https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-125877/
Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal
Inside the web of conspiracy theorists, Russian operatives, Trump campaigners and Twitter bots who manufactured the 'news' that Hillary Clinton ran a pizza-restaurant child-sex ring
It strains the imagination to think how Campbell – a cat lady in Missouri – had pieced together not only the story that Clinton was a sex-trafficking pedophile, but its details: NYPD officials, Weiner’s laptop, Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet. According to Clint Watts, a cyber and homeland-security expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Katz fits neatly into a well-worn blueprint for disinformation campaigns. For a story to gain traction, propagandists plant false information on anonymous chat boards, hoping real people will pick it up and add a “human touch” to acts of digital manipulation. “If you want to sow a conspiracy, you seed it someplace – 4chan or Reddit is a perfect vehicle,” he says, and wait for someone like Katz to take the bait. “Someone or some group,” Watts says, “possibly took this unwitting woman and made her the source that they need.”
On a pair of anonymous message boards, we found several possible seeds of Pizzagate. On July 2nd, 2016, someone calling himself FBIAnon, who claimed to be a “high-level analyst and strategist” for the bureau, hosted an Ask Me Anything forum on 4chan. He claimed to be leaking government secrets – á la Edward Snowden – out of a love for country, but it wasn’t always clear which country he meant. At various times, he wrote, “Russia is more a paragon of freedom and nationalism than any other country” and “We are the aggressors against Russia.” FBIAnon’s secrets were about the Department of Justice’s inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which federal prosecutors never formalized. “Dig deep,” he wrote. “Bill and Hillary love foreign donors so much. They get paid in children as well as money.”
“Does Hillary have sex with kidnapped girls?” a 4channer asked.
“Yes,” FBIAnon answered.