Fuentes the fake phenom
It was always clear that at least some of Nick Funetes’ traffic has been the result of bots. The only question is how much. Lately I have become more and more suspicious that the answer is “an enormous amount.” But it’s not as though I had any way to tell.
Now, this article on the subject has come out, and it seems pretty persuasive. The author, Colin Wright, cites this report from something called the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).
Wright states:
The report’s most shocking finding is just how wildly Fuentes’s engagement numbers differ from those of other political influencers. NCRI compared the first 30 minutes of engagement on 20 of his recent posts with those from four major online figures—Elon Musk, Hasan Piker, Steven “Destiny” Bonnell, and Ian Carroll. Incredibly, Fuentes outperformed all of them in early retweets, including Musk, whose follower count is over 200 times higher.
None of this makes sense if the engagement is organic. According to NCRI’s report, this is explained by the fact that 61 percent of Fuentes’s early retweets come from accounts that repeatedly retweeted several of his posts within the same 30-minute window. This is not what you’d expect if these were random users scrolling their feeds. Rather, these accounts appear to be waiting for Fuentes to post so they could amplify his content almost instantly.
When NCRI dug into who these accounts actually were, 92 percent were completely anonymous. … Many openly identified as “Groypers,” members of Fuentes’s online fan base, and their feeds consisted almost entirely of retweets or replies to him. Some even labeled themselves as Fuentes “signal boosters.” These accounts appear to be part of a coordinated network built to push his content as widely and quickly as possible.
NCRI uncovered another major red flag. When they examined Fuentes’s most viral posts—three from before the assassination of Charlie Kirk and three after—it found that nearly half of all retweets came from foreign accounts, heavily concentrated in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These regions are known hubs for low-cost engagement farms.
Crucially, Fuentes is not merely a passive beneficiary of this manipulation—he actively coordinates it. NCRI shows that he routinely gives his viewers direct instructions during live broadcasts to retweet his content, often just seconds after posting a link. This is meant to trigger the early spike in engagement that algorithms reward, a tactic that may violate X’s own rules against coordinated inauthentic activity.
And the effects of this manufactured engagement didn’t stay online. They spilled into mainstream news coverage. …
The media believed it was responding to a real political shift. It wasn’t. It was responding to a manipulated signal created by anonymous amplification networks and foreign engagement farms. Even TPUSA’s own social-media replies showed growing Groyper infiltration as Fuentes tried to capitalize on the vacuum left by Kirk’s death.
This is very much in line with recent revelations about the foreign origins of many social media accounts from supposed American patriots and America-firsters who are posting from places like Pakistan. That’s not to say that there are no real Fuentes supporters (“groypers”), but they are almost certainly far less numerous than one might originally have thought.
One result of all of this is to demoralize the right and also make it appear every bit as bigoted and moronic as the left says it is. As for Fuentes himself, aside from fame and money, what are his goals and who is backing him?
The are other related internet phenomena on the so-called “woke right” (often rabidly anti-Semitic and heavily conspiracy-theory oriented) such as Candace Owens. Are they the beneficiaries of a similar process as that which has made Fuentes famous? I think so, but probably to a lesser extent because prior to Owens’ going off into her current fringe/cringe content, she did seem to have a more conventional following on more conventional platforms.
The same is true of Tucker Carlson to an even greater extent; during his Fox News years he was a popular and at least somewhat mainstream figure on the right. A fair amount of his current traffic is almost certainly a carryover from that. But how much?
Almost since its beginning, the internet has been a place where deception is easier than in the non-virtual world. We’ve had trolling, bot farms, catfishing, phishing, sock puppets, and more recently the spread of AI, and now fake internet phenoms such as Fuentes. No wonder he’s smirking.
James Lindsay has been spot on about the “woke right” from the beginning.
He and Bret Weinstein/Heather Heying are the podcasters I trust right now (on political topics).
Maybe. I’d like to believe it, but I’m just as prone to confirmation bias as anyone else.
The hotel and conference business is run by people who cave when the $PLC says ‘boo’, so it’s difficult to know who has a following which will turn out in meatspace. Steve Sailer recently concluded a speaking tour and said it’s the first time in eleven years he’s been able to make public appearances. Not sure you could make use of public appearances as a barometer. (He does not appear to have any planned events).
The hotel and conference business is run by people who cave when the $PLC says ‘boo’, so it’s difficult to know who has a following which will turn out in meatspace. Steve Sailer recently concluded a speaking tour and said it’s the first time in eleven years he’s been able to make public appearances. Not sure you could make use of public appearances as a barometer. (Fuentes does not appear to have any planned events).
I made a mildly positive comment about Bernie Sanders on Reddit during 2016 primaries. On a thread with a couple hundred views, I immediately got over 2,000 upvotes.
My comments anywhere generally get 0-4 up or down votes.
Anyway, next comment in good faith suggesting he get a haircut got me banned.
And, Sockpuppets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EufH0T196bY
Fuentes benefitted from recent internet publicity.
There’s bots, people paid to retweet and comment, content-delivering and marketing-delivering algorithms, search engine optimization, and now there’s answer engine optimization, which is the equivalent of SEO for AI.
I don’t we have any reason to believe, ever, that just because we’re seeing more about something online that there is any reality to it. The whole point of these bezillion-dollar industries is to show you what they think you will look at if it’s in front of you, so they can sell you something. Could be a narrative, and frequently is.
The Fuentes narrative is an old one, going back at least to the days of Father Coughlin: the Right is full of crazy, hateful people. Fuentes is happy to go along, it’s his day job; legacy media helps spread Fuentes because they think it helps Dems, SPLC and other progressive activists help spread Fuentes because then people give them money to “fight” him, and establishment Republican voices help spread it because they want their position on the Right back.
But there’s nothing there, and never has been. It’s just narrative marketing. We’ve been talking about 1984 here again recently–remember that Emmanuel Goldstein was not real in 1984 and possibly never had been.
I have no doubt that bots amplify the influence of Nick Fuentes but I’ve also no doubt that hatred of Jews has risen dramatically among young people. My kids hear a lot of it from all types of people, some politically active and some not. Poll after poll shows a large gap in support for Israel between the young and older age groups.
It wasn’t too long ago that the extreme Jew hatred expressed by Candace Owens would have made her a pariah, not one of the most popular podcasters. There is a reason why so many media figures are afraid to criticize people like Candace and Tucker, they are afraid of losing viewers.
I wish I could dismiss people like Fuentes, Candace, and Tucker as being internet creations but I believe they reflect a real and disturbing phenomenon.
Gregory Harper:
I completely agree.
But Fuentes et al may not be the big sources. I think TikTok is very much implicated. There’s also plenty on YouTube, including pro-Palestinian ads.
Is it unreasonable to think that anyone who quickly garners a great deal of “public support and attention” may safely be disregarded as having gotten there by stunningly artifical means?
In years past that was accomplished by writers in the syncophantic media, today it’s just bots.
@ Cavendish, I agree that “anyone who quickly garners a great deal of “public support and attention” may … be …regarded as having gotten there by stunningly artifical means”
BUT not “safely disregarded” — as the Fuentes Fenomenon indicates.
The support and attention may at first be artificial, but once it reaches a certain point the attention becomes a positive feedback loop.
It’s similar to people who are famous for being famous, once they become famous enough to be KNOWN as being famous.
If you get my drift.
It’s a media recursion loop, and can spiral into ever more attention being paid to someone because they are getting more attention.
Just like Fuentes.
the Right is full of crazy, hateful people.
==
No, it is not.
This is a good discussion on Nick. These guys point out his following can’t be all bots if you go by in person attendances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUP4EIdamqg
Though as many have pointed out, nowadays any organization or whatever doesn’t need to pay someone to have a certain opinion – they can just go find the person that already has that opinion, and then pay money to get them promoted.
How much Nick’s growth is genuine vs how much is fueled by the feds or foreign agents or who knows who – that is what I’m most curious about.