IndyNews is No Longer Hitchhiked by the Ultra-Right

Part 1 of 2 of our Featured Story on the remarkeable Domainhistory of indynews.org

IndyNews.org is finally breaking free from the toxic legacy it inherited during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. What began as a trusted outlet within the independent media community ended up in the hands of ultra-right operatives, becoming a pawn in a broader disinformation campaign. This is the first part two exploring how a platform once dedicated to leftist causes was appropriated and exploited by groups like Cambridge Analytica and Breitbart News.

During its heyday, IndyNews.org, along with the broader Indymedia Network, was a rallying point for anti-globalization activists. Founded during the Seattle WTO Protests in 1999, it was a space where people could challenge the narratives fed by corporate media and share unfiltered reports from protests, actions, and underreported regions. But as digital media landscapes shifted and the rise of centralized platforms like Facebook and Twitter eroded Indymedia’s influence, the site went dormant. The server logs remained, the archives stayed intact, but no new content was being produced. From 2003 and 2004, as web.archive.org shows the site redirected to an alternative and leftist independent News portal called ‘the Other News’.

By 2015, the domain was ripe for exploitation. While the exact date is not know to us, sometime the Operatives linked to Steve Bannon and Breitbart News recognized IndyNews.org’s latent potential. They knew that a domain with a history of credibility in progressive circles could be the perfect Trojan horse for their own purposes. In the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election as POTUS, IndyNews.org was transformed. Old articles were scrubbed, and in their place appeared sensationalist headlines and content pushing ultra-right narratives that aligned with Trump’s campaign strategy.

Cambridge Analytica, known for its controversial role in manipulating voter behavior, also took note. By leveraging sophisticated data analytics and psychographic profiling, they were able to target specific demographics, exploiting the site’s reputation to build trust and then subtly inject disinformation. IndyNews.org, a site once known for social justice and grassroots reporting, was now a tool for spreading fear, division, and misinformation.

Echoes of the Past: How IndyNews is Still Being Indexed

Even today, automated bots continue to crawl through the ghost of IndyNews’s ultra-right past. Requests for old articles on conspiracy theories and hyper-partisan topics flood the server logs:

• PetalBot still requests URLs like /health-experts-on-second-thought-cloth-masks-do-absolutely-nothing.
• Similar bot activity references divisive stories such as /good-vs-evil-canadas-truckers-battle-justine-trudeau-for-us-all.
• Numerous requests for sensationalist content, such as “Biden’s approval close to falling into the 20s after another brutal week” and “Kamala gives $1.2B to Pepsi, Microsoft, and Mastercard to solve migration crisis.”

This bot traffic underscores the persistence of IndyNews’s contaminated search index, making it difficult to restore its reputation and separate it from the alt-right echo chamber it was drawn into. But the new owners are undeterred. Their goal is to reclaim this domain piece by piece, starting with transparency and accountability. It’s a daunting task, but in the world of media, where perception is everything, re-establishing trust is a battle worth fighting.

Stay tuned for Part Two, where we explain how these disinformation campaigns were executed and the effects they had on the political landscape.

Read Part Two of our Featured Story about Indynews.org Domain History as Propaganda Machine