Let me explain how blogging works.

Lots of different smaller entities will share content. That’s where you see like-minded people doing what you’re doing, and you share all kinds of content in each other’s universe.

We do that with several people and brands because that’s who we are—an influencer-based collective.

Mark Slapinski from Toronto99.com was one of those guys.

Yesterday, my friend Caryma S’ad (Lawyer and activist) sent me this DM:

Yes. We all thought he was weird. I’ll be honest.

Listen. I value two things doing this job: the truth and being accountable. Do we miss out on a few measly details sometimes? Maybe. It’s never intentional , and we always correct it and apologize.   When we report on shit, we take great pride in A) making it fun and B) telling the fucking truth. So, OF COURSE, I will read that story about a guy we share content with who alleges he’s a disinformation click farm.

And fuck me if it isn’t true.

LEADSTORIES.COM: On November 5, 2021, a website named Conservative Beaver published a false story about the CEO of Pfizer being arrested for fraud. It wasn’t the first false story published by the website and it wouldn’t be the last: Only a few days later the site falsely claimed Myriam Bourla (the wife of Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla) died because of vaccine complications. The fake stories generated massive amounts of engagement in anti-vaxxer circles worldwide.

Predictably Pfizer wasn’t happy about this and according to Courthouse News they filed a petition (archived here) with the Supreme Court of the State of New York on November 16, 2021, to compel hosting company DreamHost to reveal the identity of the site owner with an eye to further legal action. From the filing:

I’m now clueing into the seriousness of this story from this source (LeadStories.com) and that it’s about the Mark Slapinski we content-share with (none of our stuff went his way, thanks fucking God), and Pfizer wants to find him and make him pay.

I digress. The story from Maarten Schenk, founder of LeadStories.com, continues:

LeadStories.com cont: Pfizer probably aren’t the only ones interested in finding out who is behind this website given its history of publishing false information: It also falsely claimed that George Soros was arrested for election interference, that the pope was arrested for child trafficking and that Brian Laundrie was found alive.

Lead Stories did some digging and found there are several strong clues pointing to Mark Slapinski, a Toronto-based journalist, as the owner or operator of the site. Which is quite surprising since Slapinski appears to be strongly pro-vaccination on his own social media channels.

About the Conservative Beaver

So, who or what is the Conservative Beaver? The front page of the site shows several recent (real) news stories and at first sight it looks like a regular news website:

(Source: screenshot of conservativebeaver.com taken by Lead Stories on November 24, 2021)

As you can see at the top of the page, the website claims to be “out of operation as of Nov. 23, 2021,” likely as a result of the lawsuit threat. The false stories about the Pfizer CEO and his wife also appear to have been deleted.

The about page of the website used to say this until recently:

So if you’re following the story, Mark Slapinski is now being accused (with some serious fucking receipts by the second most reputable fact-checking org on the planet) of DELIBERATELY running a misinformation farm, TheConservativeBeaver.co, while pretending to run a legitimate news organization at Toronto99.com.

It’s all a front. A ruse, and we discussed it with the CTO/COO of LeadStories.com, Maarten Schenk, today, and it was a fucking TRIP. Watch the whole thing here:

DBS W @LochlinCross @Bondzeelive @MShenck @LeadStoriescom https://t.co/Pa2aJJaBIP

— Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) November 25, 2021

How’d Maarten find out about Mark’s shady (probably Russian-backed, my opinion, not his) di$information empire? All the money from the ad revenue for ConservativeBeaver.com and Toronto99.com is attached to this email:

The Conservative Beaver website also uses the services of Gravatar.com, an online service that websites can use to generate unique profile images for their users based on their email address. Looking at the HTML source code of the articles posted by “conservativebeaver_skphjv” their Gravatar image appears to be located at https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/97c41ee7f5b59e4e916acd2d775aa5cd?s=40&d=mm&r=g.

Note that Gravatar generates the unique code in the url (the “97c41ee7f5b59e4e916acd2d775aa5cd” part) by taking an MD5 hash of the email address of the user. If you run an MD5 hash of the string “[email protected]” at https://www.md5hashgenerator.com/ you get that exact same code.

“OHHHHHHHHHHH. FUCK. Mark Slapinski is the dude Pfizer is looking for in a NY Supreme Courtroom RIGHT NOW. Mark Slapinski shared content with us.”

Those were my first thoughts. The first thing we did was pull Mark’s user access. Then I got on the phone with Maarten Schenk, the author and fact-checker of the Conservative Beaver, doxxing to get the whole story to check his receipts, and he’s a fucking BOSS.

Then I DM’d Mark even though I already knew everything.

(keep in mind I know he’s full of shit)

Mark made TWO fatal, weirdo, nerd-nerd-for-hire, disinformation click-farm mistakes.

1. Hey, let the money trail lead right back to some weird email account
2. He used us.

If the guilty fuck isn’t guilty of using a shell site to spread disinformation about the wife of the Pfizer CEO dying from Pfizer’s vaccine, then he should fucking act like it. I don’t care if he pretended to be a good blogger with us, and I’d say this about ANY site or person who preyed on the current climate with dangerous, bullshit clickbait.

The same guy that wrote this:

https://crier.co/politics/randy-hillier-daughter/

Wrote this on the side while no one was paying attention:

Lochlin and I were talking about him tonight in a FaceTime call. Here’s the best part:

Shit-for-brains Slapinski brought up my firing from the edge (which he just used in our DM exchange to say he defended me 10 minutes after he found out I was going to put Maarten on to talk about the receipts of Mark’s shady work) to immediately discredit me and one of the most productive fact-checking companies in the world instead of admitting he’s a total fucking fraud.

He also said he didn’t know about my ‘terrible character’ until recently, despite using it to convince me I should support him an hour earlier in our DM exchange.

Mark then blocked me like the coward he truly is.

Then he started blocking everyone else.

Like, everyone.

Guess I just got blocked by association. Thanks @mschenk pic.twitter.com/2xOXq4tzna

— Alan Duke (@AlanDukeNews) November 26, 2021

I feel honored!! pic.twitter.com/eGbMDcgr01

— Brenton On Tour (@brentonontour) November 26, 2021

Everyone he hasn’t blocked is getting the same frantic DM from Mark, too.

“I thought we were friends, and WAAHAAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Fucking baby.

But there’s not one explanation from Mark Slapinski tonight because he’s a liar and up to something. Someone finds him, AND he’s going to have his dick sued off by Pfizer now because he’s the guy behind some of the vilest disinformation this country has to offer, and he’s in DEP shit.

We never paid him or didn’t prove his work, and he never shared the “Pope was just arrested for being a pedophile” stories with us. If he did, we wouldn’t be at this juncture.

Mark Slapinski, this is for you: I will delete your account. The alternative is me literally making sure you wear it forever, which, to be honest, I’m going to do anyway because you lied to me and absolutely do not have the greater good in mind when you do this job.

I don’t talk about my life like a therapy session or post pics of Connor McDavid’s expansive bathroom here so you can drag our users to see your shitpost stories about vaccines killing people for clickbait pennies, you dumb fuck. 

Nothing you post can be taken seriously, and nothing you do is authentic. You are a fraud and a liar, ace.  

The anxiety must be OF THE CHARTS for you right now, Mark.  

I’m going to do what I do, but here’s a pro tip: Delete everything and get a job at Amazon. Apologize to Pfizer and beg them to let you keep your testicles. And earn an honest living like the rest of us, you creepy ass.  

DB

I don’t even think Mark Slapinski is a real dude. He gets dragged for this, or we will never see him again.