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Russian Trolls Tried -- and Failed -- To Push Divisive Content On Vaccines (fortune.com)
Russian trolls "seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society," according to a new study shared by long-time Slashdot reader skam240.
"The topic became another issue the Russian trolls seized upon to widen existing rifts in America and turn citizens against each other," reports NBC News.
But Fortune reports there's more to the story: While the latest study highlights how Russian outfits have increasingly used social media to toy with people's emotions to influence their behavior, it's also notable for the fact that most Twitter users appeared to have ignored its anti-vaccine messages... Outside of the Russian trolls, virtually no real Twitter users actually responded to the messages, said the paper's author David Broniatowski, an assistant professor in at George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Generally, Russian trolls try to exploit controversial topics like religion, and race and class division, but "sometimes they get it hilariously wrong," he said.
Broniatowski attributed the campaign's failure to the content of the tweets, which included: "VaccinateUS mandatory #vaccines infringe on constitutionally protected religious freedoms;" "Did you know there was a secret government database of #vaccine-damaged children? #VaccinateUS;" and "Dont get #vaccines. Iluminati are behind it. #VaccinateUS." The messages were so far-fetched that even people who believe in conspiracy theories chose to ignore them.
But Fortune reports there's more to the story: While the latest study highlights how Russian outfits have increasingly used social media to toy with people's emotions to influence their behavior, it's also notable for the fact that most Twitter users appeared to have ignored its anti-vaccine messages... Outside of the Russian trolls, virtually no real Twitter users actually responded to the messages, said the paper's author David Broniatowski, an assistant professor in at George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Generally, Russian trolls try to exploit controversial topics like religion, and race and class division, but "sometimes they get it hilariously wrong," he said.
Broniatowski attributed the campaign's failure to the content of the tweets, which included: "VaccinateUS mandatory #vaccines infringe on constitutionally protected religious freedoms;" "Did you know there was a secret government database of #vaccine-damaged children? #VaccinateUS;" and "Dont get #vaccines. Iluminati are behind it. #VaccinateUS." The messages were so far-fetched that even people who believe in conspiracy theories chose to ignore them.
Because dumbasses like you were using it as an excuse to not vaccinate their kids and they hoped removing it would help avoid more kids dying of diseases we can prevent.
TFA>_ Russian outfits have increasingly used social media to toy with people's emotions to influence their behavior
They're not toying with people's emotions, they find cracks in American classes (arising from poor education in the first place) and use them to place wedges (inflammatory comments) and divide the country even further.
That is not very sophisticated from them and the guilt is partly upon the Americans themselves for failing to provide decent affordable education. It's funny how people from a failed ideology (socialism/communism) can still exploit flaws in capitalism.
Their methods are the classical FUD, applied to vaccination, Democrats (supposedly) ulterior motives, technology (space exploration/round world), etc etc
Only the stupid fall for it, but the problem is that success in America is measured by affluence, not by intellectual prowess. Given enough stupid voters one could even promote a stupid President and make him victorious.
People have a tendency of being proud of what they do even if it's dumb. Some Windows users are proud of not understanding computers -- imagine that!
I know people who are anti-vaxxers who are not stupid or uneducated. What they are is emotionally overwrought. In the architecture of the human brain, emotions have absolute priority over reason, so once you give your feelings a free rein they can lead you anywhere.
We call these particular people pushing the anti-vaxx bullshit "Russian trolls" because of the tools they happen to use, but if you look at what they're actually *doing*, it'd be more accurate to call them "Russian propagandists". And propagandists know all about the power of inciting passion, both positive and negative.
The Russian government has taken the measure of our society, and they obviously believe they have found a weakness. Freedom of communication and association. If their propagandists can encourage people to associate based on violent and paranoid passions, they can weaken us. It's psychological warfare, and that's not just a metaphor. In this case there will be casualties.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To answer your question: because it would be immoral. The end does not justify arbitrary means.
I am always amazed that people respond to what is obviously a bad joke. I guess it does prove how effective social media is against stupid people.
As long as you also make "Communicating griefs about my son's almost death" and "Communicating about stuff people other than me dislike" a crime too.
Personally, I'd like to make "Having kids without also having a fundamental understanding of the Bill of Rights and Constitution" a crime punishable by death, but I don't think that's about to happen anymore than your criminalizing desires.
/sarcasm
Banning people's speech because you dislike it is against the founding principles of the US for a reason. The fact you failed to learn that reason in school is the reason why your hate is misplaced and why it will go unanswered.
Your own link indicates that you’ve got the cause and effect backwards. It wasn’t normal people being wary of thiomersal that led to its removal: it was the removal of thiomersal that led to normal people being wary of it.
The reason thiomersal was removed from vaccines was because it metabolizes to ethylmercury, which is similar to a known-danger, methylmercury. Working on the assumption that it was just as dangerous, the CDC did some naive extrapolations from what we knew about methylmercury dosages and determined that the dosage of thiomersal in a vaccine, while likely not dangerous, was close enough that it was better to have it removed. So, as a purely precautionary measure, the CDC had thiomersal removed from all vaccines beginning in 1999 (with Europe following suit), which was the right thing to do until further studies could be done. Later studies discovered that ethylmercury flushes out of the human body much faster than methylmercury and interacts very differently with our tissue, making it nowhere close to as dangerous as methylmercury, meaning that it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines.
As for your advocacy that people make up their own minds, how about you let someone who has gone to school for the better part of a decade so that they could specialize on this topic break the issue down for you, rather than relying on Wikipedia? What next, hand people the source code to the Linux kernel and tell them they should make up their own minds about whether it’s being used to spy on out children? People aren’t equipped to make up their own minds about these sorts of topics. Either equip them to do so or point them to those who are. Telling people to “go and make up their own minds” without a foundation to do so or any of the relevant context that is necessary for an informed opinion is like pushing someone off a cliff without a parachute or any training on how to use one.
And while a few people took note of thiomersal’s removal and bandied around conspiracy theories, it probably would have blown over, were it not for Andrew Wakefield publishing his long-since discredited, retracted by its publisher, fraudulently-researched paper indicating a link between vaccines and autism. In doing so, he effectively threw fire on the burgeoning anti-vax movement, allowing it to become the circus it is today, with brainless celebrities repeating utter and complete FUD as fact. Mind you, he was never licensed as a medical practitioner in the US, and he was stripped of his license in Europe as a result of his name being erased from the medical register by the UK’s General Medical Council, which is the strictest sanction they could impose after finding him guilty on all charges brought against him.
As for thiomersal in vaccines being linked to autism, it hasn’t been. In fact, the rate of autism has continued to increase since thiomersal was removed back in 1999, which is a contraindicator to the notion that it’s at fault. But hey, why let facts get in the way of what you’re saying?
There's a relatively non-obvious problem with your suggestion: Truths and falsehoods often don't have the same quality of information.
To give a really simple example, consider these two statements:
1) Joe tells you that he has invented a perpetual motion machine.
2) Ed tells you that Joe almost certainly has not invented a perpetual motion machine.
This is already simple, and I picked a topic so that you would already know that Joe is lying (or is wrong), and Ed is correct. What's more, this is an example that should be relatively easy to test and verify, so there's not a lot of ambiguity. Still, a lot of people will probably believe Joe, even in the face of evidence against it.
But now ignore the subject matter for a second and think about the rest of the sentence. In this example, Joe claims [A] is true, and Ed claims that [A] is "almost certainly" false. That's because Joe, in the act of lying, is free to make statements with total certainty. Ed, in telling the authentic truth, has to admit that his knowledge is incomplete. Until Ed gathers more information about Joe's claim, he can't tell you what the machine is actually doing, does not have a physical model for the machines operation, and so on a certain level, has to concede a level of uncertainty.
In addition, Joe is telling you something you want to believe, it's exciting. It opens possibilities. In a lie, Joe is free to construct his statement to tell you things you want to hear, and to engage you in whatever way is advantageous to him. Ed, on the other hand, it telling you something boring and disappointing, and it closes off possibilities. Because he's telling the truth, the kind of engagement that he can offer is limited by the reality of the subject he's trying to convey.
I'm not an experts-- and there are experts in this kind of thing-- but I think it's pretty clear when you think about it that you can't get people to believe something simply by presenting them with true information, even from an abundance of sources. Often enough, people choose to believe falsehoods because they're comforting, easy, pleasant, or exciting.
It also makes a lot of sense when you think about your suggestion. You're asking, "Why not create a bot army that argues for the truth?" But there are already plenty of people posting the truth. You don't need a bot army to push the idea that people should vaccinate their children, because you already have an army of smart, responsible, informed people who are pushing that viewpoint, but it's still failing to convince the anti-vaxxers.
It's not because there isn't enough information or that there aren't enough voices, but that "vaccines caused my child's illness" is a story that people like. It lets them off the hook for any responsibility for their child's illness. It puts the blame on something that seems small and easy to avoid. If it's genetic, you don't really have control over that, and it feels like it's your fault for having shitty genes. If it's pollution, then you have to figure out who to blame and how to stop pollution. If it's a vaccine... well, you never liked bringing your kids in for vaccines anyway.