this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024

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Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport, a small town in the UK, much worse (www.prospectmagazine.co.uk)

submitted 3 months ago by tardigrada to c/technology

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archived version

Within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass-stabbings in Southport, a seaside town in northwest England, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati”—a Muslim migrant to the UK—alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services.

None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27m impressions on social media.

The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, with nearly 10m followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat”—even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”.

One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may be now run out of an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media”—you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 73 points 3 months ago (6 children)

I went on FB a while ago just to see how bad it was, and it's so horrible. I know the article is about Twitter, but all social media is like this. Everything everywhere is just bots feeding that everything is scary.

I live in Seattle, and according to any facebook post by bot or person it's just a constant warzone of homeless people and liberals just setting fire and causing crime. It's so disheartening. I have no idea how to fix it either, it's just outright lies, and terrified suburbanites just eat it up.

[–] TheOneCurly@lemm.ee 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I tried for a while fighting in my local facebook groups, but it just served to make me mad and didn't put a dent in the constant barrage of nonsense. I started blocking them all and finally just stopped using facebook entirely.

It's sad since those are really the only online groups for my town. I just have no interest in engaging in the local community now.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Local groups are the absolute worst. I realized exactly what you did, that it's the absolute worst most horrid people in my area all together. Nextdoor was even worse. I remember (no shit) a picture of a black man walking down a sidewalk with a caption "Anyone know why he's here?". I was horrified that my neighbors were like that, just the absolute horrible racism in doing that.

[–] Devi 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

My local nextdoor has an issue with non white people in vans. Like normal builders eating their lunch and Sharon down the road is posting "Anyone know why this man is here? Stayed there for 45 minutes, very suspicious, might be stealing dogs".

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I legit chuckled at the ending. Because that is exactly how they write comments. Some stupid fucking thing in their brain, "Black people steal dogs". They heard somewhere that a dog went missing and their critical thinking skills go "The boogeyman black person obviously did it"

[–] TheRtRevKaiser 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's practically a guarantee that this Sharon's dog is the most obnoxious, poorly trained little shit to ever walk the earth on four legs, too. Nobody wants your fucking dog, Sharon, it's an unholy terror.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago

Sadly there are dog fighting rings and the little yappy dogs get stolen all the time for bait…

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

People with too much time. My wife had a busy kid drop off/pickup / work schedule. If she was done work early she would park a block away from school and sleep in the car till dismissal time...some Karen came out complaining she can't sleep in her car and needed to leave. lol

[–] Devi 7 points 3 months ago

Awful woman

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 21 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I've never had a Facebook account but been questioned by UK police who demanded my non existent Facebook account maybe a dozen times.

Unfortunately I'm now on benifit having lost my job and they keep bring up damn Facebook and trying to make me make an account.

There's something badly wrong here, don't use Facebook imo I honestly think it's some kind of trap at this point.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Some kids once told me that if you're not on shitbook you don't exist...maybe they're cops now.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What's the context? Are the police the ones trying to get you to make a Facebook account?

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I was raided they accused me of wanting to shoot up my workplace, I worked out later someone made a joke when I was on my holiday and a new member took it seriously and phoned the mayor's office.

I was questioned about my non existant Facebook account in almost every police interwiew I went through which all in all I'd say was close to a dozen.

Whole thing was a nightmare which ruined my entire life at the time, the fact the mayor was involved I think made the police absolutely crazy with trying to get me on anything at all. But yeah Facebook came up way way too often to the point I felt they wanted to arrest me for not having one and I was some type of criminal scum or some psychopath for not having one.

Ultimately they didn't get me on anything but I kinda feel if I had a Facebook anything I ever posted on it would be twisted in some kind of way to get me.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's horrible. I'm so sorry to hear that.

[–] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it sucked at the time, took me quite a while to work out what actually happened.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I actually heard a story where someone made an allegation of racism against somebody, the police logged it but never visited that person or informed them about it. Then that person had a check for a job (I believe working with Children) which involved seeing police records, and it was recorded there. It couldn't be overturned or be removed because it was in no way a conviction, but it still stopped them from getting a job regardless.

[–] baggins 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

actually heard a story where someone made an allegation

Reposting things like this doesn't help - people will pick up this as fact. Unless you can prove it, don't post it.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The story itself isn't the allegation, the allegation of racism was part of the story. Apologies if my comment didn't convey that clearly enough

[–] baggins 1 points 3 months ago

Ah, right. Thanks.

[–] Frederic 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Imagine in Canada, where real news media like TV, newspaper, etc, cannot be used by Meta (FB, IG, etc). So in a Canadian facebook feed, you only have conspiracy and right-wing false info, that's it. For the people who took their info from FB, they are flooded by fake/alarming news.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 14 points 3 months ago

Unintended consequences for sure. No news is a good idea on FB, except then all you have is fake BS. Man people will always find ways to make things worse.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

but all social media is like this.

I'm not a bot, and we're talking on social media.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 9 points 3 months ago

*corporate. There's a profit motive for them to encourage the behavior and be addictive

[–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We’re talking on a forum. This is not social media. It has none of the hallmarks of social media, like friending people, following their feeds, or being a spot where you post about your lives. Forums have never been and will never be social media.

Just like Facebook Marketplace isn’t social media, just because you can do something on a site doesn’t mean that site belongs to a completely separate category of sites.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is not social media.

I hate to break it to you, but Reddit and similar fall under the category of social media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network)

Lemmy is made up of a network of individual installations of the Lemmy software that can intercommunicate. This departs from the centralized, monolithic structure of other social media platforms.[9] It has been described as a federated alternative to Reddit.[10]

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

It really doesn’t. It is pointless to describe forums as social media because then you’re really calling everything on the internet social media. News comment sections, blogs with comment sections, even Amazon product pages which have comment sections! You can even follow sellers on Amazon.

There has to be a line somewhere and it’s definitely on the other side of forums.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We were lucky the KGB didn't have access to social media tech

...were.

[–] jarfil 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I've been going to Facebook as of late, following some science, comics, LGBT+, and MLP authors. The off-topic stuff I get, are some news, airplane stuff, dashcam videos, and so on.

I just checked my Twitter feed, it's full of ponies, furries, space, and some game memes, plus random ads. My alt account is still full of R34.

I get 0 news about where I live, I refuse to follow any politicians or influencers on either platform.

Just opened Chrome, and the first 2 pages of Google suggested links, are all stuff I want to read (mostly science related).

The Algorithm giveth and The Algorithm taketh away. Tame thine Algorithm to thy desire.

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 8 points 3 months ago

It doesn't matter whether your feed is "tamed", though. This is a massive issue that extends well beyond the happy fantasy land you've created filled with rainbows and ponies. Even those who don't use mainstream social media at all are affected when it influences the real world.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 25 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The problem isn’t merely that Elon Musk is manifestly unsuited to the job of unelected social media tsar. The problem is that no one should have that job.

[–] jarfil 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that elected officials are using the unelected tsar's social media to share official announcements and engage in public debate.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Elected officials, journalists, activists, it's gradually becoming clear that everyone who uses centralised social media is part of the problem. Promoting the fediverse and keeping it resistant to takeover by fascists or anyone else ought to be a national security goal.

[–] Grimpen@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 months ago

I'd have to agree. An official Mastodon instance for announcements, and then just echo posts wherever desired.

Could go further, have public libraries get funding to run public instances or similar, but I think you are already seeing non-profits and maybe some co-ops formed to run Fediverse instances, so the need is less.

[–] apotheotic 5 points 3 months ago

Agreed, but its doubly problematic that the social media tsar is a fascist