Misinformation is like arson to a city on fire

In disaster-hit Los Angeles, misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories are spreading on social media, making it harder for devastated residents to separate fact from fiction even as winds fan fires across the city.

Like arsonists proudly watching fires of their own making, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have found the culprits behind the blazes, identifying the Democrats and diversity policies.

Since the fires swept through LA last week, authorities have been criticised over a lack of preparedness – budget cuts to the fire department; a lack of water to fight the infernos – but California has also been hit by the firestorm of misinformation lit by right-wing conspiracists and Trump and Musk.

A police officer passes a burnt-out building in Los Angeles.Credit: AP

Just days out from being sworn in as president, Trump pointed the finger at Californian Governor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass and US President Joe Biden, spreading false claims about water policy and federal assistance.

Musk used his social media site as a megaphone to play down the role of climate change, accusing female firefighters of colour and lesbian firefighters of being partly to blame, including publishing their names and faces. This plugged into right-wing conspiracy theories that the fires were part of a plot to cause the collapse of the United States.

Trump and Musk have form. They share a penchant for stoking chaos in a fast-moving crisis.

Trump incorrectly blamed federal officials for draining money from emergency services to house illegal migrants when hurricanes hit Georgia and North Carolina last year, and in 2019 he made specious claims about a hurricane falsely threatening Alabama, and Puerto Rican hurricane relief funding.

Musk habitually seizes on disasters to promote partisan misinformation. Last year, he said Boeing’s safety issues and cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s massive global tech outage were attributable to the companies’ diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. He also helped fuel right-wing conspiracy theories that complicated hurricane rescue efforts in North Carolina.

Such politically and ideologically motivated misinformation is careless, cruel and damaging at the best of times. But coming as the people of LA struggle to defeat fires that have killed 24 people, destroyed thousands of homes and forced more than 100,000 into evacuation centres is completely unforgivable.

Americans’ trust in government seems a thing of the past for many, but the growing faith in the righteousness of mad and bad information on social media websites of the rich and powerful is a bizarre counterpoint now turned tragic by Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to get rid of fact-checkers who monitored Facebook posts.

LA will be confronted with days of fear until the Santa Ana winds die. The snowball of misinformation and divisive narratives undermining authorities can only worsen the situation.

But we have seen it before. In January 2020, as the Black Summer bushfires gripped Australia, Facebook was overwhelmed by an influx of dubious social media posts featuring misleading images, reports about the scale of the fires and denials of the link between bushfires and climate change.

Australia learnt the cost of gullibility. Five years later, Angelenos must recognise the importance of scepticism and caution in the face of burning lies.

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