If you need more proof of how outdated our times are just think about this. Number of times the word “stage” was used in the hours after the White House Correspondents Association dinner last Saturday.
This is not just a problem for social media companies. It is a problem with our democracy. And it’s one we have to deal with.
While hundreds of journalists took refuge in the area on Saturday evening, and a whole series of United States officials were kicked out of the room in DC, social media had a field day.
Analysis shows that in the hours after Saturday’s attack the word “stage” (as in when the latest attempt on President Trump’s life was “planned”) appeared in more than 300,000 posts on X (formerly Twitter). Other platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have been flooded with similar claims. Many of these claims were improperly developed. Others are external accounts.
In case there is anyone reading this who thinks that the latest attempt on President Trump’s life is “staged” let me try to dispel that. If someone was going to try to fake an attempt to kill the President, what would be the worst place to do it? I would imagine it would be in a ballroom literally full of media in the world: competing outlets, fiercely opposing each other, and coming from all sides of the political spectrum. They all couldn’t wait to inform their students if something suspicious was going on.
Naturally there are some people who believe that this is all part of some evil plan. A plan that would require the Trump administration and the Trump-hating media to come together and keep a secret between themselves. Almost impossible, in my opinion.
Some online influencers (including one with half a million followers on X) say pointing this out is yet more proof that their conspiracy must be true.
Needless to say, this is pure brain rot. It was said that fighting such “arguments” is like proving that the moon is not made of cheese. Unless we can prove that the moon is not made of cheese. The only things made of cheese in this case are the minds of people who are still willing to push such pathological nonsense.
I can say with great confidence that if I or any of my colleagues at the Post Office who were walking the President’s walk on Saturday night thought that everything was “planned” we would have told you. We will have no reason not to.
The problem is that social media works for different reasons. Their motives are not truth but rather dealings, and money.
In recent years there has been so much mistrust of the media that a section of society no longer trusts any of us. And there are reasons for that.
As the Post pointed out this week, there have been “cover-ups” and conspiracies in recent years. This paper has shown that again this week regarding the characteristics of the Covid pandemic. And we made it clear with our Hunter Biden laptop reveal. Some of what was reported by some parts of the media was a conspiracy but what emerged – as we always said – was what we called “the truth”.
Here’s the latest on the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:
The problem is not just that there is mistrust in parts or all of traditional media. The problem is that social media is benefiting from this mistrust and in the process of spreading misinformation and disinformation far greater than anything the worst media has ever published.
No publication on the left, right or center can run stories that say the shooting was “planned” or a “false flag” (to use another popular term) unless we have proof of it.
But social media companies don’t need people on their platforms to have testimonials. What they are interested in is engagement. And that means that platforms are actually rewarding accounts that say the craziest and weirdest things.
Like the claims that many attempts on our President’s life were faked, that Jews killed JFK or that Charlie Kirk was killed by people close to him. Talk about these things and you will find yourself in the audience.
Of course that says something about the interest people have in wild claims. But it says a lot about the cynicism and the profit motive of the people who suppress such content.
At some point – and that day may be coming soon – social media companies will have to commit to this.
Traditional media could be in for a whole world of legal pain if they ran and amplified claims that were intentionally false. However, Meta, Facebook, X, YouTube, TikTok and others all make money from this model. They encourage people by rewarding those who advance the most absurd claims imaginable.
Like me you probably often wonder why a video is pushed to you online by another “influencer” who often appears to have a small number of followers. Sometimes it’s because those influencers pay to play. Sometimes it’s because bot-farms in other countries are growing them – as was the case with this week’s conspiracy.
But at some point social media companies have to answer for this. Because otherwise there is no financial incentive for them to stop.
Real news-gathering journalism, which involves shoe leather and cross-checking, costs money. Online analytics, by contrast, are incredibly cheap to produce.
While reporters from a paper like this will run to find the real motive of the shooter, send reporters to interview family and neighbors and find out what the real story is – all this costs a lot of money, money that has not been returned to the publishers of the social media companies that have eaten away at the digital advertising industry in favor of your information to sell products.
On the contrary, it costs nothing – and it is profitable – for some malicious actor to send a video made on his phone saying that a ring of rapists from a “combined party” is working with all the media to keep the “real” truth from you.
This is one of the reasons why our society is so misguided and conspiratorial.
Young people in particular are gradually getting their information from traditional media. But they aggregate content online.
So why do tech giants continue to undermine real journalism while promoting bogus claims and wildly outlandish conspiracy theories? The answer is that they make money from it. They make money from lies, bad claims and pure nonsense.
No one needs to criticize anyone. However, if social media companies continue to reward lies and downplay the truth, there must come a day when they have to pay. Goodness knows they’ve made enough money out of it.
