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Medicine

In Fast-Moving Pandemic, Sources of Falsehoods Spread by Text, Email, WhatsApp and TikTok Elude Authorities (washingtonpost.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Misleading text messages claiming that President Trump was going to announce a national quarantine buzzed into cellphones across the country over the weekend, underscoring how rapidly false claims are spreading -- and how often it is happening beyond the familiar misinformation vehicles of Facebook and Twitter. From a report: The false texts spread so widely that on Sunday night the White House's National Security Council, fearing the texts were an attempt to spook the stock market as it opened Monday, decided to directly debunk the misleading claims in a Twitter post: "Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown." But by then the messages already had spread widely, as had similar ones both in the United States and Europe in recent days. Text messages, encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and some social media platforms have carried similarly alarming misinformation, much of it with the apparent goal of spurring people to overrun stores to buy basic items ahead of a new wave of government restrictions.

The one claiming that Trump was going to impose a national quarantine included the advice: "Stock up on whatever you guys need to make sure you have a two week supply of everything. Please forward to your network." In fact, authorities have warned against aggressive buying that could disrupt supply chains and fuel panic. Trump addressed the misleading text messages at an afternoon news conference Monday, saying, "It could be that you have some foreign groups that are playing games." On the possibility of a national quarantine, Trump said: "We haven't determined to do that at all. ... Hopefully we won't have to."
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In Fast-Moving Pandemic, Sources of Falsehoods Spread by Text, Email, WhatsApp and TikTok Elude Authorities More

In Fast-Moving Pandemic, Sources of Falsehoods Spread by Text, Email, WhatsApp and TikTok Elude Authorities

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  • is it any wonder nobody outside of his cult believes him?

  • It is September, after all. (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @01:33PM (#59841240)

    And it always will be. Eternally.

    Once we let the herds of passive-thinking livestock onto the Internet, it was game over. I could have told you that, more than twenty years ago.

    They think the Internet is like the offine world. That it needs rules, and censorsh...moderation, and codes of cuntduct, and that what you say and do will vanish and that information behaves just like a chair, that you can buy and own and steal and rent and give back.
    And that people will be honest and nice, as they have to face you otherwise. lol

    They do not get that information space has different rules. It can be infinitely split, and you will not run out of it. Don't like somebody? Make your own room! No oppression/censorhip needed.
    It is permanent. Once posted, it will never forget. Ever.
    It only knows reading and writing. And hence copying and overwriting. And always lossless and at practically no cost. So information is infinitely abundant.
    So any control over it, which is what ownership is, is purely delusional.
    And since everybody can be anonymous, there are no consequences, and everyboy becomes a lying psychopath... or multiple (sock puppets), or multiple become one (account/IP sharing).

    And as a result, their trusting offine mindset becomes a liability, and an automatic avalanche, a circle-jerk bandwagon in a filter bubble, rolling towards the dogpile of the latest scandal-meme.

    • Once we let the herds of passive-thinking livestock onto the Internet

      it needs rules, and censorsh...moderation

      You came to the conclusion, but you sure did dance around it a lot. And then lost track of it.

  • To paraphrase the late sir Terry Pratchett (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chthon ( 580889 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @01:34PM (#59841246) Journal

    A lie runs around the world while truth is still looking for its boots

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by starless ( 60879 )

      A lie runs around the world while truth is still looking for its boots

      That's usually attributed to Mark Twain.
      But in googling to double check before I posted, I see that it (probably) originates from Jonathan Swift!
      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]

  • And CureVac... yesterday.

    Pot, Kettle.

  • Impossible to stop (Score:3)

    by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @01:40PM (#59841274) Homepage

    It's not possible to stamp out every source of false information. Governments have tried since the dawn of time and failed. It's a problem rooted in human nature, so good luck eliminating it. All you can do is make sure accurate true information is out there. And one of the first priorities needs to be that the information you want spread has to not conflict with reality. If you try to claim a disease isn't spreading when all around them people can see new cases popping up, they aren't going to believe your information. If you try to claim it's not a problem when all around them people can see businesses shutting down to keep it from spreading, they're not going to believe you. If you keep putting forward contradictory statements, they're not going to believe you.

    • I absolutely agree with the you, except the sad truth is that the public cannot handle the truth. For example, any politician who might even suggest that even some deaths are inevitable and/or unavoidable will be crucified in social media (and in the next election) as "heartless" and "not caring". This lead the government to sugar-coat the news, telling the people what they want to hear, which at some point ends up conflicting with reality, at which point people stop believing the source (government), creat

  • A certain percentage of people are just easily predisposed to believe conspiracies and fake news. A million clue-sticks won't fix them.

    • A certain percentage of people are just easily predisposed to believe conspiracies and fake news.

      In the U.S. that's about 46.1% [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Many voters viewed T as an experiment: let's see what happens, shake up the status quo and boot dead wood.

        That's not necessarily irrational, although giving somebody who tweets like a spoiled 9 year old girl access to The Button certainly should have signaled a yellow alert in the back of their minds.

        • ... who tweets like a spoiled 9 year old girl ...

          And has to be treated like a 4-year-old: Trump doctor hid cauliflower in mashed potatoes to improve diet [thehill.com]

          President Trump’s former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes in an attempt to improve the president’s diet.

          Former White House physician Ronny Jackson told The New York Times that he regretted leaving his position before he could implement the diet and exercise regimen planned for Trump.

          “The exercise stuff never took off as much as I wanted it to,” he said. “But we were working on his diet. We were making the ice cream less accessible, we were putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes.”

      • I don't understand USA politics. Not even half of the people voted for him and yet he was elected anyway. When I was in school you had to have 60% or more on your tests otherwise you failed.

        • I don't understand USA politics. Not even half of the people voted for him and yet he was elected anyway.

          Read up on the Electoral College [wikipedia.org], they actually elect the President and Trump won more electoral votes. Many (most?) states are "winner takes all" but some are now considering switching to proportional allocation -- and requiring their electoral college representatives to vote accordingly -- electors are often, technically, legally allowed to vote for whomever they wish.

        • He received the plurality of voting precincts and the majority of state electoral votes. It's roughly proportional to population but not quite, and the winner-takes-all rule in most states can hand the win to someone who failed to get the popular vote.

          Democratic Party failed to avoid making this a close election, even though they have know for decades they are behind Republicans on gerrymandering.

          An unwillingness of both sides to change the traditions means you need a decisive victory or you're leaving the

  • Moderately truthy news remains inaccessible behind paywalls. I'm surprised we don't see any headlines about that...oh wait...

  • One of the big issue is that information is behind paywalls, while lies are free. Correct information costs a ton of money, be it competent journalism or scientific reports. To have the information, we have to finance it in some ways. At the moment, it's up to you to pay to have the correct information sorted out from the pool of lies that is internet.

  • of curfews at the end of last week. Politicians emphatically denied them, and the media called them rumors and fake news. Guess what happened two days later.

  • OMG Mexican Beer virus is gonna kill us all!! Quick, MOAR CENSORSHIP NOW!!!1!1!!!!!!11!!!!!

  • The world is full of idiots. Fortunately, mostly only idiots listen to idiots. Unfortunately, we still allocate hospital beds to idiots.

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