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Disinformation is the deliberate use of lies to manipulate people, whether to extract profit or to advance a political agenda. Its unwitting accomplice, misinformation, is spread by unknowing dupes who repeat lies they believe to be true. In America today, both forms of falsehood are distorting our perception of reality.
In a democracy, the people need a shared set of facts as a basis to debate and make decisions that advance and secure their collective interests. Differences of opinion, and even propaganda, have always existed in the United States, but now, enemies of democracy are using disinformation to attack our sovereign right to truthful information, intellectual integrity, and the exercise of the will of the people. Online disinformation is particularly insidious because of its immediacy, its capacity to deceive, and its ability to reach its target.
Shouldn’t have made propaganda legal then, fuckers.
I guess you can’t put the blame on that on one individual person, but if you could it would be Ronald fucking Reagan.
No it’s not.
/s 😉
I mean, folks from Time Magazine suddenly deciding misinformation is a problem…
https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-donald-trump/
For all of Trump’s public life, tastemakers and intellectuals have dismissed him as a vulgarian and carnival barker, a showman with big flash and little substance. But what those critics never understood was that their disdain gave him strength. For years, he fed off the disrespect and used it to grab more tabloid headlines, to connect to common people. Now he has upended the leadership of both major political parties and effectively shifted the political direction of the international order. He will soon command history’s most lethal military, along with economic levers that can change the lives of billions. And the people he has to thank are those he calls “the forgotten,” millions of American voters who get paid by the hour in shoes that will never touch these carpets—working folk, regular Janes and Joes, the dots in the distance.
And that’s not even touching its hagiographies of various Evangelical ministers from Billy Graham (1954, 1993, 1996, 2007) and Jimmy Swaggart and Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker (both in the glorious year of 1987). An assortment of nine Catholic Bishops scored nine covers (the last in 1966), and of course eight Popes have worn the red frame more thirty-three times. And then there’s the straight-up pandering Jesus-y editions.
Today it’s going to be “Has misinformation gone too far?!” and tomorrow its going to be Inside the Uranium Underworld: Dark Secrets, Dirty Bombs and another excuse to march to war.
For it to work, people first need to be uneducated and indoctrinated. That’s the real issue.
This is simply not true, and this kind of belief–that misinformation only works on “other people”–is part of the problem.
Right wing disinformation is tearing America apart.
Both sides have pretty bad disinformation going on. Left is just more polished about it, I’m guessing because their demographic is on average much more educated. Right wing stuff you can at least immediately see right through.
Israel coverage from the main stream left has been stunning
Your comment literally started with “both sides”… Just ZERO self awareness.
Disinformation from establishment Democrats is enabling the Republican party. We can hate Republicans all we like but establishment Democrats are trying to walk this tightrope between fascism and worker empowerment. Every time they lose their balance they shift to the right. We will be unable to defeat the Republican party until we root out the corruption of the Democratic party.
Democrats are not leftists
Conservatives never have facts and reason on their side, so they just drop them and stop caring for reality.
Speaking the truth and being right-wing are always mutually exclusive!
Not just the right.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Wasn’t it shown that e.g. Russia is targeting our side just as heavily?
The left don’t fall for it as easily and they don’t spread it as virulently, and when they do it’s for what? Policies that generally benefit and are agreed on by enormous majorities of real people.
Did I miss the left not falling for Hunter Biden’s laptop was not genuine? Or maybe the Steele dossier? Or maybe cloth masks will protect us from Covid?
I have not seen a single actual real left-leaning person who gives even half of a shit about Hunter’s laptop, I think the most I heard about the Steele dossier was basically “we should look into that and see if it’s legitimate or not,” and cloth masks were never supposed to be a COVID killer, just a reasonable step to reduce transmission, much like the masks surgeons wear in surgery, and they remain even today a reasonable step to reduce airborne pathogens.
Did you just pop in from Bizarro-world?
edit: To be clear, we on the left do fall for misinformation and are coerced effectively constantly, but you chose terrible cases of this as examples.
Seems like maybe you missed the press about the Biden laptop being Russian disinformation, or the President himself calling it that during the debate?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276
The fact that the NY Post’s Twitter account was suspended, and Twitter did not allow the link to the article shared on the platform even via DMs. While FB deamplified the news may have had an effect on the election. So obviously some left leaning individuals cared about it very much and wanted the news about it shut down prior to the election.
Liberals too, yeah.
Rational people don’t go into politics.
People that believe in liberty have to go into politics if we are to maintain any of our liberty. Get your propaganda out of here.
I believe in Liberty above all else. I also believe you cannot be moral and a politician, and that voting is an immoral act.
I sympathize with your view, but cannot buy in to it
Liberty to what and for whom?
For everyone. I give no fucks who you are, live your life as you see fit.
That’s not Liberty, that’s not even Anarchism.
What you’re describing is the Law of the Jungle.
The Biden government is straight up denying their support for a Genocide as if they are CCP China.
Only consume government propaganda everyone!
I think they’re talking about who won the last election and whether covid vaccines are harmful, but ok … Can’t even start to address the Israel lobby until fptp voting and the ec are abolished
Get your priorities and timelines straight.
Denying and facilitating a brutal Genocide is a bit more extreme than saying they’re turning the frogs gay.
I’d say the Genocide thing has priority.
This would matter more if the other party didn’t outright cheer for and support that genocide.
You commend hypocrisy?
