Analysis: Misinformation has created an alternative world for some Americans
There’s a tendency in this heated political climate to simply reject people who are saying false things and to write off conspiracy theorists writ large.
But as the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation — and the fight against it — is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.
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I talked to O’Sullivan about the documentary, in which he has some frank and disarming talks with people about what has shaken their belief in the US. But he paints an alarming picture about the rise of fringe movements in the country.
Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below:
WOLF: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?
O’SULLIVAN: So much of mainstream American politics now is being infected and affected by what is happening on what was once considered the real fringes — fringe platforms, fringe personalities.
And I think really what we want to do in this show is illustrate how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening right now. And it is having a big effect on our democracy.
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it sucks so bad that the internet initially looked like this thing that would enlighten the world and allow for us as a species to make incredible gains in sciences and culture and morality. instead it seemed to do the opposite.
I feel like the Internet has gone through three distinct phases. The first phase was primarily driven by individuals and a small handful of businesses. Content was highly limited, but generally positive. Lots of niche communities formed and most things had a very amateur feel to them, but everything was new and interesting.
The second phase was the rise of big corporations and the almighty ad. This was the first arms race between ad tech and ad blockers and gave us such evils as the pop up and pop under. A lot of the early charm of the internet was lost here. Everything started to become much more polished and commercialized, but we also saw a rapid expansion of content and functionality. This phase was heavily driven by corporations, and most of the early individual content was killed at this time.
The last and current phase is the social media phase. It's kind of a hybrid of the previous two. We have individuals generating most content again, but it's controlled, filtered, channeled, and exploited for commercial gain by the corporations. This has somehow lead to things being worse as corporations discovered that catering to people's worst impulses is the most profitable decision.
You're forgetting the pre-Web internet: 99% students & academics. It was largely awesome. When you did get trolled, it was by someone who could spell and form a cohesive argument.
Yup I was there at the edge of that (about a year before Mosaic released on a Mac).
Aol added usenet in 93 and we got on a lot of college servers, also with FTP, gopher and a little later, Hotline. So much warez and shareware games! I was in 8th grade then, had a 14.4 modem and life was pretty great.
Commander Keen nostalgia intensifies
Many neo-nazis used the BBS system to find each other. The funding model of direct email and such, that is used today, could probably be traced back to the early 1990s BBS forums. Scummy people have a way of finding each other.
The current phase is equivalent to reality tv. Made with people you don’t have to pay much, if all, and run by faceless corporations.
honestly im talking a bit further back pre www when it was basically education institutions.
Gopher!
True story: I made a Gopher implementation that sits on top of Apache. When I first met my wife, this happened to come up in conversation, and they mentioned that being from Minnesota, they used Gopher a lot in school. I thus married the first woman who came along who knew what Gopher was.
I honestly never got the hang of gopher. usually looked for an appropriate alt newsgroup.
Usenet and FTP were how we did it. Then we found Hotline in highschool (we had a Mac and a modem back then), and found some pretty sick servers to grab 3D software and games.
Yeah OP is missing the whole pre-www era. I was on the internet with a modem and a BBS account long before browsers were a thing.
ATH0
I'm not quite old enough to remember that first phase you are talking about, but I'm well old enough to remember the other two, and frankly, during them I don't think the independent niche communities really ever went anywhere. But they are really dying or dead now, and it was discord that killed them.
Because the 1st wave of people on the internet were nerds and geeks. People driven by hope and optimist to make the world a better place and using the internet to do things they were already inclined to do... learn and share. You had to read, and write and things were generally long form interactions. Chat rooms required that you write sentences and paragraphs. It was also largely hosted by universities and other non-profit interests. The philosophy of Open Source and Freesoftware was rampant in the 2000s, and then declined as the big 5 took over the internet.
Now the internet is driven by corporate greed and the exploitation of the LCD's lazy monkey-brain interactions. EVerything now is a blurb, a meme, a click, a reaction emoji. A 8 min youtube video is 'too hard' now for the average internet user.
Youtube is horrible in some respects for creating a false reality. Click on one video and down a rabbit hole you go, your stream gets filled very quickly of similar videos, but sketcher in content.
Made the mistake of going down the flat earth rabbit hole a few years back, watched maybe 5 - 10 before I felt my brain melting and couldn't laugh any more, took months for the suggestions to stop
Never signing in and resetting occasionally is the only way I've found to try to keep from getting funneled into whatever bubble they think I fit in
A youtube video is a terrible way to get your political information. Also, many youtube videos are full of garbage.
Only those seeking enlightenment or open to it will find it anywhere. The internet has done more to pierce echo chambers. Than any other invention of the last 200 years.
The problem is. It was dropped onto a largely unprepared populous. That was born into propaganda, misinformation, and confirmation bias. Without the skills to move beyond it by design. They vault over the enlightenment at their feet. Working hard digging through mountains of shit to find things to confirm their biases.
I agree, if you made the Internet right after the invention of manufacturing of consent, it’s gonna be a tool for it.
The internet has allowed greater collaboration, and the faster spread of information.
It has also allowed the village idiots to find each other and band together...
allowed the village idiots to find each other and band together,,,
You can exploit them more if they are a mob.
I was about to say the same thing applies to AI. But AI is fucked right out of the gate. There's not even a brief window of hope for it being used to better society. Anyone with any awareness on the topic knows these AIs are already corrupted and compromised because they've been using the Internet to train all their LLMs.
Well if you go back to the use of algorithms they did have this massive potential but they all to quickly got involved with advertising and social media and yeah. it was yuck already at that point. But like computer vision and such gave it so much promise.
algorithms could help people. they could, for example, help you find relaly cool obscure stuff on netflix/spotify that you might like. They worked like this for awhile and ti was great!
But that doesn't make money. the algorithm that shoves netflix's latest trash content does, so that is why it shows up in every suggestion an takes up so my screen space. the vast majority of my spotify 'feed' is podcast trash i have never or never ever will listen to, and i can no longer use it to find some obscure band playing weird music like I did 8 years ago.
Have you actually used them? I've been shocked at how well they respond to almost everything I've thrown at them. From my experience, they give accurate medical advice, they demonstrate appropriate emotional intelligence, they are good at coding, they give sound advice, they're good at summarizing, they can write complicated papers on niche topics, the list goes on. I've never encountered something controversial or offensive, nor anything bigoted, or racist, or ignorant, or elitist, etc. LLMs are shockingly robust and, quite frankly, incredible at what they do.
Yes, I've used them. And for some things they are okay (for example, their responses on programming questions can be hit or miss).
But given that there have been active disinformation campaigns and election meddling attempts (with several countries being both the victims and the perpetrators of this), I'm not convinced they will be reliable on some topics. Not least because the companies behind them have been slow to take the topic of information fidelity seriously.
Trash in, trash out
While true, the bigger problem is how many people would rather believe the trash because it gives them someone to be angry at instead of learning empathy for other people.
I was more referring to the unfortunately naive hope that came from the early Internet. I am reminded of this quote by Charles Babbage,
I was also hopeful, but I now realize how silly that was.
It was easy to be hopeful because in the beginning it was fucking magical and then just got better and better until capitalism got involved and sunk their teeth into the veins of love and hope and sucked it dry until its dead decaying husk and then zombified by AI.
Exactly, and early on it was being led by people with radical ideas. Things like Wikipedia shouldn’t exist, but crazy people who believed in humanity and the free exchange of information made stuff like that.
Eventually the internet replaced the commons, but capital sees the commons merely as unclaimed land so they outcompeted it then enshittified it.
The solution is unfortunately we have to make normie friendly options. A home server is that just works and is cheap and easy seems like exactly the sort of shit that could help. Federation may very well be the solution
those people also believed in freedom.
not social control.
more and more and more the internet is become about social control. especially in totalitarian states, but also in the west more and more.
It always starts with the marketeers...
Then we are the garbage bin.
The internet wasn't on the 1%s leash back then. We can't be free, even digitally. To dangerous to allow such feelings in the wage slaves.
Uh.. where did you get that idea from?
Turns out the internet only works like that if you put some effort into your education and maintain a healthy skepticism.
What's really interesting is how much I agree with some people on the far right. We are angry at the conditions our society has created. We are affected by the same inequalities, lack of infrastructure, and there is no safety net in case something happens to us. It just gets insane when we see how different our solutions are.
The problem is that even though we share so many of the same problems with the far right they try to solve those problems by doubling down on them. Need food and basic housing? They make social services harder to get and cut the existing ones. Need medical care? Reject Medicaid expansion and try to get rid of the ACA. No retirement money? Go after social security and make you wait longer to get it.
Why, because someone else might get the money that didn’t “earn it” by some arbitrary metric? Or maybe they have darker skin? Or have a drug problem? Or are homeless? So the right would rather hurt themeselves so long as it hurts the people they don’t like more.
You know I've started to get the impression that the impoverished part of the right-wing electorate has long given up on looking for a solution that could really improve their lives. Instead, they want the government to create a new underclass of people made up of immigrants, leftists and criminals that they can look down on.
Ftfy
They do enjoy punching down, it seems.
Because they have been taught to look in the wrong direction for the causes and solutions. Republican politicians like to cause problems and then blame others for them and use that for their campaigns. Like defunding schools and then yelling about the education system failing.
So this has been the inspiration for my reaching across the aisle approach.
You can’t convince them by calling them idiots. You need to go on their social media and instead of fighting their wrong posts, just hint and gently point them in the class conscience posts.
They are getting there, the issue now is although they do believe power hungry people want to control things. They just think it’s done via committee instead of wealth.
It takes more effort for me to convince a group of people with talking then just buying things out.
If we had unity, we would have strength, they can't have that. The politicians are hell-bent on pushing us apart even though we all likely agree on many things.
Read the Naomi Klein book Doppelganger
I used to get so high and read this ish. Good times!
What you may not know is that this paper, along with the National Enquirer, were the result of the efforts of Gene Pope.
A guy whose job immediately before buying up and transforming the Enquirer was in the CIA's psychological warfare division.
This was around the time the CIA was upset with national coverage of UFOs. Suddenly stories about them were appearing alongside "Elvis lives" or Bat Boy, and no reputable news would touch UFO stories with a 10' pole.
That explains my current mental state.
If the internet has done anything, it's a) been a boon for people studying tribal psychology, and b) put a fork in the information deficit model.
The internet has shown us that conservatives like to be lied to. But that tendency itself predates the internet. Before conservatives said Obama was a Muslim they said that Eisenhower was a secret Communist. Before conservatives said horse medicine cures covid they said Laetrile cures cancer.
Via Google AI, for the unawares such as myself
When people talk about the "fringe", don't forget how far we have drifted.
Not a bad article, but I wish they wouldn't use politically neutral language like fringe or polarisation or even just conspiracy theorist, as if the issues aren't almost exclusively happening on one side of politics. Call a spade a spade already.
If you are concerned with the quality of candidates of Republicans, consider working towards passing electoral reform in your state. Maybe these conservatives aren't happy with the republicans or democrats and would like to vote for some other conservative political party.
Getting rid of First Past The Post voting would allow these people to choose a more moderate conservative, while still counting their vote if their preference didn't win.
Good for the goose, but may not be good for the gander.
speak for yourself, i see so much of it in my former 'leftist' friends. especially the 'woke' ones who think anyone who doesn't have enough BLM stickers is a facist.
least to say when i said BLM signs are slacktivism, they went ape-shit on me. lol
The interview is with a person that made a documentary called MisinfoNation: The Trump Faithful. It said it was airing on CNN tonight, but I don't have cable. It doesn't look like it's available anywhere online. Dammit.
What happened in the US is the exact playbook of Putin in the last 20 years. The road to dictatorship
Misinformation has been around before the written word and while many are pointing the finger at the Internet for making it worse, I am not convinced it has. I mean all bought trickle down economics before the Internet for example.
Trickle down economics, as a theory, has been around well over 100 years, and it's never been believed in by everybody. Hell, a presidential candidate gave a speech against the idea in 1896
You're correct about misinformation having been around forever, but access to and ease to create misinformation is greater than ever before thanks to the Internet.
the internet also lets propagandists and propaganda consumers find each other in speed, volume, and frequency, in a way that unprecedented.
and the sad fact that is many many many people spend most of their waking hours consuming internet content these days. at least, anyone under 40. The only people I know who watch TV or read papers are all over 50. Hell, just finding anyone under 40 who reads a magazine or some other long-format type of information is incredibly rare. Why read The Economist when you can just subscribe to their tiktok feed?
People read magazines and newspapers before the Internet and before that it was town criers and word of mouth that spread misinformation. I really sense that misinformation has really not changed…just how it is consumed has.
I think the major difference is now everyone can get their tailor made brand of misinformation based on their own biases.
For example Cambridge Analytica had about 200 personality profiles that they used for targeted disinformation during the 2016 political campaign. So before people spreading misinformation had one or two stories to try and convince everyone. Now they know just about everything about you and can bombard you with misinformation until they find something that sticks.
It was the same in the past though too. Some audiences would be targeted by this newspaper or that one, others radio, some snuck into their favourite TV drama. Nothing new here just a new medium. We can only change ourselves through education as we are susceptible to misinformation and until that changes, we are are the mercy of whatever medium of the day reaches us.
I wonder, how were town criers paid?
Is a good question. I asked ChatGPT and it said “ Town criers were often paid by the local government or the community they served. Their compensation varied depending on the time period and location. In some cases, town criers received a regular salary, while in others, they might be paid per message delivered. Additionally, they sometimes received extra benefits, such as clothing or housing, as part of their compensation. The job of a town crier was considered important for public communication, especially before the widespread availability of printed media, so communities ensured they were reasonably compensated to keep the information flowing.” Seems like a reasonable answer that other sources seem to corroborate.
Probably paid by the wealthy class and I am sure they would stay on message if they wanted to keep their job.
Right, paid by the local government which was probably some kind of aristocracy.
I wonder if individual business owners could pay for messages like ads in the newspaper. “Buy bread at Baker Joe’s!”
Also I wonder if they were literate at times when most people weren’t. So the message could be written down so they don’t forget it. I’d guess if you were literate you’d have more lucrative job opportunities. So that might make this kind of a decent job?
I've been alive both before and after the internet and it's DRASTICALLY worse now.
I too have be alive before and after the Internet and it just seems like misinformation just moved mediums. Not like newspapers and magazines were not spreading misinformation before. I feel the more we point the finger a the Internet as the cause the more we are not recognizing it has always been with us back to town criers and word of mouth into the deep past. It is always been here and is not going anywhere. How we deal with it is what changes.
Of course the Internet has made it worse. It did so initially by giving a platform to hucksters, fascists and frauds that let them find like minded people that otherwise would not have convalesced around them.
Social media optimized this process, and now algorithms design entire custom made echo chambers that reinforce and amplify the outrageous because it profitable to do so, as rage and violence keep people on the platform, churning though ads.
Youre right that capitalism, the unending profit motive that must increase is the true source of the damage, but the internet has been a powerful engine in its conquest of truth for profit.
I really cannot agree as misinformation was prevalent in newspapers and magazines before the Internet and before that you better believe the town crier was spreading the word of those in power too, many of the same people you described. Echo chambers in person versus online are still just echo chambers.
The difference is the town crier could only speak to everyone near enough to hear. Now he can speak to anyone around the world with an Internet connection. And there are millions of town criers.
There is no evidence that it is worse than past communication mediums unless you have a link to a paper that shows this. The real point I am making is that misinformation has been something humans have been susceptible to since before recorded time regardless of the medium. Many are focusing on the Internet as the issue, but the focus should be on us…the people as misinformation is nothing new. Time we really address it, starting with education.
You have forgotten the feedback and psychological magnification of technology. Written word was just put out there. Focus groups became more prominent with TV ads. The internet provided a whole new set of tools like algorithms and data analysis to study and more effectively sway people's thinking. Putin has developed a whole new type of hybrid warfare using cyber technology.
There really is no evidence that the current mediums of misinformation are any worse than previous mediums. It has been an issue for a long time and while I agree that algorithms and such can amply, previous mediums has their amplifiers too, but we never really acknowledged. There is however lots of evidence that humans are susceptible to misinformation so while we cannot control misinformation, we can better educate on how to manage better.
Nope. The media just wanted you to think that. They constantly showed archconservative politicians peddling the nonsense and never showed anybody questioning it. Then the internet came along and most people said "of course it doesn't work very well lol". And suddenly everybody realized that most people never believed it.
All? Hardly. They called it 'voodoo economics' back in the 80s for a reason.
"Some"?
Yup, some. Interact with the public on a regular basis and you'll see that most people aren't crazy, but some certainly are.
I do interact with the public, it's literally my job. That said it's not just "some". How many Trump cultists are there again? Last I checked they are enough to tie Biden in the polls almost. Not really "some".
What do you think some means?
right? i live in a the most left leaning state in the country practically, and I still see Trump stuff every single day when I leave the house. They are everywhere. 33% of state residents voted for him. That isn't some. that's 1/3 people.
Some?
I'd argue it's most. Granted, people's level of delusion varies, but esp among the younger kids who are tik-tok addicts, there is a marked decline in their ability to realize there is a world outside of their experience and what they are being told on tik-tok.
What baffles me is the intolerance of disagreement. When I was in college the main thing I learned was the limits of what I know, how much I don't know, and to tolerate others POV and to investigate the facts and see beyond biased narratives and recognize those biases...
Today it seems all people learn is 'i am right, because i feel i am right, and nobody can tell me otherwise'. and people are more and more extreme in their views and more willing to dehumanize others for the smallest of disagreements. IRL and on the internet.
My views are liberal, but I'm open to conservative ideas. This was not controversial in the 2000s, and most of the early 2010s, but post Trump/tiktok, even my own former friends on the left have whole-heartedly adopted the 'I am a victim and my feelings are all that matters' mentality, and just live in these social media hug boxes where every little think they do is a HUGE achievement, and any mistake they make is never their fault. Meanwhile, they bitch and bitch about how unfair and unhappy their lives are if only rich white guys would just give them their money it would all be better. They have zero interest in building anything inclusive or meaningful in their communities, unless you define community as 'only people who look, speak, and think exactly like I do'. Everything is a catchphrase, and no subtling is allowed. 'ACAB'... well I have family who are cops.... sorry if I'm not on board with the mentality that ACAB, but I 100% recognize the need for police reform... but that viewpoint is 'toxic' now. You can't recognize cops as people.
It's truly dark. I've also seen it firsthand with people i've know for several years now, watching them slowly become angry nutbags whose joy in life is enforcing social confomrity into whatever fiefdom they are a part of. And I am just sort of peacing out now, because I no longer want to be involved in communities and groups full of narcissistic twits and angry miserable people whose only joy in life is shitting on others who are different than them.
Somebody that fits this description (excluding ACAB) won the Presidency. Self promoting and selfish desires. The "greed is good" era has continued pushing a selfish culture over community driven goals. This is especially true in the large media organizations and social media. Media makes decisions for profits and selfish goals over community engagement, education, and cohesiveness.
But, there are many counter examples in the actual community. The community driven people just make less noise online. I volunteer with college kids and the generosity and desire for community building is really impressive. I would not find this online but in real life it is very evident. But no one makes money selling things to people who care about others more than themselves. So advertising and social media cater to the selfish side of people so that is what we see more often.
Yeah. Sadly any community org that started out great I have been a part of always lets money get in the way... and then it all becomes about 'image' and social conformity and such.
I recently left a community garden group I helped build because they won some grant and decided they needed to get more grants and more money and the best way to do that was to become a group that 'helps marginalized peoples' and hence... if you are white you should leave because you aren't helping our 'brand'. They changed all the photos on the social media/website to women and minorities, despite the fact 70% of the people doing the actual work were white male folks... but since that doesn't fit the 'brand' they need to get more money... it's just a self-defeating process and what was a inclusive group is now exclusive. Despite the flat irony that the racial makeup of our group was spot on with the that of the city (70% white) it's not decided that no, your skin color is what matters.
Greed ruins everything.
Helping marginalized peoples? Dear god, what horrors will they think of next?
England also thought they were 'helping' marginalized people when they colonized Africa/India.
You're right, a garden group helping marginalized people is no different from Europeans colonizing Africa. Why didn't I see it that way before?
Because you don't pay attention to how social power and identity are used as weapons today, just as it was during colonialism.
People haven't changed very much, we are no more 'enlightened' today than we were 400 years ago. We're just have a lot more words to pretend we are superior.
It's ACAB not ACAP (all cops are pigs). ACAB doesn't dehumanize police, it is a statement that says the institution itself is rotten and makes bastards out of well intending people. Some people do dehumanize police, and often when they do, they point to the inhumane acts of the police force at large.
right, calling people pigs and bastards isn't dehumanizing... lol
They said the acronym isn't pigs so ACAB doesn't dehumanize, a bastard is a type of human
What exactly do you think a bastard is?
Not at all, you see. They are the enemy, right? Blanket statements are always correct then. Ez pz.
Just got to love how you get downvoted. Essentially exactly doing what you complain about.