But here we are in 2024. It seems like the internet has made many of us even stupider. At the very least, it makes you more susceptible to gross misinformation.
- Young women are abandoning contraception because trendy influencer videos claim the old-fashioned “rhythm method” is safer.
- After a bridge in Baltimore tragically collapsed and a ship lost power, countless viral conspiracy theories were spread claiming responsibility. diversity education, capitalism, immigration and (inevitably) Jew.
- With so many conspiracy theorists blaming other culprits, the Islamic State effectively had to plead for credit for the massacre of civilians at a Russian concert hall. (“It never occurred to me before that we could solve terrorism by becoming so collectively stupid that no one could agree with who committed the attack,” said the technology policy researcher.) Eli Durado. “There’s no point in threatening you if you can’t earn their trust!”)
These are examples reported over the past week. Wider viral conspiracy theories weave an even richer tapestry, both brutal (9/11 truth tellers, Hamas massacre on October 7) and mundane (the price of a hamburger, the shape of the Earth). covers.
So why has the Internet allowed so many people to be born? few Have you been informed?
It’s easy to see how untruths spread. Lies can be optimized for virality. Truth is unrealizable and sometimes boring because it is constrained by reality. So it’s no surprise that lies are more effective online.they can design To appeal to the viewer’s prejudices and desires. The underlying principles are not new. As the saying goes, a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth still has its shoes on.
The Internet also makes it easy to find communities that can reinforce or gloss over specific conspiracy theories, no matter how unlikely. Of course, “old wives’ tales” and hoaxes are nothing new, but in the pre-internet era, it’s hard to imagine that QAnon lore could spread so widely, so rapidly, and in such exquisite detail. is. Those who want to spread misinformation, perhaps for political or economic gain, can now efficiently share their messages at scale.
The reason for the puzzle is consumer Not adept at spotting misinformation. During the 2016 election period, many Americans proved easily manipulated by Russian trolls and his disinformation operatives on Facebook. But these Facebook victims are disproportionately older users who didn’t grow up in the digital age and are likely less in the habit of scrutinizing the trustworthiness of online sources.
As a new generation of digital natives emerges, I (naively) think that Americans will get better at distinguishing between viral social media anecdotes and vetted news articles and reliable statistical sources. Ta. Somehow, the opposite happened. At least based on the large proportion of young people who trust random influencers on TikTok to reshare difficult news, Gen Z appears to be struggling with news literacy just like Boomers.
(And if Americans are so bad at navigating our information sources now, what hope is there as artificial intelligence and deepfakes become more convincing?)
One possible explanation for this problem, at least in the United States, is the long-documented paranoid political style. Americans’ anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian tendencies have created a lucrative media business model. The “mainstream” media is either lazy or corrupt and insists that their brave upstart news outlets are the only honorable truth-tellers. Fox has been the most-watched cable news network for decades, but this has been a brand since its inception. Now, the company is also the victim of a similar “anti-establishment” campaign by radical right-wing news outlets.
A similar trend exists on the left, small media organization We encourage our readers to press the “Subscribe” button and click “corporate mediaprobably won’t tell you.
This type of marketing works by capitalizing on and reinforcing diminished trust in traditional news media. And let me be clear: those of us in traditional media have certainly done things that warrant a certain loss of public trust. Sometimes we get things wrong, like public health or foreign wars. Perhaps viral conspiracy theories about birth control and terrorist attacks have more credence.
Now, I would argue that traditional news outlets are more eager to try to make things right, and more likely to correct mistakes, than your average one-man-band Instagram influencer. But on some level, it doesn’t matter. Too many media companies are already testing the “one true prophet” marketing model. And too many news consumers of all ages are hooked on this news.
So, naturally, makeup influencers are considered to be just as authoritative, if not more so, than traditional news services. Indeed, they are more likely to respond to consumer preferences for what “truth” should be.
