America's gullibility crisis
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
www.axios.com /2024/10/19/musk-ackman-election-misinformation
America's gullibility crisis
Zachary Basu 4-5 minutes 10/19/2024
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
In the heat of this historic election , educated elites who should know better — billionaires, elected officials, journalists — keep falling for fakes, conspiracy theories and outright lies.
Why it matters: Human gullibility is not a new phenomenon. But social media and polarized politics are exposing it at industrial scale, fueled by a poisonous cocktail of bad actors, media illiteracy and plummeting trust in traditional news.
Driving the news: Each day on the digital campaign trail has brought a torrent of false or misleading claims, often courtesy of partisan accounts with massive audiences. In the last few weeks alone:
- MAGA influencers breathlessly spread the false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris used a teleprompter during her Univision town hall, which the X algorithm then promoted in its trending topics as fact.
- Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) posted a purported screenshot of a headline in The Atlantic that read: "To Save Democracy Harris May Need To Steal An Election." It was fake, and Roy deleted the post.
- Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire with 1.4 million followers on X, obsessively promoted allegations from an ABC News "whistleblower" that the network had given Harris questions in advance of her debate with Trump. On Wednesday, more than a month later, Ackman admitted it was "fake."
Zoom in: Elon Musk, whose takeover of X has enabled fake news slop at scale, is among the most consistent offenders — credulously promoting baseless claims about voter fraud that rack up billions of views .
- "Is this true?" the pro-Trump billionaire will often ask his legions of followers about blatant bunk, helping it spread like wildfire.
- Musk frequently touts the "Community Notes" system, whereby X users can vote to add fact checks to false posts, but many posts don't get the Community Notes treatment until well after they go viral, if at all.
The other side: It's not just Trump supporters who are prone to gullibility and confirmation bias.
- Pro-Harris accounts falsely claimed last week that former Bush aide Karl Rove was campaigning for her in Pennsylvania. "It's amazing what people come up with and what they'll fall for," Rove tweeted .
- Liberal conspiracy theories flooded social media after the first assassination attempt against Trump, a phenomenon that researchers dubbed "BlueAnon" — a play on the far-right QAnon movement.
The big picture: The misinformation crisis may be playing out online, but the real-world implications are vast.
- The deadly hurricanes that swept across the Southeast in recent weeks exposed the staggering extent to which people have become prone to conspiracy theories, spurring threats against emergency responders .
- "The truth is, it's getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality," The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel wrote in an article about hurricane conspiracies headlined: "I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is."
- 54% of respondents in an Axios Vibes survey published last month agreed with the statement, "I've disengaged from politics because I can't tell what's true."
The bottom line: Never before have so many people been so exposed to so much misinformation. Given the increasing ubiquity of AI-generated content, this may be only the beginning.
Go deeper
NBC's former chief marketer: "I helped create a monster" by promoting Trump
Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump during the Celebrity Apprentice live season finale on May 16, 2010, in New York City. Photo: Bill Tompkins/Getty Images
The former chief marketing officer of NBC apologized to the country in a Wednesday op-ed for helping craft and sell "a false narrative" on "The Apprentice" that former President Trump was a "a super-successful businessman."
Why it matters: The NBC reality competition show hosted by Trump depicted him as a tough, business-savvy boss and made him a household name long before his political ambitions led him to Washington.
Tags
Who is online
473 visitors
Trump and MAGA depend on misinformation, it is their lifeblood.
John
I really liked this article thanks for sharing it.
No sane person can disagree that Trump spews a lot of bullshit, half-truths, out-of-context facts and cherry picks portions of an issue to support his side of the argument but doesn't Kamala do the same?
From The BBC fact checkers -
Is Trump planning to cut Social Security and Medicare?
CLAIM : “Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
VERDICT : This is misleading. In this campaign, Trump has said repeatedly he would not do this, although he has suggested he would in the past.
Is inflation down?
CLAIM : “Inflation is down under 3%.”
VERDICT : That figure is correct but some context is needed here.
Inflation, which is the increase in the price of something over time, is down from a peak of 9.1% under the Biden administration and it is higher than when Mr Trump left office.
When President Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was 1.4% but it rose significantly during the first two years of his administration.
How many jobs has the Biden administration created?
CLAIM : “We have created 16 million new jobs.”
VERDICT : That is roughly correct. 15.8 million jobs have been added under the Biden administration, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, when the Biden government entered the White House in January 2021, the US was recovering from the Covid pandemic, which crippled the economy and during which more than 20 million jobs were lost.
“Many of the jobs would have come back if Trump had won in 2020 - but the American Rescue Plan played a major role in the speed and aggressiveness of the labour market recovery,” says Professor Mark Strain, an economist at Georgetown University.
Did Trump drive the US economy into the ground?
CLAIM : “He froze in the face of the COVID crisis. He drove our economy into the ground.”
VERDICT : The US economy did take a big hit during the pandemic, like most countries, but it also bounced back under Trump.
During Trump’s four years in office (Jan 2017- Jan 2021), the average annual growth rate of the US economy was 2.3%.
Under the Biden administration, this figure has been 2.2% - so almost the same.
Did Trump tank the immigration deal?
CLAIM : "We had a chance to pass the toughest bipartisan border security bill in decades but Donald Trump tanked the deal."
VERDICT : Trump was publicly against the Biden administration's immigration bill, but voting on it was up to Congress.
It failed to pass a vote in February with the majority of lawmakers in the US Senate opposing it.
Trump did not have a vote as he was not an elected official at the time, but he did call for his Republican allies to oppose it.
Did Trump ban abortions?
CLAIM : “In more than 20 states, there is a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions, even for rape and incest... be sure if he were to win, he would sign a national abortion ban"
VERDICT : Bans were enacted by states after Trump left office but, as president, he appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v Wade. Trump has said he would not sign a national abortion ban.
During his campaign, he has declined to back a national abortion ban and said he believes the issue should be left to individual states.
Fact-checking six of Kamala Harris's campaign claims (bbc.com)
Mail in/drop box voting is in full swing, nothing said or done at this point by media or on discussion boards is going to make any difference in the outcome. The American electorate is not as stupid or uninformed as some want to imply. Jack Smith's attempt at last minute election interference will not work. The truth about Harris' hard left history and the progressive agenda can't be covered up or hidden. Advantage....Trump.