Imagine a world where a simple video, crafted by a teenager in Burkina Faso and spread across Facebook, could send shivers down the spine of a head of state, leading them to believe their country was on the brink of chaos. That’s precisely what happened in late 2025, when French President Emmanuel Macron received a frantic call from an African counterpart, convinced a coup d’état was unfolding in France. The culprit? An AI-generated video that, despite its fabricated nature, had fooled millions, racking up over ten million views. The young creator, when interviewed, confessed his sole motive wasn’t political upheaval or subversive messaging, but simply financial gain. He saw an opportunity to make a quick buck, and the platforms, with their vast reach and monetisation models, offered him the perfect stage.
This incident, as unsettling as it is, isn’t an isolated anomaly. Just as news often travels in pairs, another striking example surfaced recently, revealing a sophisticated network of YouTube channels pushing for Alberta’s independence. These channels, with their dramatic and often misleading videos, weren’t homegrown initiatives from passionate Albertans; they were meticulously crafted by creators based in the Netherlands. They employed actors, harnessed the power of AI, and carefully concealed their own identities, all to produce sensationalist content that garnered an astonishing forty million views. Their motivation, much like the Burkinabe teen, wasn’t ideology or genuine political conviction, but the cold, hard cash offered by YouTube’s monetisation system. These stories peel back the curtain on a modern phenomenon: the market of misinformation, where profit often trumps truth, and the digital landscape becomes a fertile ground for financial exploitation.
Carlos Diaz Ruiz, an expert who has deeply explored this phenomenon, argues that to effectively combat the deluge of fake news, we must shift our perspective. Instead of viewing it as occasional bad apples or isolated incidents of malicious intent, he urges us to recognize it as a robust, albeit often insidious, market. “If we think about it as a system that makes money for a lot of actors, then it becomes much easier to fix,” he explains. This reframing is crucial because it moves beyond simplistic blame and encourages a systemic approach to a complex problem. The social media ecosystem, by its very design, incentivizes creators to produce increasingly extreme and attention-grabbing content. It’s a relentless treadmill where maintaining viewership – and by extension, income – demands constant escalation. Ruiz succinctly puts it, “When we pay creators to come up with highly engaging content, we create a system that rewards attention. And we know that this attention is driven either by sensational content, but also by anxiety and fear.” Essentially, the very architecture of these platforms, driven by algorithms and the pursuit of engagement, inadvertently champions content that agitates, sensationalizes, and often, misleads.
The unsettling truth is that publishing sensationalist or anxiety-inducing misinformation isn’t just tolerated; it’s actively rewarded by the algorithms that govern our digital lives. A recent study by the SIMODS research project, which diligently tracks online disinformation across major platforms, revealed a stark reality: a YouTube account that consistently posts false or misleading content can receive eleven times more engagement than a credible source with the same number of subscribers. On X (formerly Twitter), that engagement multiplier hovers around ten, and on Facebook, it’s roughly nine. While Instagram and TikTok fare slightly better, with multipliers of four and two respectively, it’s a sobering indicator of how deeply ingrained this bias for sensationalism is. LinkedIn stands as a curious exception, appearing to have largely sidestepped this insidious trap. For influencers, this translates directly into revenue. Every view, click, and interaction is a small deposit in their digital bank account, fueling an attention economy where a select few rake in substantial sums. “Most influencers don’t make a lot of money,” Diaz Ruiz acknowledges, “but a few influencers make a lot of money from that.”
This attention economy, the engine driving significant profits for platforms, is fundamentally powered by advertising. Diaz Ruiz challenges us to look beyond the “big tech” moniker, a term often used as a neutral descriptor for these companies. He asserts that while they are technological marvels, their core business model is rooted in advertising. “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,” he clarifies. The distribution of these advertisements is largely automated, a complexdance orchestrated by ad networks like Meta Ads. These intermediaries, through sophisticated algorithms, deliver ads to users based on an array of targeting criteria, from location to age. The consequence? A seemingly innocuous advertisement from a legitimate brand can inadvertently land on a feed associated with an account that, while fitting the target demographic, actively spreads misinformation. Diaz Ruiz paints a vivid picture of this accountability vacuum: “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.”
This lack of accountability is further exacerbated by the fact that, in some cases, advertisers themselves are knowingly or unknowingly violating platform policies. A Reuters report revealed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, anticipated a staggering 10% of its total annual revenue – approximately $16 billion – in late 2024 to come from illicit ads and scams. “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 emphasizes. While platforms may claim to combat these scams, the financial incentive to allow them to persist remains, as the money generated from such activities often isn’t returned. This murky financial landscape begs a crucial question: how can we regulate this sprawling, opaque market more effectively? Diaz Ruiz advocates for a fundamental shift, urging for better regulation of the platform advertising market. He proposes that marketers should have a “duty of due diligence” to understand where their advertising dollars are going and what content they are inadvertently funding. He draws a compelling parallel to the banking industry, where “Know Your Customer” (KYC) regulations demand banks verify client identities and the purpose of transactions to prevent illicit activities like 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,” he highlights. Implementing similar regulations in the digital advertising sphere would establish much-needed traceability and hold digital players accountable, transforming the market of misinformation from a wild west into a more responsible and transparent landscape. Only then can we hope to stem the tide of financially motivated falsehoods that erode trust and, as President Macron’s experience shows, can even shake the foundations of nation-states.