Thread by @JuddLegum

1. In 2022, an obscure far-right website with three employees, Conservative Brief, has become a DOMINANT force on Facebook.

I've discovered the (dirty) secret to their success.

Follow along if interested.

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2. Facebook has deemphasized the distribution of news. They've even renamed NewsFeed to Feed.

Nearly all publishers have seen engagement decrease substantially.

Not Conservative Brief.

Its engagement per article is up 10x since Feb 2021

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3. Conservative Brief's success on Facebook is immense. It is now getting more engagement on Facebook than the New York Times OR the Washington Post -- media outlets with thousands of journalists.

Conservative Brief doesn't even have a Facebook page!

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4. How does it work? Each time Conservative Brief publishes an article it is posted by a network of conservative Facebook pages w/large audiences

This includes Facebook pages by folks like Dinesh D'Souza (2.7M), Brigitte Gabriel (1M), & CJ Pearson (663K)

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5. These pages post many articles from the Conservative Brief every single day. Just yesterday, D'Souza published a dozen links.

Why?

There is a clue in URLs

Each link posted by D'Souza (and the others) includes a unique UTM code

For D'Souza its DJD

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6. The UTM code posted by D'Souza allows Conservative Brief to track exactly how much traffic D'Souza is sending their way via Facebook

But provides no info to D'Souza

Absent a relationship between D'Souza and Conservative Brief there is no reason to use a UTM code

7. The fact that all of these Facebook pages use UTM codes when posting Conservative Brief links strongly suggests that Conservative Brief is paying for traffic.

That would explicitly violate Facebook rules.

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8. In September 2020, I uncovered evidence that Conservative Brief was using the exact same scheme to pay Facebook pages to boost their traffic.

Facebook recognized the issue and said they were engaging in "enforcement action"

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9. Most of the 2020 network has been taken offline or has stopped posting links to Conservative Brief

But presented with reporting on this new, more powerful, network Facebook declined to comment

What changed?

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10. In 2020, Conservative Brief was using a network of large but random pages w/names like Make America Even Greater

Today, it is high-profile right-wing activists like D'Souza, Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, and former Trump admin official Sebastian Gorka

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11. In July 2020, I undercovered a pay-to-pay scheme involving @realDailyWire, a network of Facebook pages run by Mad World News, and UTM codes.

Facebook acknowledged there was a financial relationship, punished Mad World News, and "warned" Daily Wire.

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@realDailyWire 12. Today, on a per article basis, Conservative Brief gets more engagement on Facebook than The Daily Wire.

It shows that Conservative Brief's tactics have allowed it to buck the trends and achieve a level of success unavailable to any other outlet

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13. Facebook is a $550B company, and the content on its platform has a major impact on politics around the world.

But it is unable or unwilling to enforce its own rules.

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14. UPDATE: Conservative Brief is now trying to cover its tracks. After I published my story this morning, the site added some of the conservative activists who repeatedly publish its content with UTM codes as "contributors/influencers."

conservativebrief.com/about/

15. These designations were added TODAY. Here is how the about page looked before I published my story this morning: web.archive.org/web/2022020817…