St. Catharines tech wizards turns fake news website to something more legit

They were teenagers who tricked the internet with fake news headlines, creating a website with hoax articles that earned them thousands of dollars.

They have since shut it down and are now focusing their talents on something more legit.

These St. Catharines tech whizzes hit click bait gold and turned a huge profit creating fake news articles while still in high school.

One of the teenagers behind the website, Yaman Abuibaid says, “We had $900 in our account within the first day which is crazy. It was an article titled Justin Trudeau bans Donald Trump from entering Canada.

They launched their website, Hot Global News-Dot-Com in 2014 and it went viral. Earning thousands of dollars a month from ad revenue, mostly through Facebook.

They shut down the website in 2016 after backlash online for creating fake headlines, although they did have a disclaimer labelling the content as satire.

Re-thinking their online strategy, they took their skills, their passion for web development and what they learned with Hot Global News-Dot-Com to now help other businesses. Managing social media and building websites.

They say at first it all seemed harmless, writing these articles that gained thousands of ad clicks. Before they shut it down they had posted around 40 fake articles and their website had 10-thousand visitors