The hate economy in action: how an AI rapper tried to cash in on our coverage

Earlier this month, we reported on Danny Bones, a British rapper and influencer who is in fact an AI-generated persona created by a secretive operation called the Node Project.

We revealed that Advance UK, a far-right political party, had paid the Node Project to produce campaign videos, including content tied to the Gorton and Denton byelection. The Node Project also posts anti-Muslim content on social media, where Danny Bones has gone viral.

Since our story, the project and a handful of crypto traders have tried to turn the coverage itself into a source of income.

Reporting on operations like this risks offering publicity that can be exploited to drum up support and money. But there is a sizeable economy around this sort of content, and unpicking its workings helps understand what’s driving the spread of hate online.

Part of what sustains that economy is the advent of new AI tools. (Ironically, X users were recently told that Danny Bones is “a real person – not AI!” … by the AI assistant Grok.) And we’ve previously reported on AI-generated racism being turned into profit by TikTok users, as well as a Sri Lankan influencer making money from anti-migrant AI content aimed at Brits. So we decided to follow the money.

A quick buck?

After we contacted social media platforms for our story, TikTok banned the Node Project’s account and Instagram removed several videos for hate speech violations. But the Node Project moved fast to monetise the attention.

Hours after we published, the project posted a video accusing the media of trying to shut it down and on Instagram, it described our investigation as “full of lies”. The project revamped its website with a membership page offering unreleased tracks, early teasers and updates. It launched a £100 “Founding Member” tier and a £20 “Early Member” tier, with plans for a private Telegram group, a newsletter and merchandise. An Instagram story directed followers to a donation link and at the time of writing more than 30 payments had come in.

When we contacted the Node Project, it told us its membership launch had already been planned but that “the timing aligned with your coverage because it made sense to launch when there was increased traffic to our channels”. It said our story “made it clear we needed sustainable funding to continue operating while being targeted by the media”.

The coverage also caught the attention of crypto speculators unconnected to the Node Project who saw the chance to make a quick profit. The day after we published our story, several Danny Bones-themed coins had appeared on the Solana blockchain, created on pump.fun, a platform that is not authorised in the UK. Two X groups were set up to promote the coins, one with almost 300 members, and some posters citing the media coverage in their calls to buy.

The Node Project also tweeted an address for a crypto wallet, where people could donate to its account. The project was then offered the rights to one of the coins, leading to a wave of posts from users claiming they had donated. An admin of one crypto group posted screenshots of four pending payments totalling more than $1,100, writing: “DANNY this is for you.”

The spike, though, was short-lived. The value of the coins rose and fell within about 24 hours and one of the X groups, since deleted, descended into accusations of scamming. Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, analyst and editorial manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the trajectory is common for this kind of scheme, where groups “use outrage to drive the value of the coin”.

“There’s usually a big burst when there’s media publicity and then it drops off very sharply,” he said. “They mostly lose significant value very fast.”

The Node Project told us it had no involvement with the coins, saying it “did not create them, promote them or encourage anyone to buy into them” and had declined requests to promote them. It said it had shared a wallet address for donations and is “currently developing a NODE coin as a transparent fundraising mechanism”.

Lucrative engagement

As the attention spread, the Node Project put out a new song. On Friday, Danny Bones released YooKay, his most explicitly anti-immigrant track to date. Its lyrics claim the country “hands out benefits to migrants who don’t benefit these islands”, while the video presents an AI-generated fantasy in which Danny Bones leads a violent uprising to occupy Parliament. A disclaimer at the start says the video does not “endorse, encourage or incite violence, criminal damage, public disorder or any unlawful act”.

When we contacted the Node Project, it rejected the characterisation of its content as far right or Islamophobic, saying it “covers immigration, border policy, economic inequality and the state of the country using verified facts and statistics”. It said the concerns it raises “are shared by the majority of the country”.

Whatever the label, the financial incentives behind songs like YooKay and the Node Project’s social media presence are obvious. “With the likes of Danny Bones, the more extreme the content, the more the shares, the more the engagement,” said Matteo Bergamini of the media and political literacy organisation Shout Out UK. “And engagement on certain platforms links directly to money.”

That link could hardly be clearer. Spotify confirmed to us a fortnight ago that Danny Bones was eligible to generate revenue on the platform. And the various developments since we published our story, from the Node Project’s membership drive to the crypto speculators around it, shows how readily this sort of attention can be exploited for profit.