It's merely a matter of time until disinformation leads to calamity | Hacker News Reader

It's merely a matter of time until disinformation leads to calamity

ft.com

17 pointshnuser000012 comments

> And visual images have always been more eye-catching and emotionally compelling than text.

Yes, and regardless of whether they're real or false or anything in between, which is why it's such a good idea to have a forum that doesn't allow images, like HN and early twitter.

We already have people believing disinformation to the point of storming the Capital and dying by gunfire. I’d say the calamity has already arrived.

And one million dead from a pandemic!

Yeah. Article reads to me as "Eventually, a calamity that will affect me".

Lots of people are already suffering: women who can't get medically necessary abortions, trans people who can't get care they need, etc. It's a calamity for their lives. It's the marginalized people who suffer first.

calamity

an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress; a disaster.

"the journey had led to calamity and ruin"

All of the hang-wringing about disinformation causes me to think their true worry is that existing modes of disinformation will get drowned out by newer ones.

It's always surprised me how the governments in power have done almost nothing to counteract this, given how political the misinformation can be.

As an example, the federal liberal government in Canada is facing an onslaught of very right wing American-style propaganda. Why not actually take steps to minimize this?

Do you have any examples of this propaganda? I live in Canada and I'm not sure what you are talking about

Didn't a bunch of q-anon wierdos take a ton of money from american conservatives to organize "grass roots" anti-vax protests a while back, which led to some kind of plot to assassinate canadian cops?

I believe that a significant quantity of right-wing posts, on Reddit, Facebook, etc. are not only shared by idiots, but are in fact blatant political cyber-warfare.

Just as an example: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1CZ2OF/

Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romana_Didulo didn't emerge in a vacuum.

https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/cyber-threats-canadas-de...

Also a bunch of extreme/obnoxious fake far left and right wing posts, basically rage bait. But it’s difficult to separate what’s fake and what’s not. Some people genuinely adopt the positions of the fake posters which is completely baffling and sad

Honestly with targeting and algorithmic curation you might never see any of it unless you are the desired audience. That’s certainly the case for me. Once, I watched some reels of a comedian (who apparently was popular on the right) that I found funny, and then for a few days my feed included this American super macho type content

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