Wikipedia: NaturalNews

Natural News (formerly NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is a far-right, anti-vaccination conspiracy theory and fake news website known for promoting alternative medicine, pseudoscience, and far-right extremism.[1][2][3][4]

The site's founder, Michael Allen "Mike" Adams, gained attention after posting a blog entry implying a call for violence against proponents of GMO foods, and then allegedly creating another website with a list of names of alleged supporters. He has been accused of using "pseudoscience to sell his lies".[5] Adams has described vaccines as "medical child abuse".[6]

The website sells various dietary supplements, promotes alternative medicine and climate change denial, makes tendentious nutrition and health claims,[7] disseminates fake news,[8][9][10] and espouses various conspiracy theories and pro-Donald Trump propaganda.[11][12] These conspiracy theories include chemophobic claims about the purported dangers of "chemtrails",[1] fluoridated drinking water,[13] anti-perspirants, laundry detergent, monosodium glutamate, aspartame, and vaccines.[1][7][14] It has also spread conspiracy theories about the Zika virus allegedly being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes[15] and purported adverse effects of genetically modified crops, as well as the farming practices associated with and foods derived from them.[16]

As of 2014, Natural News had approximately 7 million unique visitors per month.[4]

In May 2020, Facebook banned Natural News content from its platform after discovering that the site was boosting its popularity using content farms in North Macedonia and the Philippines, a form of spamming.[17] Natural News bypassed the ban by republishing its content on a large number of topic-specific domain names, including trump.news, extinction.news, mind.control.news, and veggie.news.[17][18] The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 496 domain names associated with Natural News as of June 2020.[18][19]

There is a NaturalNews pod on Diaspora (share.naturalnews.com), and members of that pod are without exception in my experience dedicated to spreading disinformation and propaganda, which is why I strongly advocate a block-on-sight policy for them.

The Wikipedia link has considerable additional background.

On the Wikipedia Reliable Sources page, Natural News is one of only 18 blacklisted sites of 351 entries. (The page is a useful guide to site reputation for numerous frequently-used sites, including many which appear in Diaspora posts.)

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