Freelance Fact Checker Claims Content Farm Owes Him

The business model for what are known as content farms is fairly simple. Writers submit articles that can be found through search engines. The articles contain ads that generate revenue for the content farm which are shared with writers whose articles were clicked on to generate the revenue. Freelance writing for content farms is a tough racket. It only pays off with perseverance, unless there is some luck involved, of course. 

Luck is what freelance fact checker John Keynes (rhymes with shines) thought he found before spending months of his time writing fact-checking articles about The Onion for the content farm Liar Liar Pants on Fire. Citing quotations that are false, companies that don't exist, and studies that didn't take place, Keynes concluded that nothing on The Onion should be taken seriously. 

He had submitted more than five hundred articles before the content farm told him that they weren't going to pay him because The Onion is satire. "I don't care if it's satire," said Keynes. "They post news articles, and I've found factual errors in everything they've written. They present the news as if it is all a big joke to them."

The content farm replied to Keynes's objection with the explanation that it promotes itself to its advertisers as providing viewers with fact-checking on articles posted by legitimate news sources and Fox News. They further explained that no reasonable person takes either The Onion or Fox News seriously, but, unlike Fox News, The Onion isn't intended to be taken seriously.

Keynes did not realize that his fact-checking articles didn't qualify for payment until he had reached the threshold of $25 needed for payment. Keynes said that he felt like he won the lottery when he found a site that was barely more honest than Fox News and had no competition from thousands of other freelance fact checkers vying for that penny per page view the freelancers get.

"Instead of letting me know that my articles didn't qualify for payment, they said the terms of agreement clearly state that fact checking satirical sites does not qualify for payment," Keynes said. "Liar Liar Pants on Fire let me work for four months to submit more than five hundred articles, so I say they owe me the $26.37 my page views would have earned if they qualified for payment."

Keynes said he is contemplating a career with Twitter, but for now he is raking in the dollars from Amazon as a delivery driver.