sarah brandt 02 — Transcript

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1. 0:00through the process of rating The
2. 0:02credibility of nearly 5 000 news and
3. 0:04information websites we've gotten to
4. 0:06know misinformation quite well the most
5. 0:09common myths the most popular purveyors
6. 0:11of those myths and the tactics that bad
7. 0:13actors use to spread their lies
8. 0:16we've seen how bad information can
9. 0:19pervade just about any topic from
10. 0:21medicine to mail-in voting
11. 0:23but to give you a sense of how
12. 0:25misinformation operates I wanted to
13. 0:27focus on one Topic in particular that
14. 0:29has drawn a Groundswell of
15. 0:30misinformation in recent months covid-19
16. 0:34we've been tracking misinformation about
17. 0:36the novel coronavirus since March and so
18. 0:39far we've identified more than 300
19. 0:41websites many with large audiences that
20. 0:44have spread dangerous lies about the
21. 0:46disease
22. 0:47but first let's back up to 2019 a time
23. 0:51before most of us had ever heard the
24. 0:52term coronavirus before the pandemic
25. 0:55brought Global attention to the plague
26. 0:56of Health misinformation we were seeing
27. 0:58hundreds of websites spreading false
28. 1:00claims about health everything from
29. 1:03claims that eating apricot pits could
30. 1:05cure your cancer should the claim that
31. 1:07vaccines are biological weapons designed
32. 1:10to spread death and disease
33. 1:12look at natural news a network of
34. 1:14hundreds of websites some with alarming
35. 1:16names like
36. 1:18vaccineholocaust.org and others with
37. 1:20benign or even official sounding names
38. 1:22like
39. 1:23cdc.news or science.news
40. 1:27these websites have been publishing
41. 1:29anti-vaccine articles for years seizing
42. 1:32on events like the 2019 outbreak of
43. 1:34measles in the U.S to publish stories
44. 1:37decrying this so-called dangers of
45. 1:39vaccines
46. 1:41now fast forward to 2020
47. 1:44before a covid-19 vaccine has even been
48. 1:47approved for distribution this network
49. 1:49of websites is already pumping out
50. 1:51baseless anti-vaccine articles to stoke
51. 1:54fear and undermine efforts to protect
52. 1:56the public
53. 1:57and there's already troubling evidence
54. 1:59that these efforts are working
55. 2:01a few months ago researchers at the
56. 2:03Associated Press in the University of
57. 2:04Chicago found that only 50 percent of
58. 2:07Americans say they would take a
59. 2:09coronavirus vaccine if it becomes
60. 2:10available
61. 2:12so how does a false narrative start and
62. 2:14get spread
63. 2:16let's look at false claims about 5G
64. 2:195G is a relatively new cell phone
65. 2:22technology that before covid-19 had long
66. 2:25attracted conspiracy theories including
67. 2:28claims that 5G technology causes cancer
68. 2:31radiation poisoning and the death of
69. 2:33wildlife among other negative effects
70. 2:37and these theories and claims have
71. 2:39gained online traction for more than two
72. 2:41years
73. 2:43now scientists have conducted an
74. 2:45exhaustive review of the evidence and
75. 2:47found that exposure to radio waves from
76. 2:505G technology does not pose a risk to
77. 2:52human health and all of those variations
78. 2:54of claims about the dangers of 5G are
79. 2:56baseless
80. 2:58but that hasn't stopped a network of
81. 3:00anti-5g Facebook pages from Gaining a
82. 3:02significant Following over the past two
83. 3:04years
84. 3:05many of these claims were originally
85. 3:07fabricated by Russian propaganda Outlets
86. 3:09like RT which some experts explain might
87. 3:12be motivated by the fact that Russia's
88. 3:145G technology development efforts lag
89. 3:16behind those of other nations
90. 3:19in 2020 these theories took on a new
91. 3:21form
92. 3:22on January 20th of this year a small
93. 3:25French website called Le Mouton on Roger
94. 3:29which means the enraged sheep posted an
95. 3:33article claiming there was a connection
96. 3:34between 5G technology and the
97. 3:36Coronavirus
98. 3:38after this article was posted to
99. 3:40Facebook it quickly spread among the
100. 3:42infrastructure of anti-5g Facebook
101. 3:44groups that was already in place
102. 3:46according to reporting from first draft
103. 3:48news
104. 3:50for example one Facebook group called
105. 3:53stop 5G UK which was an early anti-5g
106. 3:57group created in 2017
107. 4:00saw its membership nearly double to 58
108. 4:03000 members between March and April of
109. 4:05this year
110. 4:07the misguided hysteria surrounding 5G
111. 4:10technology became so widespread that it
112. 4:12even LED vandals in the UK to tear and
113. 4:15burn down cell phone towers and verbally
114. 4:17harass British mobile workers
115. 4:21in both of these examples anti-vaccine
116. 4:24claims and anti-5g claims we see how
117. 4:27long-standing purveyors of
118. 4:29disinformation sees on major news events
119. 4:31as an opportunity to spread their false
120. 4:33narratives employing the same tactics of
121. 4:35fear-mongering and alarmism so why do
122. 4:38they do it
123. 4:39there are various motivations for the
124. 4:42spread of disinformation to push a
125. 4:44particular ideology to sow division to
126. 4:48cause chaos Etc
127. 4:50but a major motivator for the spread of
128. 4:52online misinformation is purely
129. 4:54Financial
130. 4:55returning to the Natural News Network of
131. 4:57sites that operation hosts an online
132. 5:00store full of nutritional supplements
133. 5:02and so-called cures including the same
134. 5:05phony cures that they basically tout in
135. 5:07their articles
136. 5:08and in many cases online misinformation
137. 5:11operations simply cash in on running
138. 5:14advertising on their websites
139. 5:16because we've seen these same Bad actors
140. 5:19use the same tactics to spread Lies over
141. 5:22and over again and because we see new
142. 5:24disinformation sources cropping up daily
143. 5:26we can't expect misinformation to go
144. 5:28away anytime soon
145. 5:30but if we can learn to recognize the
146. 5:32tactics and Trends in the spread of
147. 5:34disinformation
148. 5:36we can protect ourselves and our loved
149. 5:38ones from bad information in the future