William Mahlatse Ramatseba
William Mahlatse Ramatseba is a UNISA employee who has been credited for creating numerous fake news websites in South Africa carrying sensational and fabricated, political news aiming to draw traffic to monetise his 15 websites sited on his website.
MGID and Google Adsense have been cited as his primary revenue sources. William Mahlatse Ramatseba is alleged to be the owner of Allnews.co.za, Mzansistories.com and working with his sister Grace Ramatseba
Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. The term is also at times used to cast doubt upon legitimate news from an opposing political standpoint, a tactic known as the lying press.[3][4] The false information is then often reverberated as misinformation in social media, but occasionally finds its way to the mainstream media as well. Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically,often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines to increase readership, online sharing, and Internet click revenue. In the latter case, it is similar to sensational online “clickbait” headlines and relies on advertising revenue generated from this activity, regardless of the veracity of the published stories. Intentionally misleading and deceptive fake news differs from obvious satire or parody, which is intended to amuse rather than mislead its audience.
The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary to generate online advertising revenue. If publishing a story with false content attracts users, this benefits advertisers and improves ratings. Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media, primarily the Facebook News Feed, have all been implicated in the spread of fake news, which competes with legitimate news stories. Hostile government actors have also been implicated in generating and propagating fake news, particularly during elections.