What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.

Consider the source.

 

Lying ass post. There were undecideds picked for questions in a section of undecideds and an observation audience of people who came to watch who leaned heavily Harris because they self selected to show up. What a disingenuous post.

 

I can only attribute this movement to failed education, a lack of popular intelligence, and an utter life dedicated to deceit like most of the right wing posters here… the Russian bots… the anti-vaxers.. the not so subtle racists.. the Right Wing Taliban…. Hillary was right.. Deplorables.

 

There's not a single thing Hillary was wrong about in 2016.

 

Clicked open InfoWars?

 

Would one expect discussion of democratic misinformation if none existed?

 

You guys should know, it's the entire basis of the "republican" campaign.

 

Putin told us he was going to undermine our faith in election systems and media when Hillary said his election was rigged. That was the impetus, it seems that greed took over from there once a following was cultivated. Fox news has made a fortune from it. Follow the money

 

I got an A in hurricane creation if anyone cares.

 

I've said it many times but the loss of agreement on what is a fact may be the greatest damage MAGA has done. Fox News and Twitter seem to be the primary ecosystems for the alternate reality folks. What to do? Twitter is killing itself. Will Musk personally fund his private megaphone?

 

I can't access the full article, but this quote seems to me to be spot on:

Misinformation didn't start with Trump, of course. You started seeing a good bit ago with the rejection of all mainstream media that said something you'd rather not be true. Social media fit perfectly into that, offering alternative reality on virtually everything.
And then came along Trump who already had a proclivity to falsehoods. And it all just got worse.
Look at what happened on Too Hot as we had people try to defend his claim that Haitians were eating pets in Springfield by posting photos of people who weren't Haitian and weren't in Springfield.
Now, you've got tons of people believing that Biden and Harris stole billions from FEMA to give to illegal immigrants. He said it and no amount of evidence will convince otherwise.
How can you possibly have reasonable conversations in those conditions?

 

Let's see:
Harris' town hall was billed as being for undecided Latino voters. But a reporter talked to or three people there who weren't undecided.
And that's supposed to compare to claims of stolen elections, eaten pets, billions stolen from FEMA, FEMA refusing to help hurricane victims .... etc. Because both parties are exactly the same ...

 

Yeah, a lot of them are just bad, dishonest people. The rest are just ignorant and weak-minded.

 

There's no doubt Haitians eat and sacrifice cats. It part of their culture.

Are you saying FEMA money hasn't been spent on illegals?

 

I'm saying there's no evidence they're eating the pets in Springfield. Trump lied to you and you believed.

I'm saying exactly what I said. There's no evidence Biden stole anything, much less billions. Again, Trump lied to you.

 

I didn't say Biden stole anything. I'm just asking if FEMA funds went to illegals. I don't think it really matters much

As for Haitians eating or sacrificing cats, I have no doubt that they do. I have a friend who lives next door to Haitians and he says they sacrifice animals. What kind of animals he doesn't know.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

There is a video of Haitians barbecuing a cat about 30 minutes from Springfield if memory serves.

 

you’ve actually hit on a really critical issue with misinformation. It can influence capable critical thinkers like yourself into becoming skeptical of everything. Even things that are generally accurate.

For example - Your point about the gators is well taken. If you don’t trust any media at all, how can you determine objectively if Napier is preferable to Cristobal? It’s not like you can watch every other coach or every other game. Whereas data collected by and/or written about by “experts” in reality might tell us Cristobal is objectively better. But if you can’t trust any of that you are left making your own decisions with limited information.

It’s a huge problem in our society right now. Not that we’re all dumb, but that our uncertainty about what is real and what isn’t is making us actually less open minded to outside info and thus easier to fool or to lead into faulty thinking.

 

Made me laugh after this thread:

 

No.
mail-in voting is generally safe. There are security measures, such as signature verification, barcodes, and tracking, to ensure ballots are legitimate. Also deadlines for submitting ballots. In audits and investigations there isn’t evidence of systematic fraud. For 2020 there were dozens and dozens of court cases and all showed no fraud or not enough evidence (crackpots). Also for 2020 there were full blown, deep-dive audits (ie Az) that showed, yes, Biden won.
Imo the bigger concern is maga election officials as they have embraced the corrupt nature of trump. (ie Colorado county clerk Tina Peters). Or conspiracy theories promoted by networks (ie Fox News had to pay $900M for spreading lies about voting machines).

However, although there isn’t evidence it occurred yet, our system could be manipulated with enough money and systematic effort. Including an outside state (Russia, Iran). I’m all for a national effort to make voting more safe & secure, simply education and accessible, help for our citizens to voting, and ability to count votes effectively and declare elected officials in a timely manner. But guess which group is against strengthening our entire election process - maga.

not everything that doesn’t go maga’s way must mean they were cheated and it was unfair.