Social Media: The Disinformation Capital of the World

The Devil with a blue check on!

Did Elon Musk realize the amount of treachery and deception that would evolve when he bought Twitter and turned it into X? I don’t know Mr. Musk, but I drive one of his cars and like it, so I would like to think he didn’t. I prefer to believe, as I did at the time, that he was doing the country a favor by taking the platform out of our government's hands, where it was being used as hidden state media for malign political ends.

Unfortunately, it did not end there. What Musk, in fact, many on social media did not anticipate was that their beguiling toy (because that’s what it is) could turn into the easiest distribution network for evil disinformation ever to exist.

Some of this is simple misinformation—people make mistakes—but the more ominous and growing part is deliberate disinformation.

The firewall hiding the sources of this disinformation, some of them anyway, came down briefly on Nov. 22, apparently at Musk’s direction. He should probably leave it down.

Powerline’s John Hinderaker recounted what happened:

“Last night, for around an hour, X enabled the feature that shows the actual location from which a tweet originates. Surprise! All those Gazans, tweeting about starving and dodging enemy fire? Actually located in Russia and Pakistan. Those ‘America First’ advocates, who are hostile to Israel? Not exactly American: they are in Ireland, Pakistan, etc.”

Many have written about this disgusting, though not entirely unexpected, revelation. Obviously, there’s more—a lot more.

We can almost be sentimental about the halcyon days of “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on,” variously attributed to Churchill, Mark Twain, and others.

In today’s social media world, we are bombarded by so many lies under so many assumed names and opaque handles from so many locations and venues that may or may not be real, you can forget about your pants, or even if you own any.

Does a blue check mean anything? Or is it the Devil with a blue check on?

X can seem like 80% bots or frauds, with the other 20% reacting to them like lemmings. Is this an exaggeration? Maybe… but then maybe not.

Internet duplicity preceded social media. In blogs circa 2002-2004, commenters were already pretending to be one thing and then revealing themselves to be another to trick or coerce readers.

Sometimes this was done skillfully, but it was nothing like what we see now. On X, and elsewhere, fraud is practiced for evil ends on a global, multi-national scale, and most of us, even some (like me) who come from that blog era, can’t always see through it.

Who is doing this? There is no simple answer, but we can assume, at least, some to be agents, paid or volunteers, for China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, and their allies and cutouts, also various “rogue” actors, including, now, apparently, the Houthis.

This is often done under the rubric of “free speech,” but can it be called that when we have no idea who is making it? As someone who has, at times, called himself a free speech absolutist, I am flummoxed.

Also at work are the anonymous Antifa-types of various denominations, not to mention famous individuals, the nouveau celebrities of the internet, who frequently lie or lie to themselves for clicks and cash. These online celebrities have turned X and other social media into a madhouse for the terminally ambitious. Sometimes it’s obvious who they are, sometimes not.

Sometimes, caught up in the frenzy of the moment, they don’t know themselves. In the endless competition for attention, they become inadvertent allies of the more powerful, malign state actors, behaving as their choir and, purposefully or not, aiding them in the destruction of Western Civilization.

How dangerous is all this? Very. The zeitgeist is being shaped, and we’re all part of it, even when we don’t want to be.

This is an old story adapted for the modern age. If you’re interested in how it works, I would suggest , if you haven’t read it, Ion Pacepa’s “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism”.

Pacepa, once Ceaușescu’s spy chief and the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, explained how the KGB almost always preferred disinformation to spying. It was considerably cheaper and much more effective.

It’s not hard to see why, if you think about it, given human gullibility. It’s also not hard to see why social media platforms have become ground zero for this Soviet-style disinformation.

The intention of all this, then and now, is to create confusion and depression among our people, also to drive us apart. They have succeeded mightily in their objectives. If you look at X, you find everyone at each other’s throats. Who benefits?

One wonders, too, who controls the algorithms governing X. Musk is a busy man running multiple companies. Heading up Tesla and SpaceX at once would be more than enough by itself, and that’s only part of his empire. Any social media site needs the closest of attention to stay even remotely evenhanded. And then he has Grok and xAI on his plate, competing with ChatGPT and others.

Who or what group runs the day-to-day on X?

What do we do about it?

I could throw up my hands and say, “I wish I knew,” because that is close to the truth.

We could say goodbye to it all, but we cannot totally boycott social media. It’s a fact of life, and many of our business lives as well. Nevertheless, we can learn to be discerning about what we read and warn others. Yes, to a great degree, that’s spitting against the wind, but if you have a better idea, I would love to hear it.

Finally, is there decent social media? Yes, you’re reading it. Substack seems to allow for discussion on a more reasonable level. Perfect? No. But what is?

ON THE PLUS SIDE OF MUSK

Yesterday, I downloaded 14.2, the latest version of Tesla’s Full Self Drive (Supervised) software. Taking it out for a spin, it seemed to be the best yet and drove straight into my home garage without prompting, something it had never done before. The company is now claiming to have data showing that its FSD-equipped cars are 7X safer than ordinary automobiles. Not surprisingly, counterclaims have appeared. It seems to me, however, that at least Tesla is becoming safer. As an older guy, I realize my reflexes (and vision) at the wheel are no longer as good as a computer’s. I suspect that’s true for younger guys as well.