October 19, 2021
Robert Wilis, the hacker who helped create an influential U.S.-based disinformation site recently announced that he worked for Mike Adams known as “the Health Ranger” at NaturalNews.com.
While Rob initially refused to name names in his first interview with Ars due to legal issues, he explained in a later blog post that the revelations had become necessary: “After reading many comments on the Ars article, I realize that many people feel that I am protecting the organization by not naming them. I understand that some feel that this is seen as a ‘half-assed whistleblow’, and that was not my intention. I believe naming them is the right thing to do, and I hope that the community supports me on this.”
In the lengthy post, Willis claimed he had no idea what Adams was after when he joined the site.
He explained that the pro-Trump and anti-Clinton fake news he helped spread “didn’t know it was fake news at the beginning is because the machine needed to be built before it could be used, so I didn’t spend time inside stories outside of overseeing social media and numbers, at which point I did not factor in the aspect of whether the articles were true or not. I was strictly breaking down stories by headlines and breaking it down into numbers. With an occasional crazy headline that seemed harmless.”
For more information, read the original story in Arstechnica.
