Flim-flam theories, fake news and furphy vaccines are enough to make everybody sick

Spammers alert. Damian Thompson, The Spectator Australia, May 9:

Three disastrous developments rooted in the digital revolution helped generate the fake news chaos. The first was Russia’s discovery that the output of Western news outlets could be mimicked … As we speak, spammers in Kosovar are sending “Blue Lives Matter”. The Kosovar spammers use Facebook — which brings us to the second obvious development: the explosion of news content on ­social media. Even if Facebook and Google were super-scrupulous (which they aren’t) this would be impossible to police. The third development is bias in the everyday press. What they deliberately don’t report is as significant as what they do.

Shayan Sardarizadeh, BBC, May 12:

Much like other social networks, Twitter has struggled to control the flow of misinformation on its platform since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic … It has removed 1100 misleading tweets and “challenged” more than 3.4 million.

ABC News Breakfast, April 24:

Facebook approved a series of paid ads on its platforms that claimed everything from COVID-19 being a hoax to the idea that drinking bleach will keep you healthy. The ads were part of an experiment by American tech writer Kaveh Waddell earlier this month to test the social media giant’s early ability to stop coronavirus misinformation … Waddell received approval for seven ads that made increasingly outrageous claims.

Julie Power, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 30:

Sales of purported and potentially dangerous “vaccines” for COVID-19, repurposed antiviral medications and personal protective gear are booming on dark web markets … An analysis by the Cybercrime Observatory at the Australian National University uncovered 645 listings for 222 unique COVID-19-related medical product supplies on the equivalent of supermarkets on the dark web … Roderic Broadhurst, director of ANU’s observatory, said his team identified more than 100 vendors of purported vaccines, including some in Australia.

Darren Mara, SBS, May 4:

We’re living in a time of great uncertainty, in which a climate of fear is aiding the spread of falsehoods and fake news from all parts of society … As the WHO has warned, the world isn’t just fighting a viral pandemic, but also an “infodemic”. From conspiracy theories about how COVID-19 began, and its spread being facilitated by 5G networks, to fake photos of dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice … “I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of the amount of misinformation spreading around it,” says Adam Dunn, who leads biomedical informatics and digital health at the University of Sydney. “And also I haven’t seen anything that’s had this much of a detrimental effect on people’s health and their lives as we’ve seen with this pandemic.”

ABC News, April 28:

Health workers in Iran are warning people to not fall for virus hoaxes, after 700 people died from alcohol poisoning amid claims drinking bootleg liquor can keep the virus at bay.

Russian news agency Tass, May 13.

Fake news stories about Russian attempts to underreport the number of coronavirus deaths are aimed at distracting the public from domestic issues, the Russian Foreign Ministry said … “While they could have carefully and honestly assessed the situation … journalists from a number of Western media outlets were capable only of making … biased attempts to divert public attention.”