The Latest Dangerous Conspiracy Theory: That Conspiracy Theory Research Is Part Of A Big Conspiracy
from the conspiracies-about-conspiracies dept
Let’s start off with this point, which some seem to ignore when I talk about this stuff: I think many of the “concerns” about disinformation are totally overblown. People act as if disinformation has a sort of bizarre mind-control over other people (never themselves) to the point that they act as if disinformation itself is some sort of toxic sludge that must be locked up in underground bunkers, lest it seep out and infect the populace, turning them into zombies.
The reality tends to be a bit more mundane. It is not that disinformation has no impact, but, generally speaking, the impact of certain kinds of alarmist information works as a form of confirmation bias, often filling in gaps where the public is not well informed, or often treated badly. US healthcare, for example, is a confusing, complex mess, and large pharmaceutical companies have a history of legitimately nefarious behavior in pursuit of greater profits. So, it’s easy to see how people immediately jump to false conclusions regarding vaccines.
But, again, it tends to be a form of confirmation bias, in which people, who are seeking answers to what legitimately seems confusing and unclear (thanks to a variety of other factors), are quick to latch onto complete nonsense over facts, because it fits with their priors about what they believe (sometimes based on good reasons) and gives them an explanation for something that was confusing.
As tempting as it often is (and yes, it’s very tempting) to simply bash those who fall for nonsense conspiracy theories as being ignorant or gullible, I’m concerned that’s often counterproductive. I have less concern about calling out the nonsense peddlers who know what they’re spewing is false, and who do it for clout or for profit.
And, also, immediately just calling things “disinformation” or a “conspiracy theory” opens things up to having that turned around on the debunkers. Just remember how in the wake of the 2016 election, people were freaked out about “fake news” that they insisted was why Trump won, and demanded regulations to block fake news. But, instead, what happened was Trump started calling any legitimate news reporting that made him look bad “fake news” and the “fake news” laws that did get passed were used for surveillance or to silence dissent?
There need to be better ways of dealing with these things. And, of course, this is why it’s important to have actual research on how false information actually flows, and how some people start believing it and pushing it on others. It’s also important that this research determine the best way to counter legitimately false information. Because otherwise, people are going to leap to the conclusion that the best way to counter such information is to immediately suppress it, when lots of evidence suggests in many cases that only makes things worse.
Unfortunately, though, in the last couple of years, it seems that the nonsense peddlers who have benefited the most from preying on those who were suckered in by misinformation have decided that those who study the flow of false information are themselves the problem. Some of this is that they can’t comprehend that there is a legitimate reason to study disinformation flows. They assume, falsely, that the only reasons why some would seek to understand how disinformation flows is to suppress information. Again, though, that’s not the intent of such research.
It’s easy, of course, to say that the reason disinfo peddlers believe that disinfo research is a problem is because it’s an attack on their own grift. And, there’s likely some of that at play. But, again, the reality may just be more confirmation bias. The people who push this nonsense believe, in a somewhat paranoid fashion, that “they” are out to get those who challenge the party line, and thus disinfo research must be a part of the attack on the truth.
Of course, these days, you have the worst of the worst nonsense peddlers, those in the government, like Rep. Jim Jordan, who was cynically handed a new subcommittee, ostensibly “against” the weaponization of the government to suppress speech. Except that Jordan has done exactly as many would expect and deliberately weaponized this powerful congressional subcommittee to stifle the speech other others.
The NY Times has an article, not unlike the Washington Post article we highlighted recently, concerning how Jim Jordan is using the committee to try to suppress disinformation research.
The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 election to identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.
Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.
In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.
A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.
No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.
“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Mr. Hancock said.
What it really comes down to is that the latest conspiracy theory, being pushed by folks like Jim Jordan, former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, and gullible folks like Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi, is that the mere studying of conspiracy theories, and how they spread, is itself a conspiracy.
And, of course, all that is a problem, because now merely studying and identifying issues around propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories gets you linked in as part of the grand conspiracy — one for which there still remains zero actual evidence — of seeking to silence or hide important “truths.”
In some ways, the misguided targeting of such research is kind of brilliant in its own ignorance. If the very researchers trying to understand how false information flows aren’t able to do their jobs, then it opens up new lanes for such bullshit to flow.
Filed Under: disinformation, jim jordan, propaganda, research
Comments on “The Latest Dangerous Conspiracy Theory: That Conspiracy Theory Research Is Part Of A Big Conspiracy”
As someone CAD comic one said: “Thinking is your friend”.
And, education (or ostensibly some parts of it, definitely mine) can help you think more clearly.
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As long as stuff that’s “top secret”, or even merely “classified” exist, conspiracy theories will flourish. Only in a completely honest and open society where everyone has access to any information or knowledge they want, can conspiracy theories be extinguished.
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“Only in a completely honest and open society where everyone has access to any information or knowledge”
Human nature says this is impossible, and therefore conspiracy theories will persist.
Also, the idea is a bit silly. The future will not be like startrek.
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“Human nature says this is impossible”
Everything can be changed. And if keeping secrets or lying (including “white lies”) would be literally illegal and punishable by prison without parole, people would soon discover that being honest is not that hard, it’s freeing even. As they say, the truth will set you free.
“The future will not be like startrek.”
Maybe not on a technological level, but with society-wise, it can be done. If North Koreans could be conned into believing a fat idiot ruining their country is a literal god, people can be convinced to be honest about everything.
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Also.
China managed to convince 1.3 billion people that “the Hong Kong riots were a bunch of privileged kids throwing tantrums”.
Though that was a mess of information control and leveraging on certain policies they did before…
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Exactly. So since people can be convinced one way, why not the other way around? There are no impossible things, there is only lack of skill needed to complete the task.
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Psychology.
Once someone is convinced their position on a certain thing is correct, it takes a ton of effort to even get someone to CONSIDER the evidence.
It’s a result of evolution, see. Stopping to consider the evidence would get someone eaten back when humanity was beginning to use their noggins…
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I never said it will be easy. Just that it can be done.
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You aren’t married, are you – because if you were you would know that it is a good idea to answer with a white lie when your wife ask you if something makes her look fat.
Absolutist solutions to the human condition always fail in spectacular ways because humans are messy, illogical.
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Nothing says “freedom” like [checks notes] giving the government the authority to imprison people for life for nonviolent speech.
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We do it already when people lie to the government or a court (perjury). I see no problem extending this to ordinary, run of the mill lies.
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Sadly no, even in such a society there would still be people who were sure that they knew a great ‘hidden truth’ that only the ‘select few’ are aware of because after all just because you’re told that everything is transparent and there are no secrets being kept doesn’t mean that’s actually true(even if it actually was).
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Yes, however it would be much less widespread than in a society like we have now when we know FOR A FACT governments hide stuff from us, allegedly for our own good.
Conspiracy theory research is part of a big conspiracy? That’s just what they want you to think.
Re: That’s just what they want you to think.
That’s just what they want you to think. Exactly!
You know Occam’s Razor. Here are two of my variations:
“Never attribute to ignorance that which is adequately explained by malice.”
and
Regarding the misuse/abuse of the word “phobia”:
“Never attribute to fear that which is adequately explained by malice.”
Feel free to call them Uncle Stu’s Razors. 🙂
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“Phobia” can mean either fear or revulsion.
You are thinking in the wrong categories
You are saying this as if confirmation bias is some sort of neutral fault. Like with most psychological analytics, it denotes patterns of behavior, but a pattern of behavior is not an excuse. It is a help for strategically organising one’s defenses.
If instead you choose to indulge in such patterns in spite of being aware of them, the underlying pattern is not an excuse.
And a lot of the political class choose to stoke conspiracy theories in echo chambers (while indulging in them with a vengeance themselves) because they see no disadvantage in it.
Being disingenuous does not require having to choose between being dishonest and having confirmation bias.
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Usually, it’s both.
There’s good money to be made in that area, what with having a captured audience of at least 74 million and rising.
And governments abuse the FUCK out of conspiracy theories as well, as a form of propaganda.
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Agreed. They are, to the last, without exception, making the conscious decision to disregard reality.
There’s an organized, global resurgence of fascism happening, that has been happening for at least the last decade. Uncle Cletus sharing Facebook memes is likely just a useful idiot. The people firehosing the disinformation to your Uncle Cletus, however, know exactly what they’re doing. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
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When I encounter the phrase Culture War, I substitute the word Fascism.
When I encounter a Woke Freakout, I label it as Fascism.
Some media is beginning to see things from this pov, most not.
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And if they can’t, well…
Let’s just say that Russia won’t be contributing to this resurgence anytime soon.
However, politicians everywhere ARE seeing the “success” of authoritarian regimesin recent times and will follow what appears to be successful.
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Said success is defined in terms of the fascist, not society in general – who as we all know suffer horrifically under fascism.
afaik, fascism burns out when they run out of people to persecute and start eating their own. In the mean time the planet is destroyed.
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In most cases, you’re not wrong.
H9wever, when I say “success”, I mean it in terms of the economy and perceptions of safety.
Authoritarians are like Wall Street C-suite assholes: Short term benefits over long-term stability. And your average citizen only cares about the short term.
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The average Joe is only allowed to care about the short term. They live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to see the forest because they can only move from one tree at a time. If the economy was stronger they could be more independent, but communism certainly doesn’t enjoy financial independence. Which, all things considered, is far closer to what we’ll be dealing with given the “you will own nothing and be happy” mantra of billionaires.
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Not sure what sort of echo chambers you’ve been hanging out in that have led you to refer to neo-feudalist pursuits as “communism,” but LO-fucking-L.
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I am pretty sure that’s the result of 2million+ years of evolution being abused by the powers that be, even if you are right.
Not completely true, that only makes it easier to control people, a tactic that governments everywhere use.
Nah, even if the economy was stronger, all it does is make people focus on the material comforts. It’s not like you can’t see the effects in actual developed authcap countries…
Point to me which communist bloc has remained after the fall of the Soviet Union. Oh wait, you can’t. Even China has become a totalitarian state and has not been communist of ANY flavor for at least 30+ years.
Subject of knowing Whats going on
In a supposed free country, what is free?
Not even knowledge, information, WTF are the corps doing or anyone else.
And trying to find answers is not EASY in any form, unless you have backing from someone with power, AND knowledge.
War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Fact-checking is lying
The idea that ‘looking into how people and organizations craft lies to misinform and manipulate people is itself misinformation to manipulate people’ would be a lot funnier if I didn’t know that it’s likely to fool a lot of people who’s favorite liars are panicking at the idea of research into exactly how they are exploiting people
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conspiracy
Is it a conspiracy if it is true? The twitter files documented the government – sometimes working through educational institutions or private think tanks – monitoring public communications and trying to get speech that they don’t like and individuals that uttered that speech de-platformed.
Which leads to the real problem in your article. You claim that “there still remains zero actual evidence — of seeking to silence or hide important “truths.”” The government officials (usually through the education institutions and think tanks) did try to silence important truths. They attempted to do so by combing through those tweets (and likely postings on other platforms) that they didn’t like trying to find where those comments violated the company’s terms of service. In doing so, they tried to stifle discussions of the lab leak theory, which turns out to not only a valid theory, but now appears to be true. They also tried to stifle discussions regarding the efficacy of the vaccine, etc.,etc.
You are correct that twitter for the most part did not go along with that suppression, but the effort was made. And until the twitter files were published there was no evidence of that effort. Who knows how successful they were with other platforms. The fact that the government did this through cutouts makes it more objectionable. If the government was more forthcoming about what they were doing it would be far less problematic.
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What do you mean? If nobody actually conspired about something, than by definition it wouldn’t be a conspiracy. In that sense, only a “true” thing could be a conspiracy (though, of course, that “truth” could be that some assholes conspired to promote a false conspiracy theory as fact).
The “zero truth” thing was badly quoted by you, and also badly written by Mike. I assume that was supposed to refer to some specific and recent thing. But, of course, the existence of “classified” government information is trivially a conspiracy to hide important truths, and there’s plenty of evidence that information has been hidden this way (the mere existence of the NSA, for example).
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Not a single Twitter File showed that. Nothing even remotely close to that. What it showed was information sharing, enabling actual experts, such as local election officials, having a way to report potential issues (especially around false voting information) to the platforms for them to deal with as they wished. All it did was set up a channel for election officials to report actual election misinfo to the companies so they could judge them against their own policies.
And, as the report that looked into what happened showed, the VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME, the companies refused to take action on those reports.
None of that could be seen as “trying to de-platform” “speech they didn’t like.” Indeed, the vast majority of the “actioned” were about PHISHING ATTEMPTS. Outright scams. Not “speech we don’t like.”
JFC: don’t be an idiot: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/07/mehdi-hasan-dismantles-the-entire-foundation-of-the-twitter-files-as-matt-taibbi-stumbles-to-defend-it/
They literally did not. You’ve been lied to.
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You said “ And, as the report that looked into what happened showed, the VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME, the companies refused to take action on those reports.”. In all caps like I didn’t acknowledge that in my comment: “ You are correct that twitter for the most part did not go along with that suppression, but the effort was made.” The fact that the government is COVERTLY trying to stifle speech – including using third parties to hide its involvement is a big deal. Again, if the government were forthcoming as to its involvement it would be less problematic. The fact that third parties have been co-opted into the process and are now pretending it is no big deal speaks to how easy it is for people to be drawn into the government efforts and thus making them feel that they are on the governments team. Team mentality then forces them to commit full force.
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Repeating the claims are not providing evidence for them, do you have some proof that what you claim happened/is happening actually did/is?
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And I know the psychology, but you’d better have hard evidence about social media being the tool of government censorship.
Even OLD TWITTER refused to do the government’s bidding 60% of the time. And did not take down media governments deemed “offensive”.
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Re: Re: Re:2 60% of the time
So then the other 40% of the time they were censoring what the government wanted?
And regardless of whether they requested it or not, old and new Twitter certainly take down quite a bit of legal content that governments wouldn’t want around under the authoritarian guise of “offensive content”. See, for instance, the censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop[0] and the censorship of the Turkish elections[1].
In Hunter Biden’s case, it was “fears of a misinformation campaign”. As for Elon Musk, he was at least blunt enough to admit his own cowardice and lack of real morals when faced with loss of revenue.
[0] – https://ground.news/article/ex-twitter-safety-chief-admits-hunter-biden-laptop-censorship-was-a-mistake_16df47
[1] – https://web.archive.org/web/20230513163314/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657422401754259461
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Only disingenuous idiots think that. If the government points out content they think break the Twitter TOS and Twitter agrees, is it then censorship when Twitter removes the content?
It wasn’t censorship, it was a knee-jerk reaction to something that seemed to break the TOS in regards to “hacked information” and they admitted they were wrong, didn’t they? And if you actually bothered to read the Twitter files, no one including the government told Twitter to take down the links to the story about the laptop.
The above is from your earlier post and I’ll just note that prefacing a statement with “The fact” doesn’t make it a fact unless you actually present the fact for all to see.
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“It wasn’t censorship, it was a knee-jerk reaction to something that seemed to break the TOS in regards to “hacked information””
Censorship is censorship, regardless of what prompted it. If you are removing (mis)information from circulation, you are censoring it. That’s literally what the word means. Now, it might not be government censorship, but it is censorship nevertheless.
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No, it isn’t. Is it censorship to for example remove faulty directions to an eatery that doesn’t exists any more?
No, it doesn’t. Censorship is the act of suppressing or deleting information that is deemed objectionable. The act of removing something that is factually incorrect is never censorship, just as removing content from a service that doesn’t adhere to the TOS isn’t censorship.
If you are told beforehand that a service have rules against certain topics and you persist in bringing them up, is it censorship when the owner/proprietor throw you out or give you a timeout because of your behavior?
If you want to live with absolutist views on what free speech is – start your own service that caters to your specific beliefs.
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“Is it a conspiracy if it is true? ”
Perhaps I misunderstand the question.
Conspiracy:
1: the act of conspiring together
2a: an agreement among conspirators
2b: a group of conspirators
How is this true or false?
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Jim Jordan is right and you are wrong
Conspiracies happen all the time, actually, and academic research into “misinformation” has absolutely been part of an organized conspiracy to suppress dissent.
And you’re part of that effort too, trying to gaslight us all that it didn’t happen, and isn’t continuing to happen, in fact.
But it is. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention.
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Looking forward to seeing the evidence of this.
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Citation: twitterfiles. Yes, that really is specific enough. No, your inability to read, critically think, or to see through Masnick’s gaslighting is not an argument. K, thx. .
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I see the village idiot is eating mud-cakes in the pig-pen again proclaiming how good they taste.
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So you admit you have nothing.
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The actual “conspiracy”, and I hesitate to call it that, is that there are 74 million people INSIDE of the United States of America, who would be openly committing treason should America declare war against Russia and its Master China, led by the terrorist entity known as THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, being funded by the likes of the Kochs, News Corp and other “conservative” business interests.
And you are one of the 74 million traitors to the USA.
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Oh my. Everyone who disagrees with you is a nazi AND a traitor? Amazing.
Meanwhile you want to control speech and your president has openly been taking bribes. (Including from China, which is a fair bit worse than Russia, actually)
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I don’t necessarily agree with the siteowner, or the commentariat at times.
But have they openly threatened the community, kept spewing White Supremacist/copyright maximalist talking points and continued to harass the Techdirt comment section despite being told multiple times to behave or leave?
Mike’s house, Mike’s rules. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach, and I’m still responsble for the comsequences of my speech, up to and including physical threats to my being from the Nazis who hate Mike, like you.
Oh, and you might also want to stop trying to control Mike’s speech through harassment…
As opposed to? The 15 or so openly Republican leaders who DID collaborate with the Russians, China’s newest puppets? And having not just the party not question or openly criticize those people, but BACKING THEM?
Maybe it would help to compare conspiracy theory research to cancer research. As it stands, current methods are more akin to the full chemotherapy treatment: more likely to kill the patient along with the disease.
Doesn’t everyone want the cure for disinformation?
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“Doesn’t everyone want the cure for disinformation?”
There is none, liars gonna lie.
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If by “cure” you mean “the extinction of the human race” then most people would say no.
Study the difference
Study is important. And nonpartisan
Examples:
Misinformation: Biden passed all health checks.
Biden passed a tiny subset of checks on specific concerns.
Disinformation: The election was stolen.
There is no evidence of hacking on election day. No more dead people and non-citizens voted than every other election.
While both dis and mis are problems: disinfo needs to be the focus.
Disinformation is intentional but usually comes from an actual underlying problem. In my example; the U.S. is one of only a few states in the world not requiring government ID to vote. This is because the U.S. has one of the highest cost applications for ID. Average pricing for a federal ID is $0-$5 world wide. The $20 driver’s license is banking $18 for the state.
Studying disinfo can show what the real problem is.
If voter id was required and votes were counted on film in public, there would be no thread of truth to hang the conspiracy on.
Misinformation is always a lie. Such as claiming Trump said to drink bleach. Or Biden passing medical tests. Misinformation intentionally leaves out context. Rather than come from an actual issue, mis creates an issue.
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!00% reliable method for spotting deliberate lies on Techdirt:
Does a post have “LostInLoDOS” above it
If yes, then congratulations, you’ve identified deliberate lies.
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Feel free to point out a lie in what I said.
The NYT has pointed out Biden’s cognitive concerns quite a bit of late. Swing as he can’t remember what country Russia invaded.
Or is it your stance against identification. A federal backed ID costs $6 in Japan. $4 in the Philippines, $2 in Mexico. Under $5 in much of the EU. Free in China.
The card stock costs 50ċ in bulk, each. And there is roughly $1 in ink.
And there’s no proof of systematic fraud in the 2020 election.
Feel free to point out a lie. We’re waiting.
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It is interesting how you seem to focus upon one candidate when discussing fault(s) whilst completely ignoring similar or worse behavior from others.
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It’s been a very long time since we had a president with serious health issues.
Trump, Obama, both Bush, Clinton, all quite healthy.
Policy? I’m a socialist libertarian. Always have been. Start even, equal, and survivable. Build to your own abilities.
I had my complaints about Trump. Mostly the erosion of separation of church and state.
Ive pointed to flaws in Obama policy but I was a volunteer for both his campaigns.
My only complaint about Clinton to any real degree was his willingness to continue cold-war policy and send troops into foreign civil wars.
Bush was a war hawk and I didn’t vote for him. Bush 2 was gullible and a bit dense, but did well enough.
I didn’t and wouldn’t vote for Reagan. Then now or ever.
Not caring about the “progressive” issues you do doesn’t make me a republican all of a sudden.
It makes me not care about The issues you do: and still care about the issues I do.