Abstract: Artificial identities or information sources are created and used for—among other things—the purpose of manipulating the output of information retrieval, recommendation systems, or any information gathering and classifying technique based on relationships between information sources. Fictitious information sources or information designed to be recognized as untrustworthy by an information trust ranking system are created. By linking otherwise trustworthy information sources to fictitious information or information, they also appear less trustworthy. Target information or information sources are made to rank much lower in the output of systems designed to prioritize trustworthy information sources. Other applications include creating information or associations to make targeted information or information sources rank higher and reliable by information retrieval or recommendation systems.