Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Fake News and the Parkland Massacre

Fake news was flowing fast and furious shortly after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. One of the first fake things to happen was the viral distribution of a photo identifying a young man as the shooter who actually was not the shooter. I don’t even understand how someone could be mean enough to put something like that into circulation, but that’s the virtual world we now inhabit.

Whenever there’s a significant tragedy now, opportunists mobilize very quickly to capitalize on it. Within hours of the shootings, people were setting up fake Go Fund Me victim pages. Here’s a little clue about this kind of scam. Right after something terrible happens, the first thing a normal victim does is something other than setting up a Go Fund Me page. In the wake of a horrible incident, the normal person will be recuperating, settling down, planning a funeral, etc.
Then came the stories about the students who were speaking out about gun violence.
How the internet’s conspiracy theorists turned Parkland students into ‘crisis actors’ NBC News
“The speed with which these groundless claims spread points to a troubling digital ecosystem in the era of fake news. In this shadow media network, unfounded information shows up on dubious sites, churns through the news aggregation site Reddit, and works its way into Facebook feeds — and to the mainstream media.”
The top trending video on YouTube was a false conspiracy that a survivor of the Florida school shooting was an actor. CNBC
”Facebook and Google searches for ‘crisis actor’ or the student's name, ‘David Hogg,’ return a mix of links: Some legitimate news sources citing Hogg's denial of the claim, and some spreading the false report.”
YouTube’s Fake News Problem Isn’t Going Away. New Republic
“It’s become an inevitability in the social media era. Whenever a massacre occurs, a flood of fake news follows. The narrative is predictable, even if the details are often convoluted.”
The following piece is informative about how some fake news works.
Opinion: Parkland shows power of ‘fake news’ Atlanta Journal Constitution
“The desired narrative informs what becomes “fact” more than truthful reporting, so actual fact goes by the wayside. Liberals wanted to demonstrate how bad gun violence is, and to let others know that if you opposed their remedy, you too had blood on your hands. Someone eventually checked the numbers.”
Here’s one more very interesting piece about the social engineering associated with social media.

Former Facebook exec says “you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed.”
“The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works.” Chamath Palihapitiyah

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