Rick Bowmer/Related Press Kit
The sun’s rays break through the clouds on Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023, over homes burned by wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii. Days after wildfires on Maui killed dozens of people and destroyed 2,000 homes, a shocking claim spread at an alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: The fire was started deliberately, futuristic electric weapons evolved thanks to the US military. USA
WASHINGTON, D. C. —Days after wildfires in Maui killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes in August 2023, a shocking claim spread at an alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: The fire on the Hawaiian island was deliberately started, futuristic electric weapons evolved through the U. S. military.
Accusations of “evidence” surfaced temporarily: video footage on TikTok showing a beam of blinding white light, too direct to be lightning, hitting a residential community and sending flames and smoke into the sky. The video was shared millions of times, amplified through neo-Nazis, anti-government radicals, and QAnon conspiracy theorists, and was presented as evidence that U. S. leaders had opposed the country’s citizens.
“What if Maui was just a practice run?” one woman asked on TikTok. “So that the government can use a direct energy weapon on us?”
The TikTok clip had nothing to do with the Maui fires. It was a video of the explosion of an electrical transformer in Chile the previous year. But that didn’t stop a TikTok user with a history of posting conspiracy videos from using the clip to seed. more worry and doubt. This was just one of several similar videos and photographs that were faked and presented as evidence that the wildfires were not an accident.
Conspiracy theories have a long history in America, but they can now spread around the world in a matter of seconds, amplified through social media, further eroding reality with a new destructive force.
With the United States and many other nations facing big elections in 2024, the perils of rapidly spreading disinformation, using ever more sophisticated technology, such as artificial intelligence, now also threaten democracy itself — both by fueling extremist groups and by encouraging distrust.
“I think global post-truth is possibly much closer than we’d like to believe,” A. J. said. Said. Nash, vice president of intelligence at ZeroFox, a cybersecurity firm that tracks misinformation. “What happens when no one believes in anything anymore?
Extremists and authoritarians use disinformation as a hard weapon to recruit new fans and expand their reach, fake videos and images to lie to them.
And even when they fail to convince people, the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.
Melissa Sell, a 33-year-old Pennsylvania resident, is among those who have lost their religion in the face of the facts.
“If it’s a big news story on the TV, the majority of the time it’s to distract us from something else. Every time you turn around, there’s another news story with another agenda distracting all of us,” she said. Sell thinks the Maui wildfires may have been intentionally set, perhaps to distract the public, perhaps to test a new weapon.
“Because he’s already gotten into lies, how do you know?She.
In the absence of meaningful federal regulations governing social media platforms, responsibility for their own sites has largely fallen to big tech corporations, leading to confusing and inconsistent regulations and compliance.
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, says it targets extremist content. Platforms like X, formerly Twitter, but also Telegram and far-right sites like Gab, allow it to thrive.
Federal election officials and some lawmakers have suggested regulations governing AI, including rules that would require political campaigns to label AI-generated images used in its ads. But those proposals wouldn’t affect the ability of extremist groups or foreign governments to use AI to mislead Americans.
Misinformation
Meanwhile, U. S. -based tech platforms are looking to improve their finances. U. S. cities have scaled back efforts to root out misinformation and hate speech, following the lead of Elon Musk, who fired as many content moderators as possible when he was forced to abandon the virus.
“There’s been a big step backwards,” said Evan Hansen, former editor-in-chief of Wired. com, who was Twitter’s chief curatorial officer before leaving when Musk bought the platform. “It becomes a very complicated task for an informal observer to understand: What am I doing here?»
Hansen said a combination of government regulations, voluntary action by tech titans and public awareness will be needed to combat the coming wave of synthetic media. He noted the Israel-Hamas war has already seen a deluge of fake and altered photos and video. Elections in the U.S. and around the world this year will create similar opportunities for digital mischief.
Disinformation spread through extremist outfits and even politicians like former President Donald Trump can create situations ripe for violence, demonizing the other side, attacking democratic institutions, and convincing their followers that they are leading an existential struggle opposed to those who do not share their opinions. beliefs.
Trump has spread lies about elections, voting and his opponents for years. Building on his specious claims of a deep state that controls the federal government, he has echoed QAnon and other conspiracy theories and encouraged his followers to see their government as an enemy.
He even warned that now-retired Army General Mark Milley, whom Trump himself had named the most sensible officer in the U. S. military under his administration, was a traitor and deserved to be executed. Milley said he had to take protective measures to protect his family.
The list of incidents attributed to conspiracy-motivated extremists is growing. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U. S. Capitol, attacks on vaccination clinics, anti-immigration fervor in Spain; and anti-Muslim hatred in India – all of those attacks were perpetrated through other people who believed in conspiracy theories about their warring parties and that violence was an appropriate response.
Polls and studies on conspiracy theories show that roughly a portion of Americans are into at least one conspiracy theory, and that those perspectives rarely lead to violence or extremism. But for some, those ideals can lead to social isolation and radicalization, damaging their relationships, careers, and finances. For an even smaller subset, they can lead to violence.
The credible knowledge that exists about crimes motivated through conspiracy theories shows a disturbing increase. In 2019, researchers at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism learned of six violent attacks in which perpetrators said their movements were motivated through a conspiracy theory. In 2020, the year of the last survey, there were 116.
Laws designed to restrict the power of social media and artificial intelligence to spread misinformation likely won’t pass until after the 2024 election, and even if they were, enforcing them will be a challenge, according to AI expert Vince Lynch, the tech expert. CEO. IV. AI.
“It’s declining right now and it’s one of the reasons our society is so fragmented,” Lynch said. “Hopefully one day there will be AI regulation, but we are already on the other side of the mirror. I think it’s too late.
The truth
For believers, facts don’t matter.
“You can create any universe you want,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who studies online harassment and extremism. “If the fact doesn’t matter and there’s no accountability for those false beliefs, then other people will. “start acting accordingly. “
Sell, the conspiracy theorist from Pennsylvania, said she began to lose trust in the government and the media shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 students and six educators dead. Sell thought the shooter looked too small and weak to carry out such a bloody act, and the gut-wrenching interviews with stricken loved ones seemed too perfect, almost practiced.
“It felt like a script,” he said. The parts are not compatible with each other. “
That idea — that the victims of the rampage were actors hired as part of a plot to push gun control laws — was notably spread by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The families of Sandy Hook victims sued, and the Infowars host was later ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages.
Claims that U. S. elected leaders and the media can be trusted feature prominently in many extremism-like conspiracy theories.
In 2018, a committed conspiracy theorist from Florida sent pipe bombs to CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and several other very sensible Democrats; The man’s social media feeds were filled with posts about child sacrifices and chemtrails — the debunked claim that airplane vapor clouds involve chemicals or biological agents used by the population.
In another act of violence tied to QAnon, a California man was charged with using a speargun to kill his two children in 2021. He told an FBI agent that he had been enlightened by QAnon conspiracy theories and had become convinced that his wife “possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”
In 2022, a Colorado woman was convicted of attempting to kidnap her son from a foster home after her daughter said she began associating with QAnon supporters. Other members have been accused of environmental vandalism, shooting paintballs at army reservists, kidnapping a child in France, and even murdering a New York City mob boss.
The coronavirus pandemic, with the ensuing social isolation, has created ideal situations for new conspiracy theories as the virus spreads concern and uncertainty around the world. Vaccination clinics have been attacked and doctors and nurses have been threatened. 5G communications towers were vandalized and set on fire as a wild theory spread claiming they were used to ignite microchips hidden in the vaccine.
Fears about vaccines led one Wisconsin pharmacist to destroy a batch of the highly sought after immunizations, while bogus claims about supposed COVID-19 treatments and cures led to hospitalizations and death.
Capitol Riot
Yet few recent events demonstrate the strength of conspiracy theories like the Jan. 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, vandalized congressional offices, and fought with police to disrupt the certification of the election. 2020.
More than 1,200 people were charged with crimes similar to the Capitol riot. Approximately 900 other people pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial. More than 750 more people were convicted, about two-thirds of whom were sentenced. to prison, according to information compiled through The Associated Press. Many of the defendants said they had believed Trump’s conspiracy theories about a stolen election.
“They lied to us, that is, to Trump supporters,” defendant Robert Palmer wrote Jan. 6 in a letter to a judge, who later sentenced him to more than five years in prison for attacking police. “They continued to spout false narratives about a stolen election and that it is ‘our duty’ to resist tyranny. “
Many conspiracy theorists reject any connection between their ideals and violence, saying they are blamed for the movements of a few. Others insist that those incidents never happened and that occasions like the Jan. 6 attack were false flag occasions concocted through the government and the media. .
“Lies, lies, lies — they lie to you over and over again,” said Steve Girard, a Pennsylvania man who protested the defendants’ incarceration on Jan. 6. He spoke to the AP while waving a giant American flag in busy Washington. street.
While they may have taken on a bigger role in our politics, surveys show that belief in conspiracy theories hasn’t changed much over the years, according to Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and an expert on the history of conspiracy theories. He said he believes that while the internet plays a role in spreading conspiracy theories, most of the blame lies with the politicians who exploit believers.
“Who is the biggest spreader of COVID misinformation: a guy with four followers on Twitter or the president of the United States?The challenge is our politicians,” Uscinski said.
“It happened on Jan. 6 and other people said, ‘Oh, it’s Facebook’s fault. ‘No, the president of the United States told his followers to be in that place, at that moment, and to fight like hell. “
Governments in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere have also spread extremist content on social media as part of their efforts to destabilize Western democracy. Russia has amplified anti-American attacks, adding conspiracy theories, adding those claiming the U. S. is conducting secret germ warfare. laboratories and created HIV as a biological weapon, as well as conspiracy theories accusing Ukraine of being a Nazi state.
China has contributed to claims that the U. S. created COVID-19 as a biological weapon.
Tom Fishman, executive director of the nonprofit Starts With Us, said Americans can take steps to protect the social fabric by turning off their computers and meeting with others they disagree with. He said Americans want what unites them.
Well done, Mr. Klepper, for this summary of the risks of conspiracy theories, especially those created and promoted by our former president!I was shocked by the pandemic when I saw so many other people on Kauai fall into the QAnon trash. The fact that Trump has a chance of being re-elected shows how simple it is to fall into the quagmire of worship and misinformation. Just keep believing in Fox “News” and listening to Alex Jones, Steve Banon and the rest of the right. ala ecosystem (all of whom are consciously enriched through you outraged with your lies), and watch our country and our democracy crumble in the end. Seams.