SOCIAL MEDIA PANDEMIC INFECTS VOTERS
Two pandemics are currently raging throughout the world, one due to COVID-19 and the other spread by social media.
Both are able to corrupt normal immune systems and spread exponentially. COVID-19 destroys lives and livelihoods, while social media shreds reputations and undermines democracies.
There is no vaccine in development against the negative implications of social media — such as fraud, conspiracy theories and lies — as the world is about to witness as the United States election looks set to become its biggest casualty ever.
Governments do virtually nothing to regulate the internet and attempts by social media companies to curate content — as newspapers do — have been feeble and, when attempted, have evoked outrage from both the right and the left.
Fraudsters, manipulators and armies of propaganda bots prowl Facebook, Twitter and junk websites without constraint. To blame are social media companies that have created immoral business models based on allowing anyone to post anything and reselling private user data so we can be targeted with rifle accuracy for optimal impact.
The internet has been weaponized and is used to peddle everything from phoney products to terrorism, libel and insane conspiracy theories. Social media has become host to infectious parasites that weaken society, the economy and the body politic.
Social media hoisted U.S. President Donald Trump into the most powerful position on the planet by allowing him to issue tens of thousands of unchecked, hateful and incendiary tweets that have moved markets and polls, and have trafficked in conspiracy theories about his rivals.
It has taken four years for Twitter and Facebook to factcheck or remove some of the more egregious posts made by him and others.
Social media is also behind the pathology of QAnon, a cult that has grown from an anonymous message posted on a racist bulletin board called 4chan in 2017.
It now claims tens of thousands of believers, has fielded 25 congressional candidates, has become a household name and an issue in the presidential election, despite its crackpot theory that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities rape and eat children and intend to subvert the constitution.
They also believe that President Trump is a messiah.
But the greatest threat from social media is that it undermines the social order: All official narratives are untrue, all news is fake and all authority is suspect. It certainly doesn't help that this has been bolstered by a president who pre-emptively declared that the upcoming election will be rigged and that public health authorities are wrong because 85 per cent of people who wear masks will get COVID.
And Trump's supporters are escalating the information war by organizing a social media army.
“A sizable online network built around the president is poised to amplify any claims from Trump about a rigged election, adding reach and enthusiasm that could lend a veneer of legitimacy to otherwise evidence-free allegations,” according to a story from NBC News.
For example, researchers connected 300 million tweets about voting and ballot problems to old local news articles describing a few incidents of improperly discarded mail.
These were then exaggerated by right-wing news websites, amplified by Twitter influencers and extrapolated by the White House, and Republican spokesmen, as proof of massive voter fraud.
“The narrative is priming the base, and the base is feeding the narrative,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor with the University of Washington and a non-partisan researcher into campaign social media activity.
“We're experiencing an acceleration in disinformation.
“And I don't think we're even just looking at election day, but possibly for days and even weeks after, depending on how things go.”
In a recent interview, Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and a disinformation expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that foreign meddling is no longer needed.
“Russia doesn't have to make fake news. They just repeat, you know, what conspiracies are coming out of the White House and the administration.”
Without tough regulations that outlaw online hate, racism and libel, nothing can halt the social media scourge.
Russia doesn't have to make fake news. They just repeat ... what conspiracies are coming out of the White House.