People keep asking me (online, for the most part) why I’m on this side or that. I tell them I’m not, and do my best to explain, and they remain confused. It goes like this:
(more…)“Why are you defending Israel? They’re committing genocide!”
“I’m not talking about genocide. I’m talking about [insert abstract topic].”
“That doesn’t matter! Israel is evil!”
EDITORIAL
The amount of propaganda being spread in this war is appalling. That people choose to believe it without confirmation just because it happens to agree with their own biases… arguably that’s worse.
There exists an anti-American propaganda account on TwiX today that generates millions of hits by celebrating military atrocities committed by Russia, acts of terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah, and civilian casualties of war. On it, corpse porn is reposted every fifteen minutes in order to generate profitable ad-share, subscriptions, and donations. It is too big to be toppled by the Community Notes mechanism.
Mind you, it’s unreasonable to blame the platform. Virtually every other social media organization permits the same thing in the name of free speech.
(more…)
Surrounding every conflict are rumors, innuendo, and error — and that’s not even considering deliberate disinformation along the lines of what we’re now seeing in the Ukraine conflict. Putin is a past master at this; leading up to the war were so many denials that it was going to happen, announcements of withdrawal, and so on that, for many of us, the waters were effectively muddied. And Zelensky himself is a consummate performer, a trained and experienced actor playing the greatest role of all time.
So what’s real, and what’s not? What’s worth worrying about and what’s worth forgetting? Above all: What’s about to happen?
(more…)
The Not Fake News 