This emerging hot take that misinformation was just some academic panic is mind-numbingly bad and reminiscent of attempts to frame climate science, etc… as hysteria. www.politico.eu/article/nobo... - ThreadSky

jbakcoleman.bsky.social • 86 days ago

This emerging hot take that misinformation was just some academic panic is mind-numbingly bad and reminiscent of attempts to frame climate science, etc… as hysteria.

https://www.politico.eu/article/nobody-tricked-vote-donald-trump-disinformation-panic-over/

Comments

davidcarroll.org•86 days ago

I knew Salmon would be the main academic quote in the piece as soon as I read the headline. Sure enough.

emptywheel.bsky.social•86 days ago

It would be really helpful to put together a who's who on who is cited there. Bc it's a classic case of expertise laundering, no?

newyorknp.bsky.social•82 days ago

So an article of misinformation to discuss that there isn’t misinformation? This isn’t simply an academic theoretical issue. This is a reality based active societal danger that is affecting every single person in this world.

vadkakukk.bsky.social•86 days ago

The article itself is a form of meta-misinformation.

You'd think the "lies never do any harm but, even if they did, having a massive worldwide network to spread them isn't anything to worry about" argument could be countered by

*the entirety of human history*

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

It’s almost like we have ample examples of where misleading beliefs caused harm.

vadkakukk.bsky.social•85 days ago

It's terrifying to consider "If you still remember someone's words by tomorrow then they have physically altered your brain" and then see how a torrent of misinformation through a society can change behaviour.

wndlb.bsky.social•86 days ago

The headline quote is also correct. Like a kayak well out from the shore, they were getting nudges that they weren't even perceiving. But no one 3-card-monte'd them; they chose to put on the Rogan podcast...

makeitstop29.bsky.social•84 days ago

So the author accidentally wants to confirm that millions of people are just stupid, willfully ignorant, uneducated, hateful, and immature, I guess. Politico is trash.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

Politics are and have been rife with propaganda, lies, etc… and to say disinformation impacts elections is kind of “H20 is wet.” Conflating that with a causal question of some counter factual where Russia, click farms, etc didn’t spool up 2016 efforts is absurd.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

You get papers like this cited as evidence, which (at best) measure the marginal impact of direct exposure and assert is it the total impact.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

Which would be fine if they were studying something like effects of alcohol consumption but information flows and mutates through social systems. By the same logic we’d be forced to conclude that direct exposure to wildlife doesn’t cause disease.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

This doesn’t account for amplification, narratives moving from Russian disinformation campaigns to domestic sources, etc… and it surely doesn’t account for higher order effects on trust and Overton window widening.

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

Nor things like this, where you have Russian money paying domestic influencers.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence

jbakcoleman.bsky.social•86 days ago

Even if we set that aside, it’s just absurd to hang the narrative of whether misleading or false information causes harm on our ability to measure a specific counterfactual about one countries covert information operations on another’s election.

jim.chat•84 days ago

Saying it’s not there is like the proverbial boiling frog saying the water temperature is fine.

Here was my boiling hot take in November. Would love to know if you agree with the basic assertion Joe? https://read.ultraprocessed.news/p/how-to-win-an-election

jim.chat•84 days ago

📌

jim.chat•84 days ago

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

andre-sobolewski.bsky.social•82 days ago

What troubles me is that people divide themselves into sects on social media, so that Truth to one sect is Fantasy to another.

Reality dissolves in the world of social media, including this one.

anaclsanti.bsky.social•82 days ago

This article sounds exactly like...disinformation (a deliberate ploy to misinform people). F*ck all such propagandists. They've contributed to the downfall of American democracy in so many ways.

detroitwigga.bsky.social•83 days ago

The reason they lost is because the party no longer cares about the working class. Blue collar wiggers like me went Trump this time.

zedaesquerda.bsky.social•83 days ago

Politicoeu has at least since before the last Euro-Parl election been more interested in promoting the far-right agenda than doing actual reporting from the eurobubble.

alwaysthinkhow.bsky.social•82 days ago

Politico was bought by a far Right German who now controls their narrative.

annefrommtka.bsky.social•85 days ago

They’re using Zuckerberg, the master of controlling dis/misinformation, as their source for the conclusion that misinformation isn’t a problem???

makeitstop29.bsky.social•84 days ago

Yeah, just read Broken Code and Zuck twisted all the evidence in his favor against the advice and research results of his own team tasked with addressing it.

p4ndora.bsky.social•82 days ago

All while the main disinformation was targeted against potential Dem voters. The numbers are clear.

kristinalerman.bsky.social•85 days ago

I agree that the moral panic about misinfo was driven by fears “this time, it’s different”. I do believe it is different, just not the way people think. Social media takes propaganda (a better term than “misinfo”) to the next level by manipulating our emotions.

https://today.usc.edu/why-truth-is-no-match-for-misinformation-qa-with-kristina-lerman/

ronduplantis.bsky.social•80 days ago

Concentration of power means politicians must lie.
To grab control of power.
We flippantly called it political spin.
And ACCEPTED IT!
That was sent into the stratosphere by an on-the-spot provable liar like Trump.
And of course, those lies slide into social media.
It all starts with this …1/

ronduplantis.bsky.social•80 days ago

2/ … two-choice, unacceptable to most of us 👇(dark purple), party control of power system the founders warned us against.
We must fix this nightmare … at its core by reestablishing ATOMIZED power, which forces collaboration on individual issues. http://www.realindependent.com

tspampatti.bsky.social•84 days ago

I saw this, ignored, then went back to read it to openly evaluate the criticism to the field, and... Wow, "mind-numbingly bad" really describes this condescending article very well. Wth

certificates.bsky.social•82 days ago

mainstream political discourse seems unable rise above the level of "if disinformation is not the sole or primary decider of a US presidential election, then it doesn't matter at all and talk of it was 'panic'." in a broader sense, this approach to the world is driven by falling for disinformation.

timc.bsky.social•86 days ago

Ugh, what clickbait. The argument seems to boil down to Americans aren't gullible, we're just stupid.

markyd119.bsky.social•82 days ago

Anyone who thinks RW disinformation is a confection or isn't effective, read this.

The British RW establishment got together to influence the public, on the very eve of a GE, and do all it can to prevent a socialist government from taking power in the 1920s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinoviev_letter#:~:text=It%20stated%20that%20the%20normalisation,extend%20throughout%20the%20British%20Empire.

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