Misinformation And Disinformation

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S.

How does one justify squelching free speech and censoring opponents?

By justifying it by “science.”

The authors of a new study published by the scientific journal Nature submit that “differential sharing of misinformation by people identifying with different political groups could lead to political asymmetries in enforcement, even by unbiased policies.”

Tropical Storm Helene formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 24, its projected path already showing it making landfall at the eastern end of the Florida panhandle. By the next day, it had gained enough energy to become a hurricane.

That same day, Sept. 25, the House of Representatives voted on a budget bill that would fund the government for a few more months, out past the presidential election. It was a continuing resolution, meaning that agencies would continue to receive the money they were already getting. If they needed more? Well, that would have to wait.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to speak to Elon Musk on the phone to get the tech billionaire and Donald Trump superfan to stop spouting hurricane relief misinformation.

A new paper, "Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions," published today in Nature suggests that the higher quantity of social media policy enforcement (such as account suspensions) for conservative users could be explained by the higher quantity of misinformation shared by those conservative users—and so does not constitute evidence of inherent biases in the policies from social media companies or in the definition of what constitutes misinformation.

Wild Mother - the online alias of a woman called Desirée - lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.

The two women are poles apart politically - but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.

A social media account run by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been repeatedly deceptive.

The @KamalaHQ account, which has more than 1.3 million followers on the X social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has made a habit of misleadingly clipping and inaccurately captioning video clips to attack former President Donald Trump.