I think there’s a kernel of truth in Thomas Friedman’s most recent New York Times column. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bears some resemblance to the monarchical wars of conquest of 200 years ago but there’s a major difference: it’s being shown nearly in real tie in thousands, maybe millions of videos and that’s new:
Our world is not going to be the same again because this war has no historical parallel. It is a raw, 18th-century-style land grab by a superpower — but in a 21st-century globalized world. This is the first war that will be covered on TikTok by super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones, so acts of brutality will be documented and broadcast worldwide without any editors or filters. On the first day of the war, we saw invading Russian tank units unexpectedly being exposed by Google maps, because Google wanted to alert drivers that the Russian armor was causing traffic jams.
You have never seen this play before.
but I think he’s missing something basic. 720,000 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube per day. Let’s assume arguendo that the statistics for TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are about the same. Obviously, it’s impossible for any one person to watch all of that. How much can you rely on the veracity of any given video uploaded? I would say not very much. This goes back to the wisecrack represented in dozens, hundreds, or thousands of memes “you can’t put anything on the Internet that isn’t true”.
Whether it’s true or not has little relevance to whether people believe it or its ability to affect popular opinion. Assume everything is disinformation and propaganda.
Said another way the big difference between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and prior major conflicts is that we’re being deluged in a torrent of disinformation and propaganda and have little way of distinguishing what is true from what is false.
I think that raises risks unlike any we’ve ever seen before.
†Said another way the big difference between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and prior major conflicts is that we’re being deluged in a torrent of disinformation and propaganda and have little way of distinguishing what is true from what is false.â€
What’s new about being deluged in disinformation and propaganda? Currently, distorted information applies almost to any topic, person, event etc. For instance, the pandemic is controlled by a centralized version of COVID science, data, statistics, depended upon government approval, backed up by legacy media’s filtered reporting and big tech’s censorship. Fundamentally, we were told what government, media, tech wanted us to read and hear, molding us as to what to fear and how to act, while ignoring or deriding anyone disputing it’s origins, lethality of disease, and treatment options.
The J6 protest is another incident whose full story has been hidden behind thousands of unreleased hours of WH video. The initial images purchased, and first streamed on CNN, were taken by John Sullivan, an Antifa/BLM activist. His filmed impressions shaped and programmed people to see the Capitol protest in the worst of all lights, as intended to overthrow an election, rather than allow more scrutiny of it’s many questionable irregularities.
Then you have political leaders, doctors, even Presidents who have had reputations diminished, scorched by the torrent of manipulated, propagandized materials deliberately and dishonestly generated by those in power, wanting more power. I really think that’s why people are waking up, displaying discontent, which hopefully will evolve into reinvigorating choice and freedom through the power of their vote. The Canadian truckers, the US convoy rolling across America is just the beginning…..
Speaking of covid politics……….
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-cdc-discovers-actual-public-health-just-in-time/
What Mr. Dooley said about the Supreme Court is undoubtedly true of physicians and public health officials.
Could be the elections but at least speaking from the physician POV I think we have probably reached peak vaccinations. Omicron was our most contagious variant yet so it seems pretty likely that of those not vaccinated a pretty high percentage have had covid. If you were going to drop mitigation efforts now is a good time. (Note that in the article cited it also claims lockdowns. Is anyone still having lockdowns? In the last 6 months? Year? )
Steve