Disinformation guru “Hacker X” names his employer: NaturalNews.com

Rob Willis.

Robert Willis, the hacker who helped build a massive, US-based disinformation network and was profiled in a recent Ars Technica feature, has decided to name names. In a blog post today, Willis confirmed he worked for Mike Adams, who goes by "the Health Ranger" at the site NaturalNews.com. This matches the documentation previously seen by Ars Technica in the course of reporting the piece.

Willis had joined NaturalNews.com in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and helped the site build out a network of anonymized websites that looked independent but secretly promoted the “health” information and pro-Trump political writings of Mike Adams and NaturalNews.com.

NaturalNews has long been linked to disinformation. In 2019, The Atlantic named it one of the top producers of anti-vax content on the Internet. The site has touted homeopathy, urged “natural” remedies for things like cancer, and warned about “chemtrails.” NaturalNews content has been banned from Facebook, and the site has been called a “powerful conspiracy empire.”