Reflections on Writing Conspiracy Theories

Brief:
“Take the following Russia Today article Russia stockpiles gold in continued push away from US dollar, and transform it into unique content for our blog (unnamed). Our readers are into conspiracy theories”

Payment:
$3, plus an extra $1 if you can find an image to include with the article. Extra $1 for any exceptional work to be judged at our discretion, and if we like your work, we’ll add you to a list of preferred writers for future work.

Time Limit: 24 hours

Extra notes:
Don’t forget, our readers like conspiracy theories!

Feedback: (by worker, for task setter):

For the sake of clarity, I do believe that man landed on the moon. I also believe that the sinking of the Titanic was thanks to an accidental impact with an iceberg, and that the Earth is indeed round. So, the first time I had to write a blog article for a ‘conspiracy audience’ — their words, not mine — I was somewhat out of my depth.

It caught my eye as one of the higher paying jobs on the site, in the region of $3 — which I know doesn’t sound much, but compared to the $0.01 to $0.02 tasks (such as completing google searches), or the $0.05-$0.10 ones, this was big money.

As a writer, lefty, and general critic of the role of the internet and the press on our contemporary psyche, the job made me deeply uncomfortable. It was all but asking me to elaborate the news to scare a US and European audience into some more anti-Russian sentiment. Whilst there are things I think we absolutely should be critical of Russia for, this isn’t one of them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though, and represents the comparatively benign end of what people are being asked to do online in the name of creating content and whipping-up hatred. There have been tasks that ask for authors to all but write hate speech for ‘alt-right’ websites, and these are where I draw the line — and subsequently report the requesters to the platform. What happens from there, I don’t know.

So, I set about it. With my cheap cup of instant coffee, pen, pad and computer I took the Russia Today article apart and put it together again, leaving space for the imagination to fill.

For this task, I was essentially asked to take a news story, and re-write it as ‘original content’ for an online blog. I was clearly destined to be the cold, hard, anonymous face of fake news for the day.

Often on Microtask websites such as microworkers.com, and the other ones highlighted in the rest of this issue, workers do not get to know the identity of their employer, or the

purpose for which they are writing. Here, the fourth wall of faceless exploitation was broken somewhat by the need for the requester to outline that it was for a conspiracy website, so that I would write accordingly. What conspiracy site though, I did not know and therefore ignorance could be bliss… for now…

Once the tasks are done, they also often shoot-off into the ether with no follow-up apart from the payment (if you’re lucky). However, with something so personal as writing, this didn’t have to be the case. If it had gone only into print journalism, I would never have known its ultimate fate — however, equipped with the search power of Google, I was able to search large parts of the text, and find the result.

The thing that struck me was the ‘shares’ that the article had received. I couldn’t follow these-up, but this means people have actually read it, agreed, and shared it on — or, was it an army of other micro-taskers being paid to share the article and give it some sense of traction?

It was published under a different authors name, in the ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Section of the website. And, if that wasn’t creepy enough, there was a video made for the ‘Alternative News Network’ (ew…) which is just a narrated version of my article as read by a robot from the dystopian future. Apparently this has spread the content to yet another 235 viewers to be put through the excruciating experience of having to listen to my shoddy, rush job writing.

Link here: https://bit.ly/2RkvNuG

Adam Badger is currently completing a Phd at Royal Holloway