Ovidiu Drobota, a 24-year old Romanian, is the founder of Ending the Fed, one of the top websites that have been spreading false news during the U.S. Presidential campaign. The website has been supporting billionaire Donald Trump by publishing fake news, such as the one claiming Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump or the one saying Hillary Clinton was selling weapons to ISIS, according to Inc.com.

Drobota told Inc.com that he didn’t know the news pieces he published were fake and that as soon as he found that out he took them down. Many of the fake stories published on this website became very popular on Facebook. Ending the Fed's Facebook page, titled End The Fed, has over 350,000 likes.

Ending the Fed was responsible for four of the top 10 false election stories that determined the highest Facebook engagement: Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS, Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding federal office, and the FBI director receiving millions from the Clinton Foundation. These four stories racked up a total of roughly 2,953,000 Facebook engagements in the three months leading up to Election Day, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed.com.

According to BuzzFeed, the top election content on Ending the Fed received more Facebook engagement than stories from the Washington Post and New York Times. “The top four election stories from the Post generated roughly 2,774,000 Facebook engagements — nearly 180,000 fewer than Ending the Fed’s top four false posts.”

The spreading of false news via social networks such as Facebook is considered to have played an important role in mobilizing Donald Trump’s supporters and bringing him the victory in the U.S. Presidential elections on November 8.

This has brought Facebook many critics, including from U.S. President Barack Obama. Facebook CEO rejected the idea that his company played a role in influencing the outcome of the U.S. election. However, both Facebook and Google announced that they would try to curb the spread of fake news via their platforms by restricting advertising on websites that publish such news.

Romanian Ovidiu Drobota admits that he has made nice profits from running his news site, but he says he didn’t do it for the money but because he liked Trump. Drobota describes Ending the Fed as a "conservative news website". The site receives 3.3 million unique visitors in the U.S. per month, according to Quantcast, while USA Today gets 1.9 million uniques a month and the L.A. Times gets 3.6 million.

Drobota also runs several projects in Romania. In Spring 2016, he presented himself on Facebook as CEO and owner of Expunere.com, a Romanian website that used to promote conspiracy theory news, according to PressOne.ro. The website, which is currently under construction, is connected to a local nationalistic party called New Romania Party (PNR).

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editor@romania-insider.com 

(Photo source: End The Fed on Facebook)