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He Sparked the Fake News Boom. Then Facebook Broke His Business

He Sparked the Fake News Boom. Then Facebook Broke His Business

(Bloomberg) -- From a young age, Cyrus Massoumi knew he wanted to become rich one day. In 2012, he figured out how: by creating an inflammatory, hyper-partisan news site that used Facebook to make its articles go viral. This week, Bloomberg Technology's Sarah Frier and Aki Ito talk to Cyrus about how MrConservative.com's success sparked a frenzy of other sites like it. Cyrus watched the phenomenon snowball—until one day he realized he had created a monster.

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To contact the authors of this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.net, Aki Ito in San Francisco at aito16@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pia Gadkari at pgadkari@bloomberg.net, Liz Smith

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