basquebromance
Diamond Member
- Nov 26, 2015
- 109,396
- 27,055
- 2,220
- Banned
- #1
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
from the article, this is the scariest part!:
"It doesnât require an overactive imagination to envision a worst-case scenario: On Election Day, anonymous text messages direct voters to the wrong polling locations, or maybe even circulate rumors of security threats. Deepfakes of the Democratic nominee using racial slurs crop up faster than social-media platforms can remove them. As news outlets scramble to correct the inaccuracies, hordes of Twitter bots respond by smearing and threatening reporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has spent the final days of the race pumping out Facebook ads at such a high rate that no one can keep track of what theyâre injecting into the bloodstream.
After the first round of exit polls is released, a mysteriously sourced video surfaces purporting to show undocumented immigrants at the ballot box. Trump begins retweeting rumors of voter fraud and suggests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should be dispatched to polling stations. are illegals stealing the election? reads the Fox News chyron. are russians behind false videos? demands MSNBC.
The votes havenât even been counted yet, and much of the country is ready to throw out the result.
The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the presidentâs conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited videoâserved up by the Trump campaignâthat used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?
As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: âThatâs right, the whistleblowerâs own lawyer said, âThe coup has started âŚâââ Swipe. âDemocrats are doing Putinâs bidding âŚâ Swipe. âThe only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing âŚâ Swipe. âOnly one man can stop this chaos âŚâ Swipe, swipe, swipe."
from the article, this is the scariest part!:
"It doesnât require an overactive imagination to envision a worst-case scenario: On Election Day, anonymous text messages direct voters to the wrong polling locations, or maybe even circulate rumors of security threats. Deepfakes of the Democratic nominee using racial slurs crop up faster than social-media platforms can remove them. As news outlets scramble to correct the inaccuracies, hordes of Twitter bots respond by smearing and threatening reporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has spent the final days of the race pumping out Facebook ads at such a high rate that no one can keep track of what theyâre injecting into the bloodstream.
After the first round of exit polls is released, a mysteriously sourced video surfaces purporting to show undocumented immigrants at the ballot box. Trump begins retweeting rumors of voter fraud and suggests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should be dispatched to polling stations. are illegals stealing the election? reads the Fox News chyron. are russians behind false videos? demands MSNBC.
The votes havenât even been counted yet, and much of the country is ready to throw out the result.
The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the presidentâs conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited videoâserved up by the Trump campaignâthat used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?
As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: âThatâs right, the whistleblowerâs own lawyer said, âThe coup has started âŚâââ Swipe. âDemocrats are doing Putinâs bidding âŚâ Swipe. âThe only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing âŚâ Swipe. âOnly one man can stop this chaos âŚâ Swipe, swipe, swipe."