>There has been a “significant uptick in inauthentic amplification” of posts on social media linking 5G to the coronavirus, UzZaman said, indicating that there could be a coordinated campaign and bot accounts involved. The company says it uses a system that analyzes language, communication patterns, post volumes and bot activity in order to identify social media posts that are “inauthentic” and attempting to manipulate online discussion.
Do we have any reason to believe or disbelieve their methods?
The comments on any 5G-related YouTube video I've seen, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk, tend to bear it out. You see a lot of accounts with no content posting the same thing over and over in comment threads, to a point where it's almost absurd to imagine them being anything but bots. No argument, no defense of whatever point they're trying to push, no engagement whatsoever.
For anyone curious, the conspiracy theory seems to have some varieties, with the one I've most often seen pushed not so much claiming that 5G masts somehow directly cause coronavirus, but rather that coronavirus is a false-flag campaign designed to create broad popular support for a vaccine which, thanks to magnetic particles and/or nanotechnology depending on who's telling the lie right now, will enable mass population control via 5G masts.
I've been a hobbyist collector of conspiracy theories since high school. From that perspective, and absent any sort of context, I have to admit this one's inspired. But I gradually lost my pleasure in that hobby, as thoughtless social media operations turned conspiracy theories from a cute but harmless fringe preoccupation into a means of disinformation with the power to move whole societies. From that perspective, this is truly vile.
I wonder if the ones I'm talking about have been deleted since I watched the video last night. I'll have to check again after work; it'd be nice to think Youtube is responding.
> There has been a “significant uptick in inauthentic amplification” of posts on social media linking 5G to the coronavirus, UzZaman said, indicating that there could be a coordinated campaign and bot accounts involved.
Is there a correlation with anything that gets popular then sees an uptick in 'inauthentic activity'. I know most of the attention is going to be looking into 'dangerous' buzzwords but I'm curious to see what the standard baseline is for every trend, then seeing how it compares. Especially FUDy topics.
Social media 'bots' by their very nature would be picking up on any trend in order to boost their positions from which to seed other stuff. Assuming that's what they do (and actually have an audience beyond other bots which follow them)...
One thing being spread by bots doesn't point to a cause/effect by itself.
> the previous 24 hours, there had been more than 50,000 posts about the topic on Twitter and Reddit
I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making light of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now commonly being cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.
The raw statistics don't really scare me much, especially 50k".
I remember since I was in high school when the first cell towers (well before 3G) were going up and there was a small campaign by a girl in my class who lived on a farm next to another farm which got one. They were claiming it caused cancer and other stuff.
5G/cell towers aren't a very unique point of blame as much as people flailing about in the face of a mystery and pointing the finger at the same small group of common enemies from the past (not that the real 'enemy' isn't actually among them, but it's safe to be skeptical when they are brought up...).
> I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making light of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now commonly being cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.
But even that adds up to a large amount of lost energy and time that could have been used to discuss other things.
You may as well level the same complaint against video games. If those people find it fun to mock conspiracy theories, who are you to say that's a worse use of their free time than any other unproductive pursuit?
Because video games are not used as tools for political influence. And Reddit is. Social media are a huge thing in the political landscape these days. Video games are - as far as I know - not.
Not actual diversity, but the one where you push to equalise minority representations. Like the driver roster in NFS Heat versus Forza Horizon 4 - both equally diverse yet Heat's look abnormal and crooked.
I agree that it does seem insincerely promoted. Furthermore I think think the article is foolish to connect it to 4chan trolls. This goes deeper than that, more likely it's the same group that's promoting it on twitter is also promoting it on 4chan and other channels too.
I don't know why this is getting downvoted. 4chan isn't what it once was, but given that what it once was was the most powerful organic meme amplification engine on the Internet, anyone developing a strategy like the one the article postulates would be missing an incredibly obvious trick not to include it, whether it's all it once was or not.
Preface 1: I think the evidence points to that 5G is probably safe
Preface 2: I do think we should tend to err on the side caution. I fear in 40 years we will look back at our blind rush into many forms of tech incredulously (ie. can you believe in 2020 everyone had wifi installed in their homes? next to their kids?!?)
Having said all that, who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?
If 5G is dangerous, then non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation in general is more dangerous than we thought. I don't think this is impossible, but so far the evidence doesn't seem strong.
The evidence isn't strong. That said 5G does expose you to more base station radiation than ever before, with cells of up to 120W and a cell every neighborhood block. Compare to 4G with cells of 20W and a cell every city block or two.
So to me it's always seemed rational to at least revisit the question and reaffirm it's still fine.
We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine, or once believed to be harmful! Trans fats, asbestos, lead, sun, saturated fats, sugar, exercise, etc etc.
Though, the antenna in your phone exposes you to more radiation than the base station, so that's probably the more important question. Perhaps with higher base station density, the mobile devices actually reduce output.
Typically the debate centers around "non-ionizing radiation is safe" and strictly speaking that's probably 100% true.
>We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine
That is my concern. Specifically that the "non-ionizing radiation" is a red-herring. Its possible that EMF exposure effects cells in another way that we've yet to realize. As a poor analogy: Arguing that being exposed to constant visible light on the basis that "Light is non-ionizing" misses the fact that constant visible light disrupts the circadian rhythm which has a host of other ill-effects.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we ban something on a fear, but given the enormous potential cost if we get it wrong, it should be thoroughly studied.
The big difference between visible light and 5G in this case is humans are known to be capable of sensing visible light, while no person has ever demonstrated the ability to sense radio waves like 5G signals. Of course we can't sense gamma radiation either, but in the case of ionizing radiation we at least have solid evidence humans can be harmed by it. But for radio waves? There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur, short of being put in a microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.
> But for radio waves? There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur, short of being put in a microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.
To preface: I don't think there's any evidence at this time that standard levels of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation are harmful to humans.
But it's not inconceivable that there could be some harm caused which we're not aware of yet and which is eventually discovered in the future. The body and brain are extremely complex and not fully understood, etc. Molecular biology is sensitive. It's not implausible that there could hypothetically be certain chemical reactions or cell processes which are subtly disrupted by certain frequency bands at certain amplitudes.
I personally don't think there will be such a finding, but people still need to keep an open mind, I think.
True, I think it's important for people to distinguish that. "The waves can't ionize, so you shouldn't be worried" is a counter-argument I often see, and it really isn't a good one. The entire point is to try to identify what other potential harm electromagnetic radiation could cause beyond ionization.
It definitely needs to be thoroughly studied. But to my understanding, the past decades of study into it haven't revealed any harmful effects so far, at the energy levels that humans are generally exposed to. I do think it should continue to be studied in different ways, but given the current knowledge, I don't think people should feel very concerned about it.
I operated a 1KW 100 MHz transmitter in my 'bad boy' days, my children all seem to have the right number of heads. And that thing would fry pigeons if I forgot to give the rotor a shake before switching on the end stage. Less than 5 meters from me most of the time.
I think it's very likely that such EMF isn't harmful and the current body of evidence is correct, but "I was exposed and I seem fine" is always an argument people use for things like this. For one, even if that's true, that doesn't necessarily mean anything about others' specific situations (exposure, direction/angle, their genetics, etc.), but more importantly, it's very possible that one may not ever actually detect certain subtle harmful long-term changes.
Someone exposed to low levels of lead poisoning over many years may not notice anything's happening to them. If after 10 years their memory isn't quite what it used to be, yet it's still mostly fine, they'll likely just chalk it up to aging.
Yes, it is obviously anecdata. N=1 and all that. But trust me, 1KW is nothing to sneeze at, the fluorescent tubes in the building I was in would light up spontaneously, as would those as far as I could see wherever the antenna would point. A couple of blocks at least. So if there was a direct effect and not just some very low statistical one you would expect to see a case like that register. This is not unlike smoking where chugging 4 packs per day tends to have consequences. And then of course, everybody has that great-uncle who did smoke 4 packs per day and still runs the half marathon at 85. Maybe I'm that guy, but I think that the whole EM->cell or DNA interaction is a load of bunk until you get into extreme power at very short range.
A KW of HF when you touch it or less than that at GHz+ ranges and you will do real damage to tissue, I have the scar to prove that one.
The induced power falls off very rapidly with distance, especially for omni-directional radiators. The 120' antennae that are common on cell phone installations have relatively low efficiency and 100W or so of radiated power per antenna, maybe 105W at the foot of the mast but unless there is some kind of giant impedance mismatch and if there is then you'll just fry an end stage.
>Maybe I'm that guy, but I think that the whole EM->cell or DNA interaction is a load of bunk until you get into extreme power at very short range.
I think so, too, and this is what the science currently appears to show. But my point is really much more of a general one: there are always unknown unknowns out there. It's not totally implausible that it could one day be discovered that there's some strange mechanism of action that we had no idea was present, like some sort of subtle cell machinery disruption for a specific kind of cell from certain frequencies and amplitudes which otherwise wouldn't cause any damage through sheer aggregate photon exposure, or something like that.
To reiterate, I think that that's unlikely. But I'm saying just as a general principle, it's hard to assess the potential harm of something purely based on your own subjective feeling about it, because if it actually is affecting you, you often really may not have any way of being cognizant of that fact. It's actually more likely that that would be the case the more likely that it's believed to be safe, because dramatic effects would increase the odds of the effect showing up in studies. There's a huge buffer between where you may still feel totally fine and functional over years and where you start to actually notice some harmful effects. Many people with low-level chronic exposure to some harmful thing may remain in that buffer zone forever.
For example, the water I drink has fluoride in it, and from everything I've read I don't believe the low levels that are in the water have a negative impact on health. But if somehow the scientific consensus eventually turns out to be wrong and there actually were some subtle impact to cognition that accrued over decades, would I be aware of this just by analyzing my own behavior and functionality over the years? Probably not. I don't think fluoridated water is harmful, but I also acknowledge it's quite possible I wouldn't be able to know if it's harmful or not just by introspection alone.
That 4G cell of 20W at a couple of meters and even that 120W 5G cell is still absolutely nothing compared to the cell phone you hold against your head.
Dangerous toward humans, or toward the environment in general? I worry we as a species haven't fully thought about the effect we are having on other species, like killing bees and deafening marine life.
Imagine a world where one county underfunds infrastructure because of 5G health fears, but another country does not. Wouldn’t the county that implemented the infrastructure have a competitive advantage?
There are two angles of potential for who benefits.
1) Misdirection. Someone trying to muddy the waters of blame related to SARS-CoV-2. In that case, almost anything other than the truth will be useful. Chaos of information is ideal if that's your goal. Try to shatter the consensus. Unleash, entice, the people prone to extremes on conspiracy theories, let them do the work of spraying non-sense everywhere. Moderately effective and at very little cost, all they require is a gentle nudge at a time like this.
2) Degrade competitors when it comes to their deployment of technology (5G in this case). A small erosion is a large potential benefit over time. Once you have an advantage, keep pressing it forward.
I like that you're open to holding ambiguity around this.
There are few things we should proclaim with certainty, and "5g is 100% biologically harmless" doesn't seem to be one of them, yet.
>who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?
Some:
Scientist who've staked their reputation against 5g, disadvantaged telecom co's, conspiracy theorists/media who prey on fear, gov't who don't like the social direction connectivity is taking us (populus' can 'wake up' increasingly quickly).
Well, in 2016 Russia thought they would benefit from promoting racial tensions in the US though e.g. bogus Blue Lives Matter online groups. It was a major focus of their election interference campaign (source: Senate Intelligence Report). Turning neighbors against each other over bogus health concerns feels like it's in the same ballpark.
> Having said all that, who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?
In attempt to answer this question honestly, and I doubt any of these industries are actively pushing anti-5G propaganda, but cable companies, established cellular/wireless companies, and even the WiFi industry will benefit from an anti-5G message. They will all be affected if 5G lives up to it's promises.
These articles don't address the critical aspect of WHY.
Why are these conspiracy theories about 5G being spread?
If the why involves geopolitics and economics, you just have to look at who has the most to lose from this, factoring in that China is now the cheapest option for this tech(not sure if they are the leaders, but certainly will be the cheapest with a state-funded subsidy).
HN being a critical thinking community, it is fair to postulate theories from an economic perspective. I don't think anybody will try to sell "long-life milk powder" during such discourse.
I hate to say it, but we have entered a time where information has been not only successfully weaponized, but can also be easily spread throughout the entire population with stunning penetration results. Quick example, I have recently found out about Yulin celebrations. I have zero to no doubt that it happens to be a part of anti-Chinese propaganda ( what are the odds of guy like me finding out about a local custom in a Chinese province organically ), but I simply cannot help reacting emotionally to its content.
I am sure 5G is spreading like wildfire for similar reasons ( though admittedly, this one is kinda silly, when there are actual things to worry about ... like say Mnuchin suddenly being able to disburse billions of dollars with a friendly IG, but I digress ).
Indeed, the machine works so well that, as a US citizen, I have little confidence in being able to stay in this country in the long term. Doesn't matter if I speak out, nothing will stop it.
It is amusing that the typical "skeptics" and "critical thinkers" online never notice. Their skepticism consists of swallowing the narrative whole, then insisting that the conspiracy is real but twice as evil as reported.
>as a US citizen, I have little confidence in being able to stay in this country in the long term
You're likely in for a rude awakening if you expatriate. Things aren't perfect in the US but for someone in the middle class on a dev salary it's naive to think there are many places where you'd be substantially better off.
Pretty much everywhere else in the developed world you'll have a decent compensation and free universal healthcare. Depending on where you land, your kids will have free college tuition and you'll be able to retire without fear of some clever banker will destroy your pension fund.
As I said, given how information flow works, when you do it you'll think you have an excellent reason. When the time comes, you'll be hearing about something like the Yulin celebrations every single day, and in a month you'll hate whoever you're supposed to. That is the standard playbook, and it hasn't failed once yet.
I am sorry you feel like that, and, as an immigrant myself (Brazilian born, with Hungarian heritage, living in Ireland), I hope our species learns to embrace our cultural diversity.
I'm often reminded that we are just a couple hundred thousand years of human on top of many millions of years of monkey, and that we should be patient with ourselves.
I disagree almost completely. You are right about propaganda not being a new concept. You are wrong thinking the delivery system not being a game changer here. Comparatively speaking, I would compare it to radio or TV entering the scene.
edit: I almost think it is like comparing invention of wheel to today's cars.
It's likely an opportunistic effort to spread chaos. Parties like Russia and China find propaganda value in pointing to disorder in the West, justifying their authoritarian or totalitarian rule.
Russia at least has form in trying to pour fuel on existing controversies or divisions in Western societies.
Russia has a long history of spreading fake health news in the West. The Soviets spread fake stories about the origin of the AIDS epidemic during the cold war.
I'd like not to be able to say it, but the US is not innocent in that preactice - this is why South America has so many dictatorships in the 20th century.
They are being amplified by adversaries of a state where the rumors are targeted to divide and weaken that state. You actually have examples where people were indicted https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/
When it comes to bots (especially of the Russian variety), there is evidence that there may not be a compelling motive other than to create divisive conversations.
Exactly. Weakening the opposition by confusing them.
In the US, with Trump, and in the UK, with Brexit, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They had also a lot of smaller victories in Eastern Europe.
A friend of mine insists so much on this theory he sends me articles and videos from super unreliable sources of random people claiming its science, but all of them fail to include actual proof, or really an explanation that makes a little sense. When I try to bring up the "show me coherent info" to him, he just avoids the question and continues to say that we are being shut from freedom of speech and from the truth. Almost like a cult where they need to believe this otherwise their reality would suck a lot
What I find interesting about this one is that RT.com has run a few stories about how it is a baseless conspiracy theory that scientific studies have failed to find any support for.
What's interesting about this is that RT.com in 2018 and 2019 was a big source behind the "5G will give you cancer" disinformation. Links to several of those stories, and to their current stories disputing the virus claims, in this earlier comment [1].
Why would Russia flip from trying to get people in the US afraid of 5G to trying to calm 5G fears? I have no idea.
No, I just pointed it out to you that it was ironic. You, however, seem to read an attack into it. Which it wasn't. And of course you could immediately fix that if you did feel attacked by fleshing out your profile, which you intend to keep for years anyway so you can productively contribute to the conversation here, right?
Ignore neighboring comment; he likes picking on anons because he's proud of what he writes on this site.
The reason that this is probably somewhat conspiratorial, in the sense of being planned by a clandestine group, is because RT is well-known to be part of Russia's state propaganda machine [0]. Trusting RT either way, without examining their claims and sources carefully, is a bad idea.
RT as a propaganda arm needs viewers to function as kerlin intended. RT was created to offer a kremlin approved perspective. RT would fail that purpose if its reach is limited. This is something we can all agree on, right? Russia want to draw certain audiences, that's a given right?
So how is the neighbouring comment wrong or worth ignoring? Even tho the profit motive may not be there, RT value proposition to the kremlin is the same as vice, buzzfeed, and huffpost except that instead of ads, they seek get the audience to the site to expose to them to the kremlim approved narrative.
> So how is the neighbouring comment wrong or worth ignoring?
Well the neighboring comment raised none of the points you have. The neighboring comment did nothing more than draw attention to the username/karma of the 'jsjddbbwj' user, and insinuated that the user was part of a conspiracy by calling the comment ironic.
They are not even bothered by arguing two sides of the same issue at the same time. All that matters is to stir the pot, to make more foam because foam obscures what is actually important. It isn't about 5G or pizzagate or the fact that 9/11 was an inside job by the mossad. It is about distracting you, me and a ton of other people from the things that are really going on and that then makes you look like just another conspiracy nut.
This is just one giant misinformation campaign directed towards derailing informed consent and an informed electorate. Every little bit helps in that overarching plan.
And that's the elegance of it. Think about a room where people are having a conversation. Somewhere in the room a fight breaks out over an absolutely ridiculous theory, but still, good luck continuing your conversation. Now imagine that wherever you go people will butt in on your conversation and try to derail it. Before long you won't be able to have any conversations in public at all. Especially not ones that come to some kind of reasonable conclusion or balanced viewpoint.
Just like with any good bar brawl by the time it gets underway for real nobody knows who they are fighting or what they were fighting for or who started it. For all you know the people that started it are already in another bar doing the same thing.
Because it adds no value to the mission of RT news (which is to spread influence) since it doesn't expose the targeted audience to the other articles on RT news with higher propaganda value (like coverage on syria).
You remember when Goldman peddled mortgage backed securities during the bubble and then bet against the same securities after selling it? Making cash on both sides of the scam.
If it’s not as simple as that, then the only intricate manipulation I can think of is that by playing It up, then playing it down, you normalize the need to treat the issue with credibility. Why is a news agency lending their name to even address this?
"Among the most important scientific achievements was the discovery of the so-called "resonant" frequencies of exposure to the human body of low-intensity electromagnetic fields of the MM range at medium frequencies of 50.3; 51.8; 65.0 GHz [10]"
[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2708040C2/en
Just because RT news is state backed to the point of being an apparatus of the state, it doesn't make moot the same market incentives that drove readership to huffpost, buzzfeed or vice. RT news coverage is to draw in an english audience that is that is skeptical of, or contrarian, to mainstream anglo news reporting. 5G conspiracies likely drove traffic to the site.
Why would Russia flip from trying to get people in the US afraid of 5G to trying to calm 5G fears? I have no idea.
Russia has no opinion either way and you're mis-interpreting everyday journalism as some kind of massive conspiracy, which is why it makes no sense.
I looked at the first video in the comment you link to. The story is actually "Group of scientists warn 5G network can pose health dangers", and provides a clip of Dr Sharon Goldberg talking in the Senate about 4G as evidence.
She says:
"Wireless radiation has biological effects, period. This is no longer a subject for debate when you look at PubMed and other peer reviewed literature."
and goes on to cite a bunch of papers that (she says) look at the effects.
As far as I can tell she's some sort of doctor who campaigns against mobile towers.
Now look at it from the perspective of ordinary journalists. RT tries to find stories that are interesting yet 'under-reported'. Imagine in this case there are no Russian masterminds or calls from Putin; just everyday journos who have to fill airtime with something. The clip starts with the host of the show basically admitting he has no idea what 5G is, that he's not a technical kinda guy, he only heard about it that afternoon and his entire knowledge of it comes from reading the summary on Wikipedia. His angle is "it sounds too good to be true so where's the catch?". Some random correspondent then launches into the clip of the doctor.
You don't need any fancy conspiracy theories to understand what's going on here. All you need are people who know nothing about technology looking for something interesting to talk about. They see "experts" testify before Congress citing the peer reviewed, published papers of other "experts" (journos know that this is the gold standard), and that's their permission to talk about it.
All we're seeing here is the fact that you can find peer reviewed published academic papers for a huge array of bizarre ideas. It's just not a serious filter on the flow of research but journalists don't know that - academics themselves are forced to filter it using entirely subjective notions like perceived reputation, which can vary wildly depending on who is asked.
The only reason RT specifically seemed to focus on it is their pitch is that they are outside the CNBC/MSNBC/CNN/etc groupthink.
There is a factual link between COVID-19 and 5G, in some countries at least.
Huawei is in danger of being locked out of 5G network infrastructure in some countries, such as Canada. Aside from pressure from allied countries to bar Huawei from participating in its 5G network, public opinion is also overwhelmingly against Huawei thanks to the ongoing Meng affair, China's taking of hostages to secure Meng's release, as well as Huawei's legacy of corporate espionage targeting Canadian companies such as Nortel.
Huawei is now donating medical masks as part of a charm offensive. It's possible that whoever started this conspiracy theory is attempting to counter that charm offensive.
Edit: People above are wondering what might motivate people to start these rumours. Here's a likely reason, and it has been downvoted. Go figure.
For the first, formative parts of our lives we are told all kinds of lies and we then later find out that these aren't true and for many people this is traumatic. For instance, stories about father Christmas, the Toothfairy and other such characters. Then of course there is religion, which starts out by conditioning children to believe things that are entirely unsupported by facts from a very early age. And advertising and so on.
This conditioning spreads, children are literally meme machines. Bit by bit faulty pieces of information get lodged in gullible little brains. By the time you reach the age where critical thinking skills become important the whole world around you has become infested with lies and half truths, and the bits stored in your head are full of logic holes and trash.
So then, at the ripe old age of 25, a person with no scientific background receives from a number of directions at once something that is not supported by facts. By default, they are going to do what they've always done: accept it as though it is true. And they will spread it around, a click here, a retweet there, a like over here. Then, once they are invested in it, just like with Santa Clause there are always going to be some individuals that refuse to give up the lie. They persist in believing it because that's easier than to give it up.
It's how cults are formed and how people end up with false beliefs that cause them to do really bad things. Like kill others. The 5G Virus Conspiracy is falling into very fertile soil. Against a backdrop of low level continuous distrust of the authorities, the vast gap between poor and rich and the number of absolutely outrageous things that we have told people to accept as fact this is not all that surprising.
If we want to change this we will have to start by ensuring that what we tell people from a very early age is the truth, and that lying and spreading a falsehood as such would be - again - seen as something dishonorable.
This of course is entirely not acceptable to large fractions of society. So we will have to live with the fact that some people become so gullible that they will believe anything that they are being told by some guy in a frock, a labcoat or who they happen to resonate with. Critical thinking skills are like other skills: you have to learn, and then you have to practice them the rest of your life to make sure you retain them.
Until then you will see these conspiracy efforts have great success and this should not surprise us at all.
Did you ever read Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus Trilogy"? It's basically all about this process and the higher-order manifestations of it. (It's about a lot of other things too.)
Specific to what you're talking about there is a bifurcation (really a series of them) when the system detects the invalid data and re-calibrates. Often this takes the form of a "conversion experience", and some people build specific rituals (initiations) to try to engineer them artificially.
He once described society as "open warfare between competing gangs of magicians" or something like that. By "magicians" he meant people who deliberately program the "reality tunnels" (his jargon) of others.
What you're talking about, in the context of RAW's models, is a kind of transcendent goal: allegiance to truth itself. (And critical thinking, evidence-based data collection, etc. All that good stuff.) You're part of the great anti-conspiracy.
- - - -
Now that I think about it I seem to recall that RAW had a piece where he talks about experienceing the Santa Claus disillusionment. I think George Carlin does in his autobiography.
I believe the goal of this disinformation is to cause democracy to undermine itself. I think that whoever is spreading this thinks that once we're all accustomed to YouTube and Twitter banning mostly harmless urban legends, then soon they'll fall down the slippery slope toward more advanced silencing of politically unpopular opinions or whatever. I don't think it'll work, but it's the only sensible explanation I can think of. I mean if a state actor is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into promoting this disinformation, there must be some anticipated ROI. And other possibilities like "make people in the west distrust 5G so Huawei can stay ahead" and "promote general distrust of people in power" don't seem as plausible to me.
It is much simpler than that: it is to make sure you won't trust any kind of communication anymore. And that in turn will undermine democracy more than anything else. If 99% of the stuff on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and for all I care HN is nonsense, why would you continue to believe in that 1%? At what ratio do you stop to absorb new, potentially faulty facts simply to protect yourself? The 5G/Coronavirus one is easy to dismiss. For us. For my mom, not so much.
I guess I've been on the Internet too much, but this "conspiracy" sounds like trolling to me. I mean really... coronavirus from 5G? This sounds like something created by a trolling operation to get the media to pick it up for the lulz.
And now people are setting antenna masts on fire. Just like with pizzagate which sounded totally ridiculous to any thinking individual it was apparently not crazy enough that one person took a weapon and decided to go and liberate the children.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadDo we have any reason to believe or disbelieve their methods?
For anyone curious, the conspiracy theory seems to have some varieties, with the one I've most often seen pushed not so much claiming that 5G masts somehow directly cause coronavirus, but rather that coronavirus is a false-flag campaign designed to create broad popular support for a vaccine which, thanks to magnetic particles and/or nanotechnology depending on who's telling the lie right now, will enable mass population control via 5G masts.
I've been a hobbyist collector of conspiracy theories since high school. From that perspective, and absent any sort of context, I have to admit this one's inspired. But I gradually lost my pleasure in that hobby, as thoughtless social media operations turned conspiracy theories from a cute but harmless fringe preoccupation into a means of disinformation with the power to move whole societies. From that perspective, this is truly vile.
Is there a correlation with anything that gets popular then sees an uptick in 'inauthentic activity'. I know most of the attention is going to be looking into 'dangerous' buzzwords but I'm curious to see what the standard baseline is for every trend, then seeing how it compares. Especially FUDy topics.
Social media 'bots' by their very nature would be picking up on any trend in order to boost their positions from which to seed other stuff. Assuming that's what they do (and actually have an audience beyond other bots which follow them)...
One thing being spread by bots doesn't point to a cause/effect by itself.
> the previous 24 hours, there had been more than 50,000 posts about the topic on Twitter and Reddit
I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making light of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now commonly being cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.
The raw statistics don't really scare me much, especially 50k".
I remember since I was in high school when the first cell towers (well before 3G) were going up and there was a small campaign by a girl in my class who lived on a farm next to another farm which got one. They were claiming it caused cancer and other stuff.
5G/cell towers aren't a very unique point of blame as much as people flailing about in the face of a mystery and pointing the finger at the same small group of common enemies from the past (not that the real 'enemy' isn't actually among them, but it's safe to be skeptical when they are brought up...).
But even that adds up to a large amount of lost energy and time that could have been used to discuss other things.
Edit for response:
In what ways might mocking 5G conspiracy theories on reddit have a negative political effect?
Anyone discussing 5G in a non-serious manner = -15 social credit score
Preface 2: I do think we should tend to err on the side caution. I fear in 40 years we will look back at our blind rush into many forms of tech incredulously (ie. can you believe in 2020 everyone had wifi installed in their homes? next to their kids?!?)
Having said all that, who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?
So to me it's always seemed rational to at least revisit the question and reaffirm it's still fine.
We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine, or once believed to be harmful! Trans fats, asbestos, lead, sun, saturated fats, sugar, exercise, etc etc.
Though, the antenna in your phone exposes you to more radiation than the base station, so that's probably the more important question. Perhaps with higher base station density, the mobile devices actually reduce output.
>We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine
That is my concern. Specifically that the "non-ionizing radiation" is a red-herring. Its possible that EMF exposure effects cells in another way that we've yet to realize. As a poor analogy: Arguing that being exposed to constant visible light on the basis that "Light is non-ionizing" misses the fact that constant visible light disrupts the circadian rhythm which has a host of other ill-effects.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we ban something on a fear, but given the enormous potential cost if we get it wrong, it should be thoroughly studied.
To preface: I don't think there's any evidence at this time that standard levels of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation are harmful to humans.
But it's not inconceivable that there could be some harm caused which we're not aware of yet and which is eventually discovered in the future. The body and brain are extremely complex and not fully understood, etc. Molecular biology is sensitive. It's not implausible that there could hypothetically be certain chemical reactions or cell processes which are subtly disrupted by certain frequency bands at certain amplitudes.
I personally don't think there will be such a finding, but people still need to keep an open mind, I think.
It definitely needs to be thoroughly studied. But to my understanding, the past decades of study into it haven't revealed any harmful effects so far, at the energy levels that humans are generally exposed to. I do think it should continue to be studied in different ways, but given the current knowledge, I don't think people should feel very concerned about it.
Someone exposed to low levels of lead poisoning over many years may not notice anything's happening to them. If after 10 years their memory isn't quite what it used to be, yet it's still mostly fine, they'll likely just chalk it up to aging.
A KW of HF when you touch it or less than that at GHz+ ranges and you will do real damage to tissue, I have the scar to prove that one.
The induced power falls off very rapidly with distance, especially for omni-directional radiators. The 120' antennae that are common on cell phone installations have relatively low efficiency and 100W or so of radiated power per antenna, maybe 105W at the foot of the mast but unless there is some kind of giant impedance mismatch and if there is then you'll just fry an end stage.
I think so, too, and this is what the science currently appears to show. But my point is really much more of a general one: there are always unknown unknowns out there. It's not totally implausible that it could one day be discovered that there's some strange mechanism of action that we had no idea was present, like some sort of subtle cell machinery disruption for a specific kind of cell from certain frequencies and amplitudes which otherwise wouldn't cause any damage through sheer aggregate photon exposure, or something like that.
To reiterate, I think that that's unlikely. But I'm saying just as a general principle, it's hard to assess the potential harm of something purely based on your own subjective feeling about it, because if it actually is affecting you, you often really may not have any way of being cognizant of that fact. It's actually more likely that that would be the case the more likely that it's believed to be safe, because dramatic effects would increase the odds of the effect showing up in studies. There's a huge buffer between where you may still feel totally fine and functional over years and where you start to actually notice some harmful effects. Many people with low-level chronic exposure to some harmful thing may remain in that buffer zone forever.
For example, the water I drink has fluoride in it, and from everything I've read I don't believe the low levels that are in the water have a negative impact on health. But if somehow the scientific consensus eventually turns out to be wrong and there actually were some subtle impact to cognition that accrued over decades, would I be aware of this just by analyzing my own behavior and functionality over the years? Probably not. I don't think fluoridated water is harmful, but I also acknowledge it's quite possible I wouldn't be able to know if it's harmful or not just by introspection alone.
Go through the cited papers / patents [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/CN106643287A/en [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3951134A/en
I'm not pushing EM->DNA or really any particular theory. But I try to remain aware of all the health blunders we've made in the past hundred years.
1) Misdirection. Someone trying to muddy the waters of blame related to SARS-CoV-2. In that case, almost anything other than the truth will be useful. Chaos of information is ideal if that's your goal. Try to shatter the consensus. Unleash, entice, the people prone to extremes on conspiracy theories, let them do the work of spraying non-sense everywhere. Moderately effective and at very little cost, all they require is a gentle nudge at a time like this.
2) Degrade competitors when it comes to their deployment of technology (5G in this case). A small erosion is a large potential benefit over time. Once you have an advantage, keep pressing it forward.
There are few things we should proclaim with certainty, and "5g is 100% biologically harmless" doesn't seem to be one of them, yet.
>who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?
Some:
Scientist who've staked their reputation against 5g, disadvantaged telecom co's, conspiracy theorists/media who prey on fear, gov't who don't like the social direction connectivity is taking us (populus' can 'wake up' increasingly quickly).
Casting the narrative into an easier to manipulate one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soYkEqDp760
In attempt to answer this question honestly, and I doubt any of these industries are actively pushing anti-5G propaganda, but cable companies, established cellular/wireless companies, and even the WiFi industry will benefit from an anti-5G message. They will all be affected if 5G lives up to it's promises.
Why are these conspiracy theories about 5G being spread?
If the why involves geopolitics and economics, you just have to look at who has the most to lose from this, factoring in that China is now the cheapest option for this tech(not sure if they are the leaders, but certainly will be the cheapest with a state-funded subsidy).
HN being a critical thinking community, it is fair to postulate theories from an economic perspective. I don't think anybody will try to sell "long-life milk powder" during such discourse.
I am sure 5G is spreading like wildfire for similar reasons ( though admittedly, this one is kinda silly, when there are actual things to worry about ... like say Mnuchin suddenly being able to disburse billions of dollars with a friendly IG, but I digress ).
It is amusing that the typical "skeptics" and "critical thinkers" online never notice. Their skepticism consists of swallowing the narrative whole, then insisting that the conspiracy is real but twice as evil as reported.
You're likely in for a rude awakening if you expatriate. Things aren't perfect in the US but for someone in the middle class on a dev salary it's naive to think there are many places where you'd be substantially better off.
So what? No matter where I go, I'm still going to be ethnically Chinese. If the US expels people like me, I assume Europe, etc. will follow suit.
I'm often reminded that we are just a couple hundred thousand years of human on top of many millions of years of monkey, and that we should be patient with ourselves.
Sorry, but this is an extraordinarily naive point of view.
The "fake news" meme is fake "news". Nothing new about it, just new players entering an old game.
edit: I almost think it is like comparing invention of wheel to today's cars.
Russia at least has form in trying to pour fuel on existing controversies or divisions in Western societies.
In the US, with Trump, and in the UK, with Brexit, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They had also a lot of smaller victories in Eastern Europe.
Your version makes slightly more sense at least.
What's interesting about this is that RT.com in 2018 and 2019 was a big source behind the "5G will give you cancer" disinformation. Links to several of those stories, and to their current stories disputing the virus claims, in this earlier comment [1].
Why would Russia flip from trying to get people in the US afraid of 5G to trying to calm 5G fears? I have no idea.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22785716
The reason that this is probably somewhat conspiratorial, in the sense of being planned by a clandestine group, is because RT is well-known to be part of Russia's state propaganda machine [0]. Trusting RT either way, without examining their claims and sources carefully, is a bad idea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_cla...
So how is the neighbouring comment wrong or worth ignoring? Even tho the profit motive may not be there, RT value proposition to the kremlin is the same as vice, buzzfeed, and huffpost except that instead of ads, they seek get the audience to the site to expose to them to the kremlim approved narrative.
Well the neighboring comment raised none of the points you have. The neighboring comment did nothing more than draw attention to the username/karma of the 'jsjddbbwj' user, and insinuated that the user was part of a conspiracy by calling the comment ironic.
This is just one giant misinformation campaign directed towards derailing informed consent and an informed electorate. Every little bit helps in that overarching plan.
Just like with any good bar brawl by the time it gets underway for real nobody knows who they are fighting or what they were fighting for or who started it. For all you know the people that started it are already in another bar doing the same thing.
alternative theory: they look for fringe topics trending and picked up the narrative to drive views.
If it’s not as simple as that, then the only intricate manipulation I can think of is that by playing It up, then playing it down, you normalize the need to treat the issue with credibility. Why is a news agency lending their name to even address this?
"Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves" [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3951134A/en
"Method and system for eliminating fighting strength of opposing combatant using electromagnetic wave" [2] https://patents.google.com/patent/CN106643287A/en
non-ionizing radiation thank you
Russia has no opinion either way and you're mis-interpreting everyday journalism as some kind of massive conspiracy, which is why it makes no sense.
I looked at the first video in the comment you link to. The story is actually "Group of scientists warn 5G network can pose health dangers", and provides a clip of Dr Sharon Goldberg talking in the Senate about 4G as evidence.
She says:
"Wireless radiation has biological effects, period. This is no longer a subject for debate when you look at PubMed and other peer reviewed literature."
and goes on to cite a bunch of papers that (she says) look at the effects.
As far as I can tell she's some sort of doctor who campaigns against mobile towers.
Now look at it from the perspective of ordinary journalists. RT tries to find stories that are interesting yet 'under-reported'. Imagine in this case there are no Russian masterminds or calls from Putin; just everyday journos who have to fill airtime with something. The clip starts with the host of the show basically admitting he has no idea what 5G is, that he's not a technical kinda guy, he only heard about it that afternoon and his entire knowledge of it comes from reading the summary on Wikipedia. His angle is "it sounds too good to be true so where's the catch?". Some random correspondent then launches into the clip of the doctor.
You don't need any fancy conspiracy theories to understand what's going on here. All you need are people who know nothing about technology looking for something interesting to talk about. They see "experts" testify before Congress citing the peer reviewed, published papers of other "experts" (journos know that this is the gold standard), and that's their permission to talk about it.
All we're seeing here is the fact that you can find peer reviewed published academic papers for a huge array of bizarre ideas. It's just not a serious filter on the flow of research but journalists don't know that - academics themselves are forced to filter it using entirely subjective notions like perceived reputation, which can vary wildly depending on who is asked.
The only reason RT specifically seemed to focus on it is their pitch is that they are outside the CNBC/MSNBC/CNN/etc groupthink.
The greatest strength is perhaps the lower impact of a single tower failure.
Huawei is in danger of being locked out of 5G network infrastructure in some countries, such as Canada. Aside from pressure from allied countries to bar Huawei from participating in its 5G network, public opinion is also overwhelmingly against Huawei thanks to the ongoing Meng affair, China's taking of hostages to secure Meng's release, as well as Huawei's legacy of corporate espionage targeting Canadian companies such as Nortel.
Huawei is now donating medical masks as part of a charm offensive. It's possible that whoever started this conspiracy theory is attempting to counter that charm offensive.
Edit: People above are wondering what might motivate people to start these rumours. Here's a likely reason, and it has been downvoted. Go figure.
This conditioning spreads, children are literally meme machines. Bit by bit faulty pieces of information get lodged in gullible little brains. By the time you reach the age where critical thinking skills become important the whole world around you has become infested with lies and half truths, and the bits stored in your head are full of logic holes and trash.
So then, at the ripe old age of 25, a person with no scientific background receives from a number of directions at once something that is not supported by facts. By default, they are going to do what they've always done: accept it as though it is true. And they will spread it around, a click here, a retweet there, a like over here. Then, once they are invested in it, just like with Santa Clause there are always going to be some individuals that refuse to give up the lie. They persist in believing it because that's easier than to give it up.
It's how cults are formed and how people end up with false beliefs that cause them to do really bad things. Like kill others. The 5G Virus Conspiracy is falling into very fertile soil. Against a backdrop of low level continuous distrust of the authorities, the vast gap between poor and rich and the number of absolutely outrageous things that we have told people to accept as fact this is not all that surprising.
If we want to change this we will have to start by ensuring that what we tell people from a very early age is the truth, and that lying and spreading a falsehood as such would be - again - seen as something dishonorable.
This of course is entirely not acceptable to large fractions of society. So we will have to live with the fact that some people become so gullible that they will believe anything that they are being told by some guy in a frock, a labcoat or who they happen to resonate with. Critical thinking skills are like other skills: you have to learn, and then you have to practice them the rest of your life to make sure you retain them.
Until then you will see these conspiracy efforts have great success and this should not surprise us at all.
Specific to what you're talking about there is a bifurcation (really a series of them) when the system detects the invalid data and re-calibrates. Often this takes the form of a "conversion experience", and some people build specific rituals (initiations) to try to engineer them artificially.
He once described society as "open warfare between competing gangs of magicians" or something like that. By "magicians" he meant people who deliberately program the "reality tunnels" (his jargon) of others.
What you're talking about, in the context of RAW's models, is a kind of transcendent goal: allegiance to truth itself. (And critical thinking, evidence-based data collection, etc. All that good stuff.) You're part of the great anti-conspiracy.
- - - -
Now that I think about it I seem to recall that RAW had a piece where he talks about experienceing the Santa Claus disillusionment. I think George Carlin does in his autobiography.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk