Joseph Mercola Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Ty and Charlene Bollinger Sherri Tenpenny Rizza Islam Rashid Buttar Erin Elizabeth Sayer Ji Kelly Brogan Christiane Northrup Ben Tapper Kevin Jenkins Source:...
Kinda weird to see him in that list. Not much due to his family, but mostly his environmental activism. This is not a guy that I would guess was an anti-vaxxer.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
Kinda weird to see him in that list. Not much due to his family, but mostly his environmental activism. This is not a guy that I would guess was an anti-vaxxer.
At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the US to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
He's an old-school anti-vaxer. According to Wikipedia that goes back at least to 2005. Before anti-vaxism became a Republican thing, it was more of an alternative medicine thing, associated with...
He's an old-school anti-vaxer. According to Wikipedia that goes back at least to 2005. Before anti-vaxism became a Republican thing, it was more of an alternative medicine thing, associated with chiropractors in particular.
I remember when I was in college some of my teammates were bio majors and taking an immunology course together and I'd listen to most of them argue with this one girl who was also bio major on the...
associated with chiropractors in particular.
I remember when I was in college some of my teammates were bio majors and taking an immunology course together and I'd listen to most of them argue with this one girl who was also bio major on the team and anti-vaxx. It was wild because she'd say something they'd be like "YOU'RE IN A CLASS WITH ME WHERE WE READ THE STUDIES EXPLAINING WHY WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS WRONG, AND READ THE STUDIES YOUR CITING TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE FLAWED." Everyone went on to medical school minus the one anti-vaxx girl who went on to become a chiropractor. Didn't make any sense to me at the time, so I guess its at least interesting to know that her attitude is a trend.
Remember this when people tell you our current age of misinformation is the inevitable outcome of social media enabling global communication. This is not natural, it is being pushed by a...
Remember this when people tell you our current age of misinformation is the inevitable outcome of social media enabling global communication. This is not natural, it is being pushed by a relatively small number of people, and the online platforms that could be preventing this are standing by because conspiracy movements are good for engagement metrics.
I think I would agree that content platforms and engagement metrics definitely drove the rise of these types of groups but I'm worried they are so large now they are self-sustaining. That is, even...
I think I would agree that content platforms and engagement metrics definitely drove the rise of these types of groups but I'm worried they are so large now they are self-sustaining. That is, even we could somehow reset the web to somewhere in the mid 2000s enough people are now primed with garbage that we'd end up somewhere similar.
According to a French sociologist, the issue is the deregularization of the information market meeting our cognitive biases. Before internet journalists and experts were gate keeping the access to...
According to a French sociologist, the issue is the deregularization of the information market meeting our cognitive biases. Before internet journalists and experts were gate keeping the access to the information market, conspiracy theories existed but they were spreading through word of mouth which is slow and inefficient. Now that they can spread freely, they meet their market, and the demand is there ; as humans we prefer having explanations over no explanation (we hate not knowing), we prefer simple explanations over complicated ones (we just don't remember those much), we love stories, bad guys, we pay attention to bad news & conflict more, etc. Stories that match all these cognitive biais spread and thrive, and under intense competition every information producer has to adapt if they want to survive.
Point is you could "unprime" everybody it would eventually come back all the same. We somehow need tot regulate the information market again.
Both "unpriming" or regulating information marketplaces alone I don't think would solve the issue. You're either stuck with the system that produces bad outputs, or stuck with the bad outputs that...
Both "unpriming" or regulating information marketplaces alone I don't think would solve the issue. You're either stuck with the system that produces bad outputs, or stuck with the bad outputs that in all probability even when fed back through a "good" system also produce bad outputs. Together it might be effective but I don't think "unpriming" is very realistic anyways.
I agree that simple explanations and negative stories outperform complex ideas and positive stories in an ideas marketplace but I think it's deeper than that. Qanon and similar conspiracy groups provide a method to distill a very complex world into a very simple one, explain away personal failings as the actions of others, promise salvation to their in groups, and provide a vehicle to reject introspection required by the world's rising complexity. There is no reason to think or care about climate change, social and economic justice, possibility of nuclear war, and the myriad of other failure cases for the human species if you think the world is organized and controlled by a shadowy cabal of evil figures and there is a saviour figure waiting in the wings to assume control of the world for "good".
Qanon has replaced religion for many people, and it appears it is in the process of being spliced into the doctrine in many evangelical churches. Where they themselves are seeing less and less participation, Qanon has far broader appeal and promises a church resurgent. Regulation of information sharing may slow its growth, but if Qanon succeeds in taking root in evangelicalism I think it's here to stay.
True that the religious dimension is something else, and given how hard it is to deconvert people it's gonna stay for long, although it might mutate into something else at some point.
True that the religious dimension is something else, and given how hard it is to deconvert people it's gonna stay for long, although it might mutate into something else at some point.
Maybe we're going to end up at religious tolerance for these new "religions?" There are established religions with harmful beliefs too. (Consider Jehovah's Witnesses on blood transfusion....
Maybe we're going to end up at religious tolerance for these new "religions?" There are established religions with harmful beliefs too. (Consider Jehovah's Witnesses on blood transfusion. Apparently they also opposed vaccinations until 1952.)
Or maybe religious tolerance gets a bad name like free speech did and we go back to 200 year religious wars.
I think it's driven by content recommendations, so it'd die down until we get back up to about 2015 internet. Platforms have enough data on users to effectively funnel them into whatever...
I think it's driven by content recommendations, so it'd die down until we get back up to about 2015 internet. Platforms have enough data on users to effectively funnel them into whatever environment makes them as obsessed as possible.
I don't know if there's data on this, but I don't think it would last without the algorithms leading people down rabbit holes. The example I would point to is how every large online conspiracy seems to rise and fall over the course of a few years when bored members begin to funnel into a new conspiracy. The flat earth movement shifted towards QAnon en masse when engagement started to lag. But what if they had to find new conspiracies without an algorithm concentrating them in one place? Fragmenting them into different niche conspiracies that don't coordinate and each lack the numbers to make the conspiracy a self-contained social circle for members to immerse themselves in.
It's hard to truly make sense of this but I'm having a theory that it might be even simpler than this: Group size. Note that I can't estimate the exact numbers and mechanics of this but roughly,...
It's hard to truly make sense of this but I'm having a theory that it might be even simpler than this: Group size. Note that I can't estimate the exact numbers and mechanics of this but roughly, there's just nothing "social" about "social media" if you get to broadcast your opinions to like 10 million+ people. There is this instinct to see social media as an impossibly complex web of millions of people connected to each other but research like this shows that there definitely is a start, a concentration of power. Once you reach a certain number, you're basically doing marketing, mass entertainment or politics, you're no longer "just posting your thoughts". If we'd just limit the amount of followers for individuals to a reasonable number (again: no idea what that is! 1000? 100,000?) and make everything beyond that a paid service with standards enforced as it's basically like running a TV channel, maybe that could do the trick.
If we'd just limit the amount of followers for individuals to a reasonable number (again: no idea what that is! 1000? 100,000?) and make everything beyond that a paid service with standards enforced as it's basically like running a TV channel, maybe that could do the trick.
What's weird to me is that this article is on sky.com, a former Murdoch property, fountain of engagement-over-truth, and the equivalent of Fox News in the parts of the world that don't watch Fox News
What's weird to me is that this article is on sky.com, a former Murdoch property, fountain of engagement-over-truth, and the equivalent of Fox News in the parts of the world that don't watch Fox News
Yeah, I couldn't find a better article/better site and if I didn't have the source link above I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Found it odd they didn't bother to name names in the article.
Yeah, I couldn't find a better article/better site and if I didn't have the source link above I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Found it odd they didn't bother to name names in the article.
Source: https://www.counterhate.com/disinformationdozen
Kinda weird to see him in that list. Not much due to his family, but mostly his environmental activism. This is not a guy that I would guess was an anti-vaxxer.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invokes Nazi Germany in offensive anti-vaccine speech
CNN – 24th January 2022
He's an old-school anti-vaxer. According to Wikipedia that goes back at least to 2005. Before anti-vaxism became a Republican thing, it was more of an alternative medicine thing, associated with chiropractors in particular.
I remember when I was in college some of my teammates were bio majors and taking an immunology course together and I'd listen to most of them argue with this one girl who was also bio major on the team and anti-vaxx. It was wild because she'd say something they'd be like "YOU'RE IN A CLASS WITH ME WHERE WE READ THE STUDIES EXPLAINING WHY WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS WRONG, AND READ THE STUDIES YOUR CITING TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY ARE FLAWED." Everyone went on to medical school minus the one anti-vaxx girl who went on to become a chiropractor. Didn't make any sense to me at the time, so I guess its at least interesting to know that her attitude is a trend.
Remember this when people tell you our current age of misinformation is the inevitable outcome of social media enabling global communication. This is not natural, it is being pushed by a relatively small number of people, and the online platforms that could be preventing this are standing by because conspiracy movements are good for engagement metrics.
I think I would agree that content platforms and engagement metrics definitely drove the rise of these types of groups but I'm worried they are so large now they are self-sustaining. That is, even we could somehow reset the web to somewhere in the mid 2000s enough people are now primed with garbage that we'd end up somewhere similar.
According to a French sociologist, the issue is the deregularization of the information market meeting our cognitive biases. Before internet journalists and experts were gate keeping the access to the information market, conspiracy theories existed but they were spreading through word of mouth which is slow and inefficient. Now that they can spread freely, they meet their market, and the demand is there ; as humans we prefer having explanations over no explanation (we hate not knowing), we prefer simple explanations over complicated ones (we just don't remember those much), we love stories, bad guys, we pay attention to bad news & conflict more, etc. Stories that match all these cognitive biais spread and thrive, and under intense competition every information producer has to adapt if they want to survive.
Point is you could "unprime" everybody it would eventually come back all the same. We somehow need tot regulate the information market again.
Both "unpriming" or regulating information marketplaces alone I don't think would solve the issue. You're either stuck with the system that produces bad outputs, or stuck with the bad outputs that in all probability even when fed back through a "good" system also produce bad outputs. Together it might be effective but I don't think "unpriming" is very realistic anyways.
I agree that simple explanations and negative stories outperform complex ideas and positive stories in an ideas marketplace but I think it's deeper than that. Qanon and similar conspiracy groups provide a method to distill a very complex world into a very simple one, explain away personal failings as the actions of others, promise salvation to their in groups, and provide a vehicle to reject introspection required by the world's rising complexity. There is no reason to think or care about climate change, social and economic justice, possibility of nuclear war, and the myriad of other failure cases for the human species if you think the world is organized and controlled by a shadowy cabal of evil figures and there is a saviour figure waiting in the wings to assume control of the world for "good".
Qanon has replaced religion for many people, and it appears it is in the process of being spliced into the doctrine in many evangelical churches. Where they themselves are seeing less and less participation, Qanon has far broader appeal and promises a church resurgent. Regulation of information sharing may slow its growth, but if Qanon succeeds in taking root in evangelicalism I think it's here to stay.
True that the religious dimension is something else, and given how hard it is to deconvert people it's gonna stay for long, although it might mutate into something else at some point.
Maybe we're going to end up at religious tolerance for these new "religions?" There are established religions with harmful beliefs too. (Consider Jehovah's Witnesses on blood transfusion. Apparently they also opposed vaccinations until 1952.)
Or maybe religious tolerance gets a bad name like free speech did and we go back to 200 year religious wars.
I think it's driven by content recommendations, so it'd die down until we get back up to about 2015 internet. Platforms have enough data on users to effectively funnel them into whatever environment makes them as obsessed as possible.
I don't know if there's data on this, but I don't think it would last without the algorithms leading people down rabbit holes. The example I would point to is how every large online conspiracy seems to rise and fall over the course of a few years when bored members begin to funnel into a new conspiracy. The flat earth movement shifted towards QAnon en masse when engagement started to lag. But what if they had to find new conspiracies without an algorithm concentrating them in one place? Fragmenting them into different niche conspiracies that don't coordinate and each lack the numbers to make the conspiracy a self-contained social circle for members to immerse themselves in.
It's hard to truly make sense of this but I'm having a theory that it might be even simpler than this: Group size. Note that I can't estimate the exact numbers and mechanics of this but roughly, there's just nothing "social" about "social media" if you get to broadcast your opinions to like 10 million+ people. There is this instinct to see social media as an impossibly complex web of millions of people connected to each other but research like this shows that there definitely is a start, a concentration of power. Once you reach a certain number, you're basically doing marketing, mass entertainment or politics, you're no longer "just posting your thoughts". If we'd just limit the amount of followers for individuals to a reasonable number (again: no idea what that is! 1000? 100,000?) and make everything beyond that a paid service with standards enforced as it's basically like running a TV channel, maybe that could do the trick.
Very interesting idea.
What's weird to me is that this article is on sky.com, a former Murdoch property, fountain of engagement-over-truth, and the equivalent of Fox News in the parts of the world that don't watch Fox News
Yeah, I couldn't find a better article/better site and if I didn't have the source link above I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Found it odd they didn't bother to name names in the article.
This is an old story, strange that it was just now picked up by them, but here are some other sources:
New York Times
NPR
Original Source: CCHE, PDF