conservatives. “Many beginners got started because of Cheshelkoski,” says Arsov. “But no one started in politics because of him. None of the first serious sites and pages began with him.” 

“The trend continued to snowball. The ‘kids’ were the second phase. They would monitor Facebook groups to see what was ‘trending,’ then simply ‘copy-paste’ and through the groups, they spread the ‘outreach’—the response to their content. Essentially, they created instant sites because it was easy—people who didn’t even know what they were downloading and republishing. The source was always American sites. People from Veles didn’t create, they just reposted,” claims Arsov. 

The purpose of the websites and Facebook pages that generated advertising revenue, according to Arsov, was not to influence, but to profit from, American politics. That is why the phenomenon didn’t end with the 2016 elections, nor did it repeat itself in subsequent American election cycles. 

“They were not active in any of the subsequent election cycles because they were never part of a campaign. All the sites that covered those elections (in 2016, Ed. Note) continued to operate at full speed after the elections, maintaining the same pace into 2017. This continued until 2018, when Facebook abolished the method of promoting ‘content,’” says Arsov. 

 

A quick check of the domain usapoliticstoday.com on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine reveals that the last political posts supporting President Donald Trump were indeed published in 2017 and 2018. However, the archive also shows that the site received a significant amount of traffic in 2019 and 2020, coinciding with another US election year. This suggests that old articles from the site may have been shared on social networks. By 2021, the domain was entirely repurposed, with content focusing on online gambling. 

A screenshot from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine showing the contents of the usapoliticstoday.com domain as of March 9, 2021

 

Arsov: “The news about fake news was fake” 

At the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, just a week before the election, BuzzFeed reported that over a hundred websites supporting Trump were being operated from a single city in Macedonia. 

The BuzzFeed story cited an article by News Agency Meta.mk, which seven months earlier, in early April 2016, reported that Macedonians from Veles had created websites that spread articles in favor of Donald Trump. Since those who registered the domains of these websites had not hidden their data, Meta.mk contacted five of the owners back then. Some of them said they were doing it for fun, some for financial gain, and some because they believed Donald Trump would win the election. 

After the US elections, which Trump ultimately won, Buzzfeed and The Guardian counted 150 websites from Veles. However, they emphasized that the “global disinformation industry,” as they termed it, also exists in Romania, Bangladesh, Vietnam, with a scope far broader than just the US presidential elections.  

BuzzFeed’s discovery quickly turned Veles into a media sensation. The world’s largest, and especially, American, media outlets immediately sent their teams to interview young website administrators in Veles, who became known as “clickers.” 

The former industrial city was visited by dozens of journalistic teams and academic researchers in the following years, who used it as a case study for scientific papers published in prestigious scientific journals. The media received “first-hand” testimonies, and Veles earned the title of the “world capital of fake news.” 

“The media outlets made fake news,” Arsov categorically claims. “The first team arrived with cameras to film how fake news is made. A friend asked, ‘Will someone speak in front of the camera? How much do they pay me to say what they want to hear?’ ‘Three hundred dollars,’ they told him. And there was no actual website —just a screen showing someone else’s site, with viewership numbers from who knows where,” the lawyer says. 

According to Arsov, anyone willing to tell an interesting story for a monetary reward made statements to foreign media outlets. 

“They created ‘content,’ while everyone else sourced the story. Journalists came from the US, Britain, Norway, and every other country—except Macedonia. Only one journalist and media outlet from Macedonia reached out to me,” says Arsov. 

Arsov accuses foreign media outlets of “spinning” the story about the Veles sites and creating a myth about fake news and “troll farms.” 

Arsov claims their story was entrepreneurial: 

“The goal was self-sustainability and profit. We published up to 15-20 pieces of content on the site daily. Now, out of all that content, you will find some conspiratorial, suspicious ones. Out of 3,500 published pieces of content, they found four or five fake news items, they found four or five and accused us of spreading fake news,” explains Arsov, justifying the content on his site, contrary to all previous analyses. 

He admits that the “kids” who got involved in the second phase by copying and republishing were plagiarizing, but according to him, they were “just sourcing American stories.” 

“When the bubble burst, they shut down all the sites, while the American ones remained operational,” adds Arsov.  

He argues that the troll farm claim is a false narrative: 

“The narrative is shifted. The sites were operating normally, but the public only became aware because of the political sites. None of the sites with other content faced any issues because no one even knew about them. The narrative about spreading fake news is wrong. That,in itself, is the biggest fake news,” says Arsov, defending his actions. 

Although he has created pages that present themselves as media outlets without actually being one, he points the finger squarely at the media, especially foreign outlets, which he claims “glued” the fake news narrative to them for the sake of a better story. 

“There was bad intent! The goal was to accuse us of spreading fake news,” says Arsov, adding: “I have testimonies of payments, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, up to five hundred dollars, euros, depending on where the team is from. They were making documentaries, footage—Veles in darkness, mournful music, children ‘crying,’ ‘no money’—all of it paid for, just for the camera.” “Instead of being a business topic, we became a story for the crime column,” says the lawyer, seeking to support his perspective on the “clickers.” 

 

“Facebook owes us—Trump has not repaid us” 

Following the revelation of hundreds of non-US websites and Facebook pages monetizing American content and influencing public opinion among American voters and especially following the US investigation into foreign interference in the 2016 election, social media platforms changed their rules for publishing and, most importantly, for placing sponsored content. Hundreds of websites were abruptly cut off from their revenue, and countless Facebook pages were deleted. 

The main figures behind the Veles phenomenon believe they were the ones who suffered harm, not the public or social networks. Arsov, claims the following: 

“When they removed the pages, I still had visits to the site. But they took our entire investment in ‘traffic building’ (increasing the number of visits through Facebook)! They didn’t return the money spent on promotion to anyone. When Google Ads removed the ads, Google returned everything that had been earned to everyone who had sites. Facebook didn’t,” says the lawyer. 

Facebook has removed thousands of pages and groups as part of its crackdown on “coordinated inauthentic behavior”—interconnected pages and groups that impersonated each other. Some of them paid for their advertising on Facebook. For example, in March 2019, Facebook removed 2,632 pages, groups, and profiles from Iran, Russia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo for this reason. Of these, 513 pages linked to Iran had spent about $15,000 on Facebook advertising by the time they were removed. There is currently no estimate of how much Macedonians spent on Facebook advertising for click fraud pages. 

Arsov, as a lawyer, claims that this is even grounds for a lawsuit, because the company violated American rules on fair trade and unfair competition. 

However, he is more sorry that the coinage “Veles—fake news hub” remains. 

“We started in 2015 and tried to work as professionally as possible, with authors, being careful when choosing photos for illustration so as not to violate copyrights, by checking the content through checkplagiarism.com,” Arsov told us. He says that the intention was long-term and that they had a strong influence. Above all, he says that they did not manipulate the public, explaining: “We published pro-Republican content on a media outlet intended for people close to the Republicans. The audience knew what to expect. We never pretended to be neutral. We were biased, we cheered, we did not pretend to be neutral,” says Arsov. He adds that he is still the owner of his first website, and that he occasionally updates it. He does not know if any of the young people from Veles are still publishing content, but he is sure that he does not publish political content. 

He says that in one of the documentaries in which he was interviewed, the journalist asked him if Donald Trump had thanked them for the victory. “He should thank us,” says the “patient zero” of political sites, as foreign media outlets have dubbed him. 

 

From elections to veterans and Trump Cards 

Arsov was also mentioned in the case of the “hijacking” of the Facebook page “Veterans for Trump” in 2018, which was reported by the Washington Post. However, the lawyer claims that his brother legally purchased the page. Before him, the page, according to the Washington Post, was “hijacked” by an entrepreneur from Kumanovo, who promised the then owners that he would increase the visibility and number of visits to the page with his marketing firm. Later, Facebook returned the page to the original owners. 

To this day, there is no official information on whether, where, and what kind of investigation is being conducted into this case. In response to inquiries, the US Embassy in Skopje directed, in December 2024, that answers be sought from US investigative authorities. 

“The Embassy is working with US law enforcement and social media platforms to counter cybersecurity threats. We recommend contacting law enforcement directly for information on outcomes or ongoing investigations. Building cybersecurity capacity remains a focus of US-North Macedonia cooperation in order to prevent abuse of digital platforms,” reads the Embassy’s response to “Veterans for Trump.” 

In addition to the “hijacker” of the “Veterans for Trump” page, several other operators of fake news Facebook pages originated from Kumanovo. Among them were two members of the Army of the Republic of North Macedonia and an inspector from the Ministry of Interior, a former cadet of the Military Academy. In January 2019, the Army of the Republic of North Macedonia initiated disciplinary proceedings and began investigating the potential criminal liability of its members. However, no crime was ever determined to have been committed, and there is no available information regarding the disciplinary proceedings to date. 

The data on the violations has been deleted from the records 

“Given the fact that this is an event that occurred almost five years ago, the data related to the procedure for determining disciplinary responsibility and the imposed disciplinary measures have been deleted from the official records. Under the laws of the Republic of North Macedonia, data related to imposed sanctions, such as fines or misdemeanors, are deleted from records after a certain period has passed. Analogous to this general legal rule, the records related to disciplinary measures are also handled,” the General Staff of the Army of the Republic of North Macedonia responded. 

What’s reassuring is that, at least, there are no new fake news sites administrated by soldiers. 

“Regarding the question of whether similar cases of administering websites/profiles with fake news have been observed since then, we inform you that no such events have been observed,” the General Staff’s response states. 

Even the US Embassy did not notice any new Macedonian “fake news factories” in the last elections. 

“The Embassy is aware of allegations of disinformation campaigns involving individuals in North Macedonia during the 2016 presidential campaign and is coordinating with other authorities to monitor developments in the area of information manipulation. As part of coordinated actions across the US Government, the State Department has been working to disrupt Kremlin-backed malign operations attempting to influence the 2024 US elections. We will continue to expose and hold accountable foreign malign actors who interfere internationally and undermine free and fair elections,” the Embassy responded in December 2024. 

However, in Veles, after so many years after the affair, when Trump is back in power, it is once again smoldering. In February last year, Radio Free Europe discovered the sale of fake “Trump Cards” (debit cards with the image of Donald Trump) on the Telegram platform. Out of 69 profiles of card sellers, 45 were located in Veles. The buyers— American supporters of the Republican Party. It is important to note, RFE/RL also states that each product was emphasized as a souvenir, while a similar scheme has already been used by three companies from Colorado, which sold the “Trump coin.” They referred to the system as the “Trump Rebate Banking System” (TRB), with the premise that the coins or cards purchased today would, if Trump were to return to power, significantly increase in value by tomorrow. Trump himself launched a fourth series of “Trump Cards” for purchase in August of last year, and his sons, Eric and Don Jr., lead the “World Liberty Financial” group on Telegram, which is associated with Trump’s cryptocurrency. The group has more than 50,000 members. Trump also sold sneakers, T-shirts, Bibles, and other memorabilia as part of the campaign. 

There is currently no information on whether measures are being taken against Macedonian sellers of “Trump Cards.” 

“The Embassy is aware of the allegations regarding fraudulent activities. We encourage caution against scams and emphasize the importance of cross-border cooperation in addressing cyber-fraud. We recommend contacting law enforcement for official information on this case, as well as similar cases. The Embassy will continue to support ongoing efforts in North Macedonia to improve digital literacy and increase cybersecurity awareness,” the US Embassy’s response states.

 

“Journalism isn’t profitable—fake news is”

The phenomenon of the Veles “industry” has sparked a series of academic research and scientific papers, as well as dozens of articles, features, and documentaries among media outlets around the world. The “Veles trolls” have also become the subject of scientific papers in professional journals with an impact factor in the fields of security, political sciences, communication, sociology… but also economics.

Out of the dozen papers reviewed, two stand out—one for its clear and straightforward conclusion, and the other for its bold conclusion that goes against all previous research.

“We argue instead that producing public interest content is not really lucrative, but producing fake news is. This is actually one of the most worrying and consequential observations of this research, “state the authors of the paper “Content optimization in political communication: lessons from the fake news production sites in Veles, Macedonia” by Petre Raluca and Sara Trajckhevska from the University of Constanta, Romania, published in 2021 in the Romanian Journal of Political Science.

“What we actually witness is a new content environment where fake news, rather than real news thrive. We believe that this is the fundamental issue to be addressed if we are to aim for a better information ecosystem and informed citizenship,” the study states.

Content creators, the authors state, give the audiences exactly what they want to hear, regardless of the truth, and call it internet marketing.

“This kind of content enterprise is not likely to disappear, but to thrive, because it is lucrative. The commodity value of fake news is higher than the public service value of journalistic content,” say the authors, who have identified a growing trend of blurring the line between marketing and journalism.

“The aim of the content producers from Veles has always been optimizing the content for traffic ends, irrespective of truth. They just turned from commercial to political content, and then back to commercial content. The content they produce is not only political, but as well situated in many other lucrative areas: sports, cosmetics, transport etc. The principle is the same, content and traffic optimization by means of audience profiling. Therefore, the content enterprise from Veles Macedonia has not been intended to be journalism, but marketing. Marketing aims to fit the needs of the consumer with a product and/or service, and this is exactly what these young people are doing,” the study concludes.

An alternative to fake news, according to the study’s authors, is journalism, which involves hard work without a clear positive outcome: “In this situation, the commodity value of fake news is clearly higher than the public service value of quality journalistic content,” the study reads.

“The entrepreneurial mantra that came along with the neoliberal ideology in Eastern Europe after the demise of socialism has been preaching individual initiative and the drive to be prosperous and make money. The youth of Veles Macedonia have been doing just that in their emerging market society, with the means that they have been having at hand,” Raluca concludes in the study.

 

“Just because there is no evidence doesn’t mean there are no Russians”

Much of what has been written about the “Veles fake news industry” actually supports the claims of Arsov and Cheshelkoski—that the primary motives were economic, likely driven by financial gain, rather than political, with political motives emerging later, spontaneously.

The economic mechanism, motives, and founder are also confirmed by the study “The Macedonian Fake News Industry and the 2016 US Election” by researcher Heather Hughes and Professor Israel Waismel-Manor from the University of Haifa, published in August 2020 in the journal Political Science & Politics. However, this study is unique in that it presents a conclusion that is not introduced or supported by a single preceding sentence in the entire paper.

The fact that there is no evidence of any involvement by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) does not rule out the possibility that they were involved behind the scenes, without the knowledge of the young Macedonians.

“Alternatively, it is plausible that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) clandestine operation was so effective that Cheshelkoski and all others were unaware of it or refuse to admit that they were manipulated by the IRA,” concludes Professor Israel Waismel-Manor on the fifth, final page of the paper, which never mentions the respondents’ contact with Russians.

The field portion of the research was conducted by Heather Hughes in Veles in May 2018, and she also attended one of Cheshelkoski’s digital marketing courses.

“Our research confirms (1) the pivotal role Ceselkoski had in the creation of this industry; (2) the economic motivation driving the fake news disseminators; and (3) the manner in which the mostly young people in their early twenties with little English fluency were able to generate so much traffic and disseminate so much disinformation,” the study concludes.

While this study was being prepared, research by the Macedonian Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) was also published, revealing that Trajce Arsov is the owner of the first “Veles website.” The research also reveals that in 2015, Anna Bogacheva, former head of the data analysis department at the Russian Internet Research Agency—an organization mentioned in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections—traveled to Macedonia. However, IRL states in the research that neither they nor their partners at OCCRP found any connection between the Russian woman and the Macedonian websites.

In the study, the team refers to the IRL research, but with its own interpretation and conclusion:

“Speaking with operatives, locals, and Mirko Ceselkoski himself in our own field research, we found no evidence to contradict the latter account (Russian interference, Ed. Note) but much information to confirm the original narrative,” the conclusion of Waismel-Manor’s study states.

Both the studies and the operators of the sites themselves define their activity as “internet marketing.” In their eyes, as the Romanian study concludes, what they do has nothing to do with journalism and information and therefore does not necessarily have to be accurate. This complete avoidance of the ethical component of their activities is especially emphasized in “businesses” such as the sale of “Trump Cards,” which, while not formally fraudulent, come close to crossing that line. Equally harmful is the “creation of content” that misinforms millions and causes various other types of damage.

The “Freedom on the Net 2017” report by the Freedom House indicates that online manipulation and disinformation tactics played a significant role in elections in at least 18 countries in 2016.

“The main novelty that the new media make possible is that consequential disinformation is no longer located mainly in the field of (authoritarian) politics but has diversified and can be instrumentalized by regular people; like the case of the youth of Veles,” the Romanian study emphasizes.

This way of earning money may be quick and efficient, perhaps legal, but it is not harmless. After all, as Waismel-Manor concludes: “If the Macedonians are those making a profit, it must be democracy that is paying the bill.”

Incidentally, the aforementioned Anna Bogacheva was detained for questioning in Minsk, Belarus, at the request of Interpol in mid-October 2019. However, as the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Minsk announced at the time, she has been released.

Author: Igor K. Ilievski 

(Meta.mk)

 

 

 

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