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- cross-posted to:
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Russia has helped amplify and spread false and misleading internet claims about recent hurricanes in the United States and the federal government’s response, part of a wider effort by the Kremlin to manipulate America’s political discourse before the presidential election, new research shows.
The content, spread by Russian state media and networks of social media accounts and websites, criticizes the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, exploiting legitimate concerns about the recovery effort in an attempt to paint American leaders as incompetent and corrupt, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The London-based organization tracks disinformation and online extremism.
In some cases, the claims about the storms include fake images created using artificial intelligence, such as a photo depicting scenes of devastating flooding at Disney World that never happened, researchers say.
I have conservative family who are falling for this. Of course, they have a faith-based belief system as opposed to a reality-based belief system, so they’ll believe anything they are told.
The people who, when we were growing up, told us to not believe anything on the internet all of the sudden decided to start believing everything they read on the internet.
you know what? my parents didn’t tell me not to believe anything on the Internet. they taught me to be wary of information sources and how to be skeptical in a productive way.
the people that don’t have these skills are the ones that told you not to believe anything on the Internet. they don’t know how to tell what’s real and what’s not without their priest there to do it for them. now these people are all on the Internet without protection or guidance. the children that learned this behavior from them are here too. we had entire populations for generations that based all of their beliefs on what the local priest told them before the Internet. even after the printing press, many people relied on their religious leaders to interpret what was written for them.
for the most part, any non urban population would have burned you alive for trying to think for yourself for generations. now we’re all surprised that they aren’t very good calling out bullshit.
it’s almost like religion is often designed around letting the powerful control people. it WAS the system of hierarchy before capitalism. it’s where we got our social classes and kings from. it’s for the powerful to manipulate others. it’s working as intended.
This a lot but also they grew up in the time before their hero did away with the Fairness Doctrine, so when they were formative and watching Cronkite and Rather et al on TV, it wasn’t obscured through an echo chamber opinion piece masquerading as The Truth ™️so they never needed to think critically about their news sources bc I’m sure most of what was reported was factual (albeit whitewashed I’m sure)
It’d be great if Churches allocated a little time to preaching the value of critical thinking skills so that their congregation wasn’t so susceptible to misinformation, but then… Well, you know.
Except the truth, for some reason.
This is what makes progressives’ work cut out for us. We can’t even use the same tactics, because what we’re saying makes people uncomfortable. People will happily believe the things that give them good feels and reinforce their existing beliefs. The truth of what we need to do and what change needs to happen and of injustice is not something that can be packaged and sold in feel good lies.
We can exploit the same rage-bait engagement-bait outrage tactics to mobilize people like us, but we can’t change people’s minds