Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Social misleadia has peaked

Social media has a problem.

Unfortunately, it has been corrupted by monetization.

What am I talking about?

Well once upon a time, social media was a great way for people to speak their minds, voice their opinions and to gather information without the "interpretation" of the mainstream media adding bias one way or the other.

It was generally a fun place, even though trolls and idiots were using it in small numbers.

Now however, it is increasingly becoming a cesspit of misinformation, ragebaiting and abuse.

Having said that, I still don't support the age-gating of social media for reasons I've previously stated.

Today I'm going to take a look at the latest bit of craziness that has erupted on that wonderful platform X (formerly Twitter).

Twitter/X, like many social media platforms, used to be quite useful. There'd be people sharing their ideas, opinions and experiences in just a handful of words per post.

The short SMS-style message format meant it was generally pretty easy to sort the wheat from the chaff. Intelligent folks would spend a bit of time crafting a post by using the intricacies of the English language to their full extent -- while the idiots would just create incoherent word-salad.

All that has changed and now, with only a few exceptions, it seems that everything on X is click-bait, rage-bait or just BS.

What has brought about this dramatic change?

Simple, X has decided to reward its most prolific and engaging posters by way of paying them for the traffic they generate.

Now, a huge swathe of the X user-base isn't interested in anything other than getting others to read, rate, respond to or republish their posts. Every time that happens, they earn a tiny amount of money which soon ads up to a sizeable amount if you're good at it.

Now while X is still good for getting an early heads-up to breaking news, complete with first-hand video footage that isn't heavily edited by the MSM, the amount of dis/misinformation being posted solely to farm engagement is outrageous. The recent flash-floods in Nepal are a fantastic example of this with lots of video footage and first-hand accounts to be had.

The topic de jour seems to be the visit of the USA's CIA chief to Moscow yesterday. This has been the catalyst of endless posts that predict the outbreak of WW3, the use of tactical nukes and attacks on the UK by Russia.

If you believe what's being posted on X, we're teetering on all out global conflict and it seems that each new post tries to cast even more gloom and doom on the situation, so as to get views and responses.

As far as I can tell, 99 percent of these posts are not based on any kind of evidence or fact -- they're simply ridiculous "worst case" extrapolations of the little solid information we actually have.

I feel sorry for anyone feeble of mind who might read these posts and immediately start digging a bomb shelter in their back yard.

Although, to be fair, the UK government has advised its people to stock up on water and canned foods -- albeit not for war (so they say) but for general emergency situations.

It does appear as if there are also some bots involved in this doomsaying, with some clearly bot-generated posts claiming that Russia will crush its enemies and is about to deploy half a million troops to Ukraine to take the entire nation by force.

Others are connecting the explosions at a gas plant to Ukrainian attacks and claim that this will bring China more directly into that conflict because this was a joint-venture operation involving China and Russia.

I guess the most fun to be had on X is simply watching how creative people can be come when trying to come up with an novel spin on the news by connecting incredibly disparate dots in an attempt to pocket just a few more coins.

Of course we've seen this social misleadia rot affecting most of the other platforms as well. YouTube has its clickbait, as does Facebook (I guess, I try to avoid FB).

I think we've now passed "peak social media" and wonder what we'll come up with to replace it.

Of course, shudder, there is always the possibility that these X posts are right and sometime in the next month or so we will see the deployment and use of nuclear weapons which may lead to WW3.

Nah, not even Trump and Putin are that stupid, are they?

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font