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The DISINFORMATION Dozen: Just 12 Anti-Vax liars responsible for the majority of vaccine BS

posted 3 years ago by brux (14666)
72 replies | jump to latest

Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes

Fox News’s embarrassing blunder in the White House briefing room
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/16/fox-newss-embarrassing-blunder-white-house-briefing-room/

I, like Doocy, was intrigued by where this number came from Thursday. I, unlike Doocy apparently, actually did 30 seconds of research on it. That’s all the time it took to find the publicly available study — which even has the number Psaki cited in its title, “The Disinformation Dozen” — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study was picked up by the likes of NPR and others in May.

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The Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of anti vaccine content At the outset of this research, we identified a dozen individuals who appeared to be extremely influential creators of digital anti-vaccine content. These individuals were selected either because they run anti-vaccine social media accounts with large numbers of followers, because they produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or because their growth was accelerating rapidly at the outset of our research in February.

Full profiles of each are available at the end of this report.
1. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Kelly Brogan
10. Christiane Northrup
11. Ben Tapper
12. Kevin Jenkins

from the PDF file:
The Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content
Our analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook and Twitter between 1
February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is
attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.
This shows that while many people might spread anti-vaccine content on social media
platforms, the content they share often comes from a much more limited range of
sources. Exposure to even a small amount of online vaccine misinformation has been
shown by the Vaccine Confidence Project to reduce the number of people willing to take
a Covid vaccine by up to 8.8 percent.6
Platforms have failed to act on the Disinformation Dozen
Despite repeatedly violating Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s terms of service
agreements, nine of the Disinformation Dozen remain on all three platforms, while just
three have been comprehensively removed from just one platform.
This is an extension of platforms’ failure to act on vaccine misinformation. Research
conducted by CCDH last year has shown that platforms fail to act on 95 percent of the
Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them, and we have uncovered evidence
that Instagram’s algorithm actively recommends similar misinformation.7
Tracking of 425 anti-vaccine accounts by CCDH shows that their total following across
platforms now stands at 59.2 million as a result of these failures.
8 The 20 anti-vaxxers
with the largest followings account for over two-thirds of this total.

[–] Freeion (111) 3 years ago

I find it hilarious that in 2021, people still believe the myth of centralized misinformation. I'm sure those twelve have large numbers of followers, but deplatforming them will only result in a dozen others popping up and most likely harden the group's resolve.

It's understandable that it's easier to believe that people are just brainwashed into thinking a certain way than admit people naturally tend to seek out opinions that match their own. Just that it isn't true, there will always be people who think differently than you do, you might not understand why they think that way but disagreement is human.

[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

I think there is something more going on that just people being stupid ... it is a focusing and cohering of the stupid and mobilizing them for political means.

[–] moviechatterer (13419) 3 years ago

yeah but like Freeion says , you can never cut the head off the snake, its a hydra
Due to "information revoultion" everyone has a voice,
and this rabble will *always* have a few loudest voices egging the rest of them on.

[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

>> Due to "information revoultion" everyone has a voice

Hahaha ... that's ridiculous. Maybe take a media, math or communications class.

If the USA did not have Fox News and rat-fink Clinton's media consolidation de-regulations the could would not be hostage to right-wing ignorant rabble. We could be struggling with the extreme Left nonsense, but I really doubt it because before de-regulation the media was pretty responsible about keeping the extremes of both sides out of the public mind ... and that includes even when there were good or popular ideas.

We never saw Noam Chomsky ( supposedly the darling of the left ), for example, in the media, even on the supposedly Liberal or extremely Liberal PBS, yet we see a lot of total right-wing nut-jobs today, in fact that is most of what we see.

So much so that no one can get even a word in edgewise, and they are drowned out, ignored or shouted down by the moron majority.

We have a country that has let its industry and government fall into fascist hands over the last few decades and we will be extremely lucky if we can get it back, and I am not optimistic about that.

[–] Rorikon (16425) 3 years ago

Schools not teaching people to be smart but too focused on race stuff and parents taking kids out of school for teaching race stuff so they're home schooled by wannabe teachers. Combination of shit that makes Americans stupid in general and why they bleed so much money to every other nation even though they're the richest nation.

Don't forget it only takes a small number of people to spread things like wildfire. Like a virus. One person says something, small followers pick it up and spread it around and then those pick it up and spread it around where eventually you got a whole city or state spouting it. Why it's so easy for foreign authoritative adversarial nations to manipulate these nations.

[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

Schools are obviously not focused too much on "race stuff" or we would not have so much racism. Texas is the largest school textbook market, so when they order masses of books full of crap, a lot of the rest of the country learns from those books.

Saying the US is the richest nation when in fact we have the largest economy is just another lie we are not really being told how to interpret. Richest nation when in the developed world we have the most people in poverty, much of them non-white, we have the highest prices in things like Internet, telephone, health care, etc.

It is not just that things get spread around, it is that lies are spread around deliberately and amplified by the right-wing media, and the right-wing trolls too.

[–] B1cKsurN (14866) 3 years ago

Soooooo...where's the evidence?

[–] wheelin176 (2026) 3 years ago

Like you I'm waiting for an answer with a link.

[–] B1cKsurN (14866) 3 years ago

These are the same crazies that actually believe a bunch of unorganized people can successfully overthrow the US Governement with batons and viking hats.

[–] chilone (17281) 3 years ago

If the "government" was a bunch of leftist, gender neutral soy boys, they could.

[–] JoWilli (15274) 3 years ago

just wear 7 masks, problem solved...

[–] Rorikon (16425) 3 years ago

Pfft. Pathetic. I wear 24 like triple layered tampon/diapers/toilet paper. Everywhere I go I can't breath but at least I know I am safe. I even mask my privates in case it pops out to take a breath of erection.

[–] KinkyInk (1693) 3 years ago

'Disinformation' is the new tool of the Left to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Public debate is not permitted on issues where the Left has already determined what the 'truth' is.

A year ago, they were doing the same thing to anyone who suggested that Covid-19 may have come from the Wuhan lab. They were shunned, banned on social media, and publicly shamed. You will be penalized if you question the dogma.

Somewhere, George Orwell is telling his critics, "I told you so."

[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

The Right is pushing disinformation to shout down the Left.

The Right cannot abide by the rule of law and has to corrupt the government and break its oaths to protect the Constitution when it votes down an investigation on an insurgency because it knows in advance the result will implicate them.

The Right funds all kinds of disinformation about problems with the vaccine, and this after denying the pandemic and doing nothing about it for almost a year, and then just pretending to take it seriously.

In the broader picture the right brings on these catastrophes because the catastrophes hurt the people and are always money making opportunities to steal from them. Disinformation is a big part of how they do it ... but the other side is in knowing how to manipulate very stupid people.