Spreading Misinformation Quotes

This place is a paradox: it’s a backward shit heap with no cell phone signal and thus no WhatsApp. But we have broadband cables at home and jobless aunties on the main street who spread misinformation faster than radio waves. I

It's okay to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second best policy.

...when like-minded people get together, they often end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk to one another.

The goal was to create a distorted reality—a misinformation disease. And like any disease, it would spread. The only question was, ‘What would be the nature of this infection?

Social media, by bombarding users with fast-moving social stimuli, pushed them to rely on quick-twitch social intuition over deliberative reason. All people contain the capacity for both, as well as the potential for the former to overwhelm the latter, which is often how misinformation spreads. And platforms compound the effect by framing all news and information within high-stakes social contexts.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instruction as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Responding to one’s fellow social media users is an example of a broad, tricky problem, and this is why what we call “social media bots”—rogue accounts that spread spam or misinformation—are unlikely to be implemented with AI.

Without an informed public willing to question confident claims, democracy decays and misinformation spreads. Once alternative facts are reported and retweeted, they become the truth. Pseudoscience becomes indistinguishable from real science.

Whatever one thinks about the merits of Trump’s election, or of the UK’s exit from the EU (“Brexit”), it is profoundly troubling to think that these momentous political events were underwritten by falsehoods. And it raises a deep and unsettling question: Can democracy survive in an age of fake news?

Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is to misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage.

Hillary Clinton tried to dismiss her role in paying for the “dossier” by stating that it was simply “opposition research.”29 While it is true that political campaigns often use such research, what Clinton, Simpson, Fusion GPS, and Steele did was antithetical to any definition of “research.” In a column published by The Hill, Ned Ryan explained it this way: Opposition research is based on fact, from voting records, court records and public statements, to tax returns and business relationships. Fusion GPS’s dossier, on the other hand, was misinformation. It was not opposition research because it was not based on fact. Given Fusion GPS’s dependence on Russian gossip spread by Vladimir Putin’s spies, there is a good case to be made that Fusion GPS more deeply colluded with the Russians than anyone else.30

Many professionals have to sign gagging clauses or face the sack if they speak out. The social worker and therapist was familiar with the scare that revelation brings to the survivor. […] We are in this story. It isn't ours, but we are in it nonetheless, not least because of the viscous campaign which has followed us over the last ten years. Any organisation with which we work may receive correspondence from the accused adults’ and ‘false memory’ movements. Some of these propagandists are confidentially dominating the professional and political arguments using new information technology to spread what we consider to be smears, innuendo and misinformation. P8 (refers to authors Beatrix Campbell & Judith Jones – a journalist and a social worker/therapist)

There has been so much misinformation spread about the nature of this interview that the actual events that took place merit discussion. After being discreetly delivered by the Secret Service to the FBI’s basement garage, Hillary Clinton was interviewed by a five-member joint FBI and Department of Justice team. She was accompanied by five members of her legal team. None of Clinton’s lawyers who were there remained investigative subjects in the case at that point. The interview, which went on for more than three hours, was conducted in a secure conference room deep inside FBI headquarters and led by the two senior special agents on the case. With the exception of the secret entry to the FBI building, they treated her like any other interview subject. I was not there, which only surprises those who don’t know the FBI and its work. The director does not attend these kinds of interviews. My job was to make final decisions on the case, not to conduct the investigation. We had professional investigators, schooled on all of the intricacies of the case, assigned to do that. We also as a matter of procedure don’t tape interviews of people not under arrest. We instead have professionals who take detailed notes. Secretary Clinton was not placed under oath during the interview, but this too was standard procedure. The FBI doesn’t administer oaths during voluntary interviews. Regardless, under federal law, it would still have been a felony if Clinton was found to have lied to the FBI during her interview, whether she was under oath or not. In short, despite a whole lot of noise in the media and Congress after the fact, the agents interviewed Hillary Clinton following the FBI’s standard operating procedures.

The advent of the internet has greatly magnified the potential for misinformation and disinformation to spread, to the extent that we may speak of twin plagues in 2020: one caused by a biological virus, the other by even more contagious viral misconceptions and falsehoods. This problem might have been less serious in 2020 had meaningful reforms of the laws and regulations governing the big technology companies been implemented. Despite ample evidence after 2016 that the status quo was untenable, almost nothing was done.

Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage

Haters, witches and wizards are always concern. They publicly act like they are concern or worried as if they really care. but what they are really doing is hating on another person and trying their best to destroy that persons life. They are very good in spreading misinformation and manipulating people.

Barack Obama has spent two decades of his public life advocating for radical anti–Second Amendment zealots’ most extreme anti-gun policies. In his five years in the Oval Office, he has surrounded himself with anti-gun radicals and empowered them to defy federal law and risk innocent lives in pursuit of their agenda of destroying the Second Amendment. He has wealthy, Second Amendment–hating allies right along with him. Through their unified campaign for power and their efforts to impose a vision of a nearly gun-free American on an unwilling nation, they have insulted gun owners, lied to them, impugned their motives, and accused them of spreading misinformation—a case of the pot calling the kettle black, if ever there was one.

What these followers do not realize is that the Islamic faith is mostly a peaceful religion. The violent tactics spread by Islamic radicals is a common misconception of the religion that has made it hard for most Islamic cultures around the world to continue peacefully. The misinformed assume that all Muslims, followers of Islam, are dangerous threats. Yet the truth is that the words of Islamic faith are about peace, not war.

But the person who has done more than any other to popularize the myth is the model/actor/TV host Jenny McCarthy, who, in her many high-profile interviews on the topic, repeatedly characterized her son’s autism as a cataclysm that invaded an otherwise perfect life. When a doctor gave her the diagnosis, McCarthy reports, “I died in that moment.” She has continued to spread misinformation for well over a decade, telling PBS’s Frontline in 2015, “If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we’d rather have the measles versus autism, we’d sign up for the measles.

This was true, but the New York Times nevertheless vilified me for spreading “misinformation” and claimed that the Fulton County Coroner had determined that Aaron’s death was “unrelated to vaccines.” USA Today, Newsweek, TIME, Daily Beast, ABC, CNN, and CBS reported the Times claim.23 But when I called to verify their claim, the Fulton County Coroner told me that the office has never seen Aaron’s body and that no autopsy was ever performed.

The great masses, he wrote in Mein Kampf, “will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie sometimes in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies. Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the possibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others.” Hitler’s lies spread misinformation that was favorable to Germany and unfavorable to us and our allies, and sowed dissension among the American public not just about the war effort but about our own basic system of government. His very well-funded propaganda mission in the United States was twofold: to try to keep the United States from getting into World War II, and also to soften us up, to mess with us, to make us less effective as a country, by finding and exploiting what the Germans called “kernels of disturbance” in the United States. The German propaganda operation in America, according to the first U.S. academic study on the topic, identified these kernels of disturbance as “racial controversies, economic inequalities, petty jealousies in public life,” and “differences of opinion which divide political parties and minority groups.” Even the “frustrated ambitions of discarded politicians.” Germany’s agents were tasked with finding these fissures in American society and then prying them further apart, exploiting them to make Americans hate and suspect each other, and maybe even wish for a new kind of country altogether. A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe. It might even soften us up for an eventual takeover. Hitler was counting above all on racism and religious bigotry to carry the day in the United States, and to set the stage for global domination. “The wholesome aversion for the Negroes and the colored races in general, including the Jews, the existence of popular justice [lynching]…scholars who have studied immigration and gained an insight, by means of intelligence tests, into the inequality of the races—all these strains are an assurance that the sound elements of the United States will one day awaken as they have awakened in Germany,” Hitler said.

The motivations behind why people spread fake news professionally are usually either financial or political.

back then, not many realised that social media was like the moon: it had a bright side, full of light and promise, and then, an unexpected dark side. the same digital platforms could contribute to the spread of misinformation, slander, hate speech, division and falsehood, and were received enthusiastically by autocratic regimes, extremists and demagogues themselves.

The claims of the president directly contradicted much of the early public health information. And while information would sometimes find its way onto the networks, more often they would parrot the president’s misinformation—and, because conservative outlets were his primary source of news, he would parrot theirs. That led to a situation where, for instance, the Fox News medical contributor told Hannity viewers on March 6, 2020, that “the virus should be compared to the flu,” calling flu-level illness the “worst-case scenario.” Misinformation spread about masks, lockdowns, and even death totals, which pundits on Fox News, Newsmax, talk radio, and social media falsely argued were much lower than reported. 23

Current research suggests that being duped by bullshit is a result of thinking superficially rather than an inability to think. Essentially, we fail to ask the right questions when presented with bullshit. When people claim that a Moon landing was faked, that a used car will likely get us another 100,000 miles, that essential oils will calm us and provide more restful sleep, that a politician can solve all of our problems, or a Pollyannaish TED Talk speaker will save the world in only 15 minutes, it will be much easier to dispel the bullshit if everyone is asking critical questions. What agenda does the speaker have? Who is providing the evidence? How credible is the speaker? To get people to stop spreading bullshit, misinformation, fake news, and the like, we will have to get comfortable asking bullshitters, How do you know this to be true? To the best of your knowledge, is the claim accurate? What sort of evidence supports your conclusion? If we do not, bullshit will only continue to pile around us while we waste precious opportunities to encourage optimal decision-making by refocusing on reality and evidence.

To be duped into joining cults and stupid fads, to be manipulated into voting for politicians who promote disastrous policies, to be fooled into ordering sham products, to be tricked into donating vast sums of money to charlatans, to waste decades trying out false solutions to medical ailments, to unwittingly spread misinformation to close friends, is not only unwise. It may ultimately be deadly for the ignorant. It may destroy the minds of the most vulnerable.

Of course, as we have already argued, to some degree the persistence of false beliefs is simply part of the human condition. The core structures of human knowledge and belief are such that social effects can lead to the spread of falsity, even in cases where the world pushes back.

One little piece of misinformation can break down communication between people, causing every person it touches to become infected and contagious to others. Imagine that every single time others gossip to you, they insert a computer virus into your mind, causing you to think a little less clearly every time. Then imagine that in an effort to clean up your own confusion and get some relief from the poison, you gossip and spread these viruses to someone else.

Many obstacles needed to be overcome; culturally ingrained apathy, fear of retaliation, the general ill health and drug addiction issues of the populace, the tremendous misinformation spread by the corporate propaganda machine, and the current set of repressive laws.

There's an urban myth, still popular in some quarters, that the Glock can't be detected by X-ray machines. The myth was spread by a Bruce Willis line in the 1990 movie Die Hard 2: "That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun, made in Germany. Doesn't show up on your airport X-ray machines." Every bit of the line was false: there was no such thing as a "Glock 7"; Glocks are made of polymer, not porcelain; it was made in Austria, not Germany; and they do show up on X-ray machines. But in a strange twist, the firestorm of controversy triggered by the false rumors may have helped goose publicity and aid Glock sales.

The resultant violence is rare, but letting politicians spout whatever nonsense the Internet offers without challenge is indeed a slippery slope. The BLAME THE BLOGGER is in some ways a free pass for politicians to lie; if they are just quoting someone else’s claim, can you really blame them? We should blame them; politicians have a public influence that the average blogger does not wield, and they should be held to a higher standard when it comes to science. Calling out their repetitions of silly, ridiculous, or downright dangerous Internet nonsense can have wide-ranging impacts: stopping the spread of abortion-related misinformation could help reduce the possibility of extremist violence, for example, and building trust in climate science could help push for action, quite literally helping to save the world.

Without an informed public willing to question confident claims, democracy decays and misinformation spreads.

The deliberate spread of mis-information is easier if access of information on the internet can be commercialized, or sold to the highest bidder. On December 14, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted in favor of repealing these policies, 3–2, along party lines, as the 2015 vote had occurred. ... On June 11, 2018, the repeal of the FCC's rules took effect, ending network neutrality regulation in the United States. (Trump era)

Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive.This is a subset of misinformation, which also may be unintentional. The English word disinformation is a loose translation of the Russian dezinformatsiya,[derived from the title of a KGB black propaganda department. Joseph Stalin coined the term, giving it a French-sounding name to claim it had a Western origin. Russian use began with a "special disinformation office" in 1923.[Disinformation was defined in Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1952) as "false information with the intention to deceive public opinion”. Wikipedia

I meet people who bought into the misinformation spread about Hillary Clinton and couldn’t bring themselves to vote for someone who was insufficiently attentive to proper email security protocols.

All of this mess can be caused by one little computer virus. One little piece of misinformation can break down communication between people, causing every person it touches to become infected and contagious to others. Imagine that every single time others gossip to you, they insert a computer virus into your mind, causing you to think a little less clearly every time. Then imagine that in an effort to clean up your own confusion and get some relief from the poison, you gossip and spread these viruses to someone else.

The study notes that misinformation remains in an individual’s memory and continues to influence their thinking, even if the person is aware that they are mistaken. The person is also likely to make use of the misinformation, especially if it fits with their existing beliefs and makes a logical story. This then leads to spreading the inaccurate information to other people.

In our daily lives, we fail to exercise our critical-thinking muscles and instead leave it to others to draw conclusions. As a result, these muscles atrophy over time. Without an informed public willing to question confident claims, democracy decays and misinformation spreads. Once alternative facts are reported and retweeted, they become the truth. Pseudoscience becomes indistinguishable from real science.

confirm that Latinos in the U.S. are more likely to consume, spread, and receive fake news and misinformation online compared to the average population.