Now they can admit it.
Disinformation. BLM. Masks.
Count three moral panics that never made any sense, that destroyed people’s lives, yet questioning them had severe consequences. And certainly the one place that they could never be questioned was in the media. Yet, when the time came, the media simply shrugged, brushed them aside and acted like they had been no big deal in the first place.
Disinformation was originally a Russiagate component that was used to conduct mass censorship of political dissent and a top-down regulation of speech on the theory that there was a dangerous kind of speech ‘disinformation’ that made democracy unworkable without censorship.
But now the time has passed and a Politico article casually brushes the whole thing aside without actually acknowledging the harm that it did and while still pretending that the censors were acting in good faith.
What followed was almost a decade of alarm over disinformation, with legislators agonizing over which ideas social media platforms should allow to propagate, and hand-wringing at how this was all irrevocably corroding the foundations of society.
A vibrant cottage industry — dubbed “Big Disinfo” — sprang up to fight back against bad information. NGOs poured money into groups pledging to defend democracy against merchants of mistruth, while fact-checking operations promised to patrol the boundaries of reality…
There is currently a “crisis in the field of misinformation studies,” announced an October article in Harvard University’s Misinformation Review.
“For almost a decade,” misinformation has been a central fixation of political elites, non-profits and the media, the authors wrote. Despite this, “it can sometimes feel as if the field is no closer to answering basic questions about misinformation’s real-world impacts, such as its effects on elections or links to extremism and radicalization.”
Foundational issues such as how to define misinformation are still vexing the field, the authors note.
The work is frustrated by “incredibly polarizing” conversations on the role misinformation plays in society. For example, whether “Facebook significantly shaped the results of 2016 elections” — which, eight years on, is still inconclusive, although studies have cast doubt on Russian bot farms having had much to do with it.
Because it was all a bunch of lies. Misinformation can simply be defined as something the other side believes that you think isn’t true. (That turns out to be most things.) The very notion of censorship was a fundamental attack on the First Amendment and yet, until very recently, we had courts, law professors and top experts wave away the idea that the government telling social media platforms what speech needed to be removed was censorship or at all problematic.
What just changed?
The Politico article says it. “‘Nobody was tricked into voting for Trump’: Why the disinformation panic is over.”
The disinformation campaign was manufactured to stop Trump. Stopping Trump is moot since he won his second term. Now the whole thing can be taken apart and packed away in storage until it’s needed next time. (Which will likely be before long.)
The one good thing you can say about Kamala is that unlike Hillary she didn’t manufacture a fake narrative about why she lost (beyond the usual racism and sexism.) Hillary created the Russiagate disinformation monster (which Politico never gets around to acknowledging.)
The same can’t be said for what Politico still insists on referring to as ‘disinformation researchers’ even while admitting that it’s not a scientific subject and has no validity.
Some scholars believe the unavoidable subjectivity involved in defining “misinformation” renders it inappropriate as a field of scientific inquiry altogether…And some scholars have pointed out that Big Disinfo’s roots, forged in a partisan revolt against Trump, led to glaringly one-sided speech prescriptions.
“Misinformation researchers have not transcended the partisan origins of the misinformation discourse to develop an unbiased and reliable procedure for separating misinformation from true information,” wrote Joseph Uscinski, professor of political science at Miami University, in 2023.
This has resulted in the field’s “inadvertent tendency to take sides in the polarized political debates it attempts to study” and the “asymmetrical pathologization of what we, the researchers, consider to be false beliefs.”
That’s because ‘misinformation’ just literally labels conservative views as a dangerous pathology and sets out to suppress them. It’s no more a scientific field of study than witchcraft is, but at least it’s an entirely predictable one.
The people engaged in it, unless they were complete blinkered idiots, no more believed in it than the political consultants believed that Bloomberg would become president. They were cashing checks and pursuing political goals. If there’s anyone who ought to be charged with threatening democracy, it’s them.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
This particular initiative needs to be investigated as well by the new DOJ, since the objective was the subversion of the constitution by having the government regulate the flow of information. Regardless of whether or not that project has been abandoned
Raymond Bullock says
People who lie almost every time they seek to avoid the inconvenience of truth tend to be aggressive about what reality “ought to be.” Those who disagree with them, they consider “offensive” and need to be “put in their place” (i.e., brainwashed). This will never stop because it is so prevalent with mass media and the enormous reach and complexity of the internet. Theoretically, only the most destructive lies should be exposed. However, in the real world, the biggest lies are the ones that the big-time liars protect the most. For example, the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, PA almost worked for the liars. Without Divine Intervention the liars would have gotten away with it. The cover up of this egregious lie will be forever protected more strongly than Fort Knox. The same with the COVID lies. The same with the ideology of Islam lies. It turns the view of certain particularly important things, like truth, upside down. An open society allows these lie sto be discussed and exposed. The liars want a closed society so that they control truth i.e. their lies.
somehistory says
Lies. Lies were pushed and the Truth was flagged as bad.
Masks. First, the public was told to leave them for the *medical professionals.* Then, we were all told to wear them everywhere…but don’t go anywhere. One, two, three….six masks and six feet.
The elderly and the ill were kept from seeing their loved ones, and the dead were left to bury themselves because only the elite….like the bo’s, schumer, pelosi, cuomo, etc. were allowed to be at gatherings…even funerals and church services.. The public could still frequent bars and drug dens, however.
biden was fully aware, cognizant, in control, awake and making decisions (but only about the flavor of ice cream).
And a terrorist is not a terrorist if he is a mozlum terrorist, or a terrorist who has come illegally across the border. A terrorist is only a terrorist if he is a natural born citizen of White skin and conservative beliefs. That’s why there has not been any terrorism since biden has been in charge.
The ceo of Allstate blamed “divisiveness” for the mass murder in New Orleans, LA The lies continue.
And the FBi says that the guy in Las Vegas who blew up the truck, shot himself in the mouth before he blew up the truck. He had no ill-will toward Mr. Trump. He had PTSD.
40 rounds says
I look at 2020 as a totalitarian exercise to see what percentage of the population would bend the knee, tow the line, and obey without question. Blue states cowed as expected and were thrilled to stick it up their residents arses and were quick to arrest the non participants
somehistory says
And people have returned to the masks….as if they ever worked.
And in the news….China is unleashing a *new* disease.
WPM says
I am sure Bill Gates and the other elites have already bought up the stock of the medical firm that will provide the new mandatory jab for the latest lab made flu .
somehistory says
Probably without a doubt. gates said he could diminish/reduce the global population with ‘vaccines.’ Grinning as he said it; and grinning as he jabbed some poor little kids in Africa with who-knows-what.
tgusa says
Those that decry disinformation are the same ones who reject any information that doesn’t coincide with their cult like thoughts and beliefs. Sometimes I feel that a large percentage of the world has gone crazy. These modern cultists put all the other cults in history to shame.
Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad.
Euripides
That seems about right.
Jeppe says
Such wonderful phraseology: ‘(…) the “asymmetrical pathologization of what we, the researchers, consider to be false beliefs.” Academe (or academia) at its best…
skeptiker says
Der Impfstoff ist längst fertig. Jetzt fehlt nur noch ein passender Virus dazu.
Ich wette, dass nach der Inauguration von Trump Tedros im Auftrag von Gates das WHO Alarmglöckchen läuten wird und die Soros finanzierten Gazetten und Politikerdarsteller dafür die nötigen Zwangsmaßnahmen zur Rettung der Menschheit in Gang setzten werden.
Mozart says
Du bist wahnsinig.
somehistory says
OT Time
“Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and Denzel Washington Received the Highest U.S. Civilian Honor”
biden gave awards to h clinton and g soros……disgusting in the extreme.
James Lincoln says
According to Mr. Greenfield’s excellent feature article:
“Misinformation can simply be defined as something the other side believes that you think isn’t true.”
Yes, that is one interpretation.
The other interpretation is that the “other side” actually knows that the “misinformation” is “truth”, but they do not want the truth to gain traction.
gravenimage says
Media: Remember That Whole Disinformation Thing? It Was All Made Up
………………………………………….
Just appalling–but no surprise. I always found this concerning–while there have been a handful of claims I have found harmful and false and worth rigorosly countering–such as “Islam is a religion of peace”–I have gnerally found attempts to curtail free speech far more disturbing than any amount of “fake news” that might result. I have also wondered if there was really some sort of explosion of “fake news” recently–now it appears that there has not been.
This always appeared just political to me, since virtually all ‘fake news’ was supposed to be conservative.