Natural News (formerly
NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is a
far-right,
anti-vaccinationconspiracy theory and
fake news website known for promoting
alternative medicine,
pseudoscience, and
far-right extremism.
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". Adams has described vaccines as "medical child abuse".
The website sells various
dietary supplements, promotes
alternative medicine and
climate change denial, makes tendentious nutrition and health claims, disseminates
fake news, and espouses various
conspiracy theories and
pro-Donald Trumppropaganda. These conspiracy theories include
chemophobic claims about the purported dangers of "
chemtrails",
fluoridated drinking water,
[13]anti-perspirants,
laundry detergent,
monosodium glutamate,
aspartame, and
vaccines. It has also spread conspiracy theories about the
Zika virus allegedly being spread by genetically modified
mosquitoes and purported adverse effects of
genetically modified crops, as well as the farming practices associated with and foods derived from them.
As of 2014, Natural News had approximately 7 million unique visitors per month.
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. 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. The
Institute for Strategic Dialogue found 496 domain names associated with Natural News as of June 2020.
