Ealing wrote:A simple answer as to why the numbers were exaggerated
could be either pure and simple greed, a bi-product of the pandora's box of social media being opened or more than likely a mix of both.
I've been giving this a fair bit of thought and it doesn't necessarily need to be because a shady cabal is pulling strings to make it happen it could just be a cascade of self-interest and the way social algorithms work that have massively skewed not only the way the information is presented but also how in general we are interpreting that information.
Selling a pandemic (before pandemics. were cool) To begin, media manipulation is a fairly straight forward process. In fact, Marc Van Ranst, Belgium crisis manager for the flu commissioner, pretty much outlined how he did just that during the swine flu pandemic.
Short version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjxHoUyiAM8Full version:
https://vimeo.com/320913130Now it should be pointed out that Van Ranst was more than likely acting in the very best of intentions. I'll take it at face value that his job was to protect the people of Belgium from a
potential pandemic so he invoked the fear of something far greater than was ever-present to pull the levers he needed for widespread social compliance and maximum vaccination uptake.
That said, the exact same tools and processes could have been used for more nefarious purposes. I'm not for one second saying they were, but a big pharma company standing to make billions on the supply of the vaccine could make a man like Van Ranst very, very wealthy just for doing the exact same thing. Not saying this is the case just that like any tools and processes they could be used for good or bad intentions.
Social media makes things easier/worseFast forward 11 years to 2020 and the media manipulation has become even easier due to the mass prevalence of social media for three reasons.
Firstly, the audience on Facebook and Twitter has grown almost exponentially in the last 11 years meaning direct communication is easier.
Facebook had 150 million users in 2009. By 2020 it had increased to 1.69 billion.
https://mashable.com/2009/12/30/faceboo ... urope=truehttps://www.statista.com/statistics/490 ... ook-users/Secondly, the impact of news feed algorithms within social media has shifted the purpose of news outlets from being true journalistic entities publishing the story to something more akin to marketing specialists fighting for attention in a marketplace that is ever increasing and for a share of attention with an audience whose focus is being automatically curated by the algorithms.
Whether by design or not, social media is a propagandist's dream and can just as easily drive a narrative by automated accident than by deliberate intent.
Good article on this here from 2017
https://qz.com/1039910/how-facebooks-ne ... or-profit/Thirdly, given the dominance of social media as a source of information, we are now at a peak of media concentration. Again, without necessarily being a coordinated plan (am doing my best to put this forward without my customary tin-foil hat on) it only takes a few operational decisions to shape the narrative that is presented to billions of people.
Facebook, Twitter and Youtube's decisions to ban content deemed to be questioning the authorised narrative on COVID for example didn't take any nuance into consideration.
For example, this blanket ban approach treated content from David Icke inferring COVID was related to the 5G rollout and Dr Dolores Cahill (a highly respected Professor of Translational Science, School of Medicine & Principal Investigator, Conway Institute whose work has over 4500 citations.) in exactly the same broad strokes.
But anyway, let's give Facebook et al the benefit of the doubt and say that they made their decisions to protect their users from fake news and to prevent the spread of ideas like drinking fishtank cleaner because you don't have a science background and mistook
chloroquine phosphate for
hydroxychloroquine after President Trump referred to the latter as a
potential gamechanger against COVID.
From that perspective, it could be absolutely morally justified to take the stance they took in order to save lives. However, it still doesn't change the fact that only one side of a discussion is then being presented to the masses without any real counterbalance being offered for them to shape their own balanced opinions.
News outlets adapt to the algorithms and package the news to meet requirements and drive profitIt's not just the social media platforms at fault though. The whole system drives news agencies to exacerbate the problem and they willingly, all though perhaps unwittingly, play their role.
Factoring in the earlier point about how the algorithms are designed to push content that drives engagement and that headlines are 'packaged' to trigger emotions, plus fear is known to be a more compelling trigger emotion than comfort and we can soon arrive on a path to mass hysteria.
A perfect example of this is the current India messaging. The big scary numbers are presented, but the counter-balance of how those numbers compare to the UK on a per capita basis are overlooked. Why because the stories and particularly the headlines are packaged to trigger an emotive response, to drive engagement.
This is where some simple economics comes into it.
Running a profitable news outlet is damn hard work (I know as I've been working in publishing a long time).
Ultimately, most news organisations have had to learn quickly to play the algorithms game to keep themselves profitable. This has inadvertently led to the death of journalism incidentally.
At a very basic level the higher a post performs the more advertising revenue for the news outlet so news outlets are incentivised to play the game within these rules or fall away.
Quick note for anyone saying but I get my news from Sky/BBC/Guardian etc I don't go on social media - it doesn't matter: Online viewership dwarfs all other medium and all legacy media are within the same trap as new media. It doesn't matter if you navigate to the site directly it is curated/structured and packaged to perform for the algorithm so the effect of how that headline is packaged still kicks in (there is a whole bunch of stuff around the psychology of headlines/standfirst and pull quotes that clever kids get taught at university and people like me who went the long way round just happened to work out along the way.) Also, the overwhelming majority, if not all news companies now operate online first so what leads the way in terms of visibility online is what makes it into the print or TV equivalents. Ultimately, COVID is just another level of the same game - the exact same logic can sit behind a ton of other big issue stories including BLM, Climate Crisis, War in Ukraine whatever. Shit that scares people or makes people angry gets shared more, seen more and ultimately drives revenue more.
End of the day, this is nothing new it's just the ratings game on AI-powered steroids. Blood and sex sells as the old adage goes.
It's not as if this is a big secret, but a bit more confirmation of this idea was outlined by Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN who was filmed stating:
“Fear really drives numbers.”
“COVID? Gangbusters with ratings,"
“Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side," and "it would make our point better if [the COVID death toll] was higher.”
https://www.projectveritas.com/video/pa ... practices/ Money, Money, Money: So you've got a greater consolidation of media than ever before, who have a greater financial incentive than ever before to promote a fear-based narrative and the general populace is being drip-fed that narrative by automated algorithms that pick up push emotionally charged content to the top of the newsfeed (its also why cat videos do so well).
Then you add on top of that mix the wealthiest man in the world in Jeff Bezos who just happens to own one of the most influential and respected magazines in the world (Washington Post). While they may not directly push one side of the narrative there is little incentive to push any alternative views that would bite the hand that feeds them when the rise in remote shopping that is a direct result from lockdown has made Bezos an extra $48Billion.
That's before we even get into the influence Bill Gates has (Politico recently called him the world's most powerful doctor despite the fact that he's, um not actually a doctor) and the staggering amount of money he is set to make out of the pandemic.
2020 was the greatest transfer of wealth we have ever seen in human history and a very small number of insanely wealthy people profited at the expense of the everyman.
https://www.businessinsider.com/billion ... ?r=US&IR=THowever, the point I'm (slowly) getting to here is that all of this
still could absolutely happen without any shadowy cabals pulling the strings and with no dodgy conspiracy in the background.
It could simply be just the natural occurrence of automated algorithms, while those with the wealth, influence and power to do so can gently nudge things along in a direction beneficial to them (Gates), softly turn the volume down on opposing views (Zuckerberg/Bezos) not because they're all in cahoots but simply because the situation serves their own individual purposes.
Lets be completely honest, if the lockdown made you $48
BILLION would you want to shine a light on anything that could question its validity?
If you knew you had an investment opportunity to get a 20-1 retrn as long as you could pour billions into vaccination programmes would you be a fairly vocal advocate for them?
What's the old saying of never letting a good crisis go to waste?
By accident rather than by design?So perhaps no conspiracy and ultimately perhaps there is no real reason why we've been spun a narrative that can't help but fray at the edges as soon as you pick at it a tiny bit with a more sceptical eye.
The reporting on the pandemic was just blown out of proportion as an indirect result of the vicious cycle of the media trying to play the newsfeed algorithms and so constantly having to re-enforce the negative hype cycle. It essentially becomes a feedback loop.
Meanwhile, the massive transfer of wealth to a handful of archetypal billionaire bond villains plays into the opposing narrative that none of his makes sense so the world must be controlled by a shady cabal of ultra-wealthy people behind the scenes, a global shadow government that are finally making their play for world dominance.
The ongoing polarisation of society (again driven by social media) then creates two factions and no matter how hard you try to cling onto the centre-ground you're pushed to one side slowly, inevitably. Anyone that questions the narrative you settled on is either a conspiracy nut or blind-sheep, depending on which side of the aisle you sit.
We stumble into this world of opposing factions, doubling down on our beliefs and thinking the other side is getting madder by the day. All because of some dumb bloody algorithm.
We
really should have stopped at cat videos, that is all I'm saying.
Nah it can't really be that stupid, can it? Surely the politicians wouldn't that happen? But what about the politicians you ask?
Surely they wouldn't let madness like this magnify to this extent without intervening?
This is where I accept that there are two big assumptions I'm making that are required for this theory to line up.
First of all, I think it is increasingly clear in the twenty-first century that politics is downstream of media. If anything COVID has finally removed any pretence of this being the case. If you stop and think about it this makes a lot of sense. Ultimately as we all know the politicians crave only one thing - power. Equally, they fear only one thing also, the people turning on them and taking their power away.
The truth is that politicians don't lead us, they never have. They just tell us what they think we want to hear so we will keep them in power.
If a politician is smart they'll put a well paid 'scientist' in the way to take the flak. The problem is that said scientist is usually already on the payroll. When you have a scientist that has been working in government for almost as long as I have been alive, I suggest they become just as susceptible to the allure of power as a politician with Dr Fauci probably being the best example of this. Fauci is a man that is held up to be one of the most preeminent governmental advisors the world has to offer that has flip-flopped more than a Frenchman wearing sandals.
What is particularly interesting with Fauci is how he swings from position to position generally only after a media narrative has formed in one way or another for example his position on mask-wearing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF850LL08QUSo no, I don't think the politicians are the fail-safe for an overly hyperbolic media pushing us towards mass hysteria. I think the politicians follow the narrative the media delivers.
Ok, the politicians might be idiots but regular people would never buy into itWell, surely the whole world couldn't be hoodwinked at the same time? OK so here is the second of the big assumptions. Not all of them, but yes a majority could - although hoodwinked again suggests some process by design so perhaps misled is a better term.
There are two lines of thinking as to why this could be the case, both with their heart in psychology and evolutionary biology. Firstly, our brains are hard-wired to make certain assumptions on certain information. This is pretty much right at the core functionality of the oldest part of our brain the reptilian brain (hmm maybe Icke was onto something after all).
https://www.interaction-design.org/lite ... lian-brainAn easier way to describe this would be learnt trust - I think the posh word for it is heuretics but I might be wrong on that.
For example, first time you go into a new room, this part of your brain (the basal ganglia I think is the posh name) is lit up like the Blackpool illuminations. Why? Because it is all the information coming in from all your senses is being compiled to establish if this is a safe environment or if it's time to rev up the amygdala and get the adrenaline flowing so we're charged up for fight or flight if it's not a good place to hang out.
Second time you go into that room, that part of the brain isn't needed and is just running on standby because you already know the room is safe so your brain doesn't waste a bunch of energy on something it doesn't need to do.
It's exactly the same process with how we discern information. If we trust a source of news whether it be a person or a brand, the bit of our brain that would be doing the thinking doesn't need to be switched on. The thought process is person X has earned my trust previously, therefore I can trust them now, therefore I shall conserve precious energy and just accept that at face value.
We all do this to varying degrees whether we like to admit it or not. The ability to step back and try and think critically and challenge our thought processes is something that has been dangerously eroded in the last couple of decades.
Biases here, biases there, biases every fcking whereAnd this problem is compounded by the second of these deeply embedded facets of our species. We are herd animals with deep-rooted cognitive biases baked into us from those earliest days of us hanging out in trees.
An important and very accessible read on this topic is Robert Cialdini's Psychology of Persuasion (well worth a read) and these tools are used consistently in marketing to manipulate us (I know as I use them a lot in my work when writing copy for marketing emails).
A few of these biases that could have kicked in, again purely as a result of the way the introduction of social media algorithms have fundamentally changed the way media is curated and consumed could be:
Anchor bias - the tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information that we hear. For many people, the first time they really sat up and paid attention to COVID was the footage of the guy collapsing in China. 12 months on we know that just isn't how COVID works, but that initial thought that this is a dramatic killer that could strike suddenly and anywhere lingers in the back of our minds.
Confirmation bias - essentially this is something many of us are aware of but still fall susceptible to. We seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that may contradict those beliefs. This is hugely important in this context when we think about the social media algorithms because our confirmation bias is putting us into one echo chamber initially but that echo chamber is reinforced by the way social media algorithms focus on engagement which then magnifies it. Further the suppression of contradictory information then further reinforces the confirmation bias further because the only competing narrative is pushed into dark corners of the internet where only conspiracy nutters belong.
Commitment and consistency bias - essentially people like to act consistently with their perception of who they are (who they are committed to being). This is one of the reasons why cognitive dissonance is so common, people will literally leap to huge conclusions or ignore the bleeding obvious to keep their thinking in the same lane. Our confirmation bias has already told us that the counter-narrative is only for the tin-foil hat wearing nutters and that is not consistent with our self-image and so feeding our commitment bias as well.
Authority bias - Individuals who are authoritative, credible and knowledgeable experts in their fields are more influential and persuasive than those who are not - even when they consistently make paradoxical statements within a short period (e.g Dr. Fauci or Neil Ferguson). This is probably the most damaging impact of the removal of people like Prof Dolores Cahill or Dr Andrew Kaufmen etc in the blanket approach to suppressing fake news around COVID. By removing those with authority who had a view that went against the predominant narrative, the only authoritative voices that remained were all singing from the same scrip further compounding cognitive biases.
Social biases (consensus) - Humans are social by nature and generally feel that it’s important to conform to the norms of a social group. This means that when it comes to decision making, we often look around us to see what others are doing, before making our mind up. In the context of the above, with the direction of conversation going largely in one direction (not the band but they may be in on it) social bias is a very hard thing to move beyond.
https://worldofwork.io/2019/07/cialdini ... ersuasion/https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... itive_Biashttps://www.verywellmind.com/cognitive- ... ng-2794763The conspiracy that turned out to just be a massive balls up by some geeks in California (or was it...) (the 'tin-foil hat' ending) Now the funny thing is that all of the above, the social media algorithms, the manipulation of cognitive biases, the suppression of alternative hypotheses, the daily tickers of death and the shock and awe visual impacts of the early viral videos of COVID
could all have been coordinated by some shadowy cabal of ultra-wealthy people.
Now if you were in a cabal of ultra-wealthy power-hungry psychopaths and you could pull something like this off well what exactly would be the primary reasons for doing so...
a) initiate the biggest transfer of wealth from the masses to the true elite ever known to man,
b) establishing a far more authoritarian status quo
c) subduing the populace into slow submission and acceptance of that authority
d) so you can pave the way for a Great Reset that ushers in a one-world government that sits within a communist model and allows you and your progeny to be rulers of this shitty little corner of the universe pretty much forever.
(the 'random bad luck and someone should have thought social media through properly before putting a fifth of the planets population on it' ending) But equally all of the above
could in just as much probability have occurred as a crappy bi-product of how significantly the internet and more importantly social media has inadvertently tapped into some of our most fundamental psychological drivers. All this while the AI is just doing its thing in constantly refining the news feeds we receive tountil an extremely consistent unchallenged message of impending doom is all we get and everyone goes mad.
The AI does this all without realizing this is bad because, well because its a robot and robots don't give a shit about things like that they just like nice ones and zeros and there all good (just don't tell them there is no silicon heaven.)
The thing is though having thought it all through, I really don't think it matters which ending we end up at - they both arrive at the same place.
It doesn't matter why we got here, it just matters that we are here. This is the situation and if we step back and take a look at it with a more sceptical eye, if we compare actual important statistics like India's infection and death rates per capita rather than the big scary numbers (because 1 in 7 people on the whole damn planet are Indian so their topline numbers will be big and scary) we can make our judgements on a more rational basis.
I'd suggest the first question we must ask is
could the narrative that is being presented be exaggerated?
If we can answer that in the affirmative, then the next questions should be
how should this knowledge change my outlook and subsequent actions.
Ultimately, if the fact is that the information is misleading, does it really matter why or is it more important to just know that is potentially unreliable and to take it with a pinch of salt when making any important decisions?
I'm sure most have done that anyway mind but maybe not as effectively as they might think they have (myself included)