On 29 December 2015, the web site Hot Global News published an article reporting that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had banned U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump from entering Canada: 
 
 In a meeting held by the Liberal party earlier this week, party leader and Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau called for the prohibition of Donald Trump from entering Canada effective immediately for as long until Trump publicly apologize for his racist comments against Muslims and Mexicans. “Canada is a free country. Canada is a country that supports all ethnic backgrounds, all cultures and all religions. Donald Trump’s speeches have demonstrated his hate towards Muslims and Mexicans. Canada does not tolerate racism or hate. Donald Trump is here by banned from entering Canada for as long as he wishes to show his racism.” 
 
 However, this story was nothing more a work of fiction from Hot Global News a site that clearly states in its disclaimer that it is a satire (i.e., fake news) publication and does not publish factual stories: 
 
 HotGlobalNews is both a satire news site and real news site. Posts should be read at your own discretion. 
 
 While Prime Minister Trudeau has not banned Donald Trump from entering Canada, he did say that he strongly disagreed with the GOP candidate’s plan to bar Muslims from entering the United States. Shortly after Trump declared that he would prohibit Muslims from entering the United States, Trudeau said that Canada was opposed to “politics of fear and division in our election here.” 
 
 Several online two petitions have called upon Trudeau to ban Trump from entering Canada. 

 Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed Daré Adebanjo and Yaman Abuibaid. 
 
 Yaman Abuibaid was sitting in a 10th-grade classroom when the teacher started talking about Justin Trudeau's plan to legalize marijuana in Canada. He realized that would be a perfect story for the news website he and a friend had created a year earlier. 
 
 He pulled out his phone, started writing, photoshopped a feature image, and published the post under the headline “Justin Trudeau To Build Marijuana Stores In Every City Across Canada." 
 
 
 
 Hot Global News 
 
 Yaman Abuibaid / Google AdSense 
 
 Prior to discovering the power of Trudeau hoaxes, Abuibaid said they were writing fake celebrity news — "Soulja Boy To Change Stage Name to 'Offisir Boy' And Tattooed It On His Face" — and making barely $500 a month from ads. Their earnings exploded in October thanks to the Canadian prime minister. Abuibaid provided a screenshot from Google AdSense that shows their total ad revenue that month was $10,734.40 in Canadian dollars. They now consistently earn thousands per month and recently added two new fake news websites to their fledgling online hoax empire. (Abuibaid provided a screenshot that shows their June earnings were just under $3,000 Canadian.) Hot Global News has more than 90,000 fans on Facebook and the teenagers say they're working towards an ambitious target. "We’re trying reach at least 1 million likes on Facebook, that’s our goal," Abuibaid said. Why? "Because a million sounds amazing." 
 
 Abuibaid spoke to BuzzFeed News via Skype from his local mosque in St. Catharines, Ontario. Eid al-Fitr had just begun and the sound of prayers spilled in from a nearby room. He was apologetic about the interview setting. "Yeah, my mom forced me to go," he said. Abuibaid is the kind of teenager who spends his spare time building websites. This year he won a medal in a national web design competition for secondary school students. Prior to getting into the fake news game, he tried to create social networking and community websites. None of them caught on. 
 
 Niagara Catholic District School Board / Via niagaracatholic.ca 
 
 His parents know about his fake news business. At first his father was concerned about the legality of making up stories about the prime minster. 
 
 "My dad has read the stories I’ve written and he said, 'These are really harsh articles,'" Abuibaid said. "And I said, 'Well, if on the website we say it’s satire then I’m pretty sure we’re good, because I’ve seen a lot of satire websites and they say it's a satire.'" (The site carries this disclaimer at the foot of every page: "HotGlobalNews.com is a satire website, articles/post [sic] on the website are all made-up stories and should not be taken seriously.") Adebanjo, the older of the duo, recently completed his first year of a computer science degree at Carleton University in Ottawa. Aside from creating websites, he's trying to break into music as a rapper and has several music videos on YouTube. The two met three years ago when they were playing FIFA Online. They're two talented teenagers who share a passion for website development — and a drive to make money online. 
 
 Dare Adebanjo / Via instagram.com 
 
 Hot Global News in fact grew out of a failed venture by Adebanjo. Two years ago, he and some friends in high school bought Samsung phones with the plan of reselling them online at a profit. "They didn't end up selling for as much as we estimated," Adebanjo said in a Skype interview. "We ended up being like $600 short." It had been his idea so he wanted to pay back his friends. He sent Abuibaid a message suggesting they team up. "I know you're smart and I'm smart and we're really good with computers — what can we do to make that money back?" he said. Abuibaid remembered the time he heard his friends talking about a Kim Kardashian story that turned out to be fake. "I said, 'That’s definitely fake — why would you ever believe that?'" he said. "And they said, 'It’s online, it’s true.' And you realize that people believe a lot of things online. So we use that to our advantage." Abuibaid told Adebanjo he had the perfect moneymaking idea: a fake news website. Hot Global News launched in November 2014. Through trial and error, the two teens say they've learned that the secret to creating a viral hoax is to tell people things they want to hear. Adebanjo said real news stories tend to be too boring and filled with facts — "useless information," as Abuibaid puts it. "Anytime we write we always try to start off with a lot of facts, but then we make it really interesting," Adebanjo said. "We try to give a little sense of wonder." 
 
 That approach of telling people what they want to hear led them to start publishing hoaxes about Donald Trump, another surefire traffic generator. Not surprisingly, Hot Global News's biggest hit to date is a hoax that combines Trump and Trudeau. 
 
 
 
 Hot Global News 
 
 That story has been viewed almost 800,000 times and received over 225,000 likes, shares, and comments on Facebook. It gets clicks because it manages to cater to Trudeau and Trump supporters at the same time — albeit by setting them off against each other. You could be impressed with the strategy, except that the story is a total fake that fools people because it accentuates partisanship and polarization. It manufactures conflict and plays up divisions. And it shows how easy it is to make people click on and share false information, so long as it confirms our biases and beliefs. "People are prone to uncritically accepting information they want to believe is true and to share it with others," said Brendan Nyhan, an associate professor of political science at Dartmouth who has conducted several studies about political misinformation. "It feels good to have our preconceptions validated. That’s why we as human beings are often not skeptical enough of claims that are consistent with our prior beliefs." 
 
 Brendan Nyhan / Via Twitter 
 
 It's one reason why the number of fake news websites continue to grow. (I started tracking them in 2014 as part of a research project, and continue to see new players crop up on a regular basis.) 
 
 Fake news sites have names such as National Report, Associated Media Coverage, The Valley Report, Huzlers, and World News Daily Report. Many publish the kind of political hoaxes that work for Hot Global News. They also produce hoaxes about highly partisan issues. After North Carolina passed its anti-trans bathroom law, fake news websites began churning out hoaxes about trans people being assaulted or killed in bathrooms. Others, such as TMZ World News, trade in outrageous crime stories or claims about celebrities. All of the sites are quick to put a fake news twist on topics and people that are trending on real news websites. For example, the popularity of Pokémon Go resulted in a tsunami of hoaxes about people being killed or robbed as a result of the game. The founder of a site that pumped out viral Pokémon Go hoaxes told Vice he does it because real news is already full of "bullshit." 
 
 "I'm a person that believes news lies a lot," said Pablo Reyes, a 26-year-old who lives in Dallas. 
 
 Fake news is a big enough problem that in early 2015 Facebook announced it would enable people to flag a post in their News Feed as a hoax or "purposely fake or deceitful news." That caused an initial decline in Facebook engagement, and traffic, for many of the larger fake news sites. But BuzzFeed News found the decline was short-lived. Fake news remains resilient and profitable. 
 
 
 
 Facebook 
 
 Abuibaid and Adebanjo show that it's incredibly easy to launch a basic website, plug in Google AdSense, and start earning money by fooling people. And as far as the teenagers are concerned, their hoaxes don't harm anyone. "We write about things that don’t bring harm but get people talking," Adebanjo said. They have a rule against doing celebrity deaths. 
 
 "We wouldn't post something... for example, 'Trudeau Kills Someone,'" Abuibaid said. "We post things that are realistic and have to do with things that Trudeau says. People believe our articles about marijuana because Trudeau does talk about it." Many of the pair's Trudeau hoaxes may seem flattering, amusing, or in line with things he might do or say. But there are also others where he's accused of a crime or violence. They have written stories about Trudeau being investigated by the CIA for supporting ISIS, and Trudeau being arrested for driving under the influence of marijuana. Perhaps their most damaging Trudeau hoax was a story headlined, "Justin Trudeau’s Wife Speaks Out About Abusive Husband." It included fake quotes from Sophie Grégoire Trudeau stating she had been abused by him. Abuibaid admitted that story went further than others. 
 
 At first Abuibaid said he thinks people who read their articles and like their Facebook pages know the stories are fake. Then he changed his mind. "Actually now that I think about it, they think it’s real," he said. "The name Hot Global News doesn't tell you it's satire — it sounds like a legit news source." (Their new sites also have legitimate-sounding names: The National Sun and The Global Sun.) One of the site's non-Trudeau hits is an alarming hoax from February claiming that a member of ISIS came into Canada disguised as a Syrian refugee. (Their story used the photo of a Canadian man named Ahmad Waseem who joined ISIS. He was not a Syrian refugee and was reportedly killed months before the government began accepting large numbers of refugees.) 
 
 
 
 Hot Global News
– Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hot stuff. At least, that's what two teens in Canada who'd been looking for ways to make quick money building websites concluded after they started the satire site Hot Global News."This is where it’s at: Justin Trudeau," Yaman Abuibaid, who is 16, tells BuzzFeed. He and friend Daré Adebanjo began to make hundreds of dollars via Google AdSense when they began writing articles with headlines such as, "Justin Trudeau To Build Marijuana Stores In Every City Across Canada." That October 2015 hoax was their first big hit—they made $900 the first day and it's since garnered more than 20,000 likes, shares, and comments on Facebook alone. They say they now make thousands of dollars every month. Abuibaid admits that a lot of readers think the stories are real, even though their disclaimer states: "HotGlobalNews.com is a satire website, articles/post [sic] on the website are all made-up stories and should not be taken seriously." (Snopes would go on to publish an article explaining that the story is, in fact, fake.) He also admits that their ultimate drive is money, and that the trick to increasing clicks is to give readers what they want, which they say turns out to be stories reinforcing what readers think Trudeau might do. “People are prone to uncritically accepting information they want to believe is true and to share it with others,” an expert tells BuzzFeed. Since the marijuana hoax, the teens have posted around 40 fake articles that range from Trudeau banning Donald Trump from Canada, accidentally kissing President Obama, naming a kitten “Kush,” and giving out marijuana at Halloween. (These viral videos were all hoaxes.)