Philip Howard emphasized the difficulty of achieving herd immunity against advertising

Interview .. British expert: disinformation on the Internet is spreading the news as mosquitoes spread malaria

Philip Howard: Congressional events shocked America and the world.

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The riots in the US Congress sparked a broad debate about the danger of social media, through which disinformation is spread.

The following are excerpts from the interview conducted by the German magazine "Der Spiegel" with the director of Oxford Internet, Philip Howard, in which he explained the stakes and challenges that they face in their work and the impact of disinformation on the recipient:

Can we develop herd immunity against online propaganda?

No.

It is good to find a technical solution to the problem, but the issue is more complex than that.

Could the US Congress riot have happened without social media?

Sure, social media helps the organizers, in both the short and long term.

For years, former President Donald Trump has encouraged people who love conspiracies and are looking for extreme and exciting stories.

And social media makes it easy to find, target, and benefit from this very specific audience.

So, after laying the foundation for a long time, he was able to suddenly condense his messages, and it was his letters that rallied his supporters to march to the Capitol.

- Trump has been permanently banned on Twitter;

But isn't that ineffective, given that his followers have already moved to more welcoming platforms, such as "The Donald" or "Parler"?

No, because the people who use Parler are now a small minority, at most 10% of the electorate regularly located in such marginal locations.

This limits their reach in a wider context.

Their very libertarian views mean that platforms like Parler, for example, are suffocating because they are flooding them with pornographic material.

This limits access to this platform, because many conservatives believe in freedom of expression and may support Trump, but they do not like meeting like-minded people surrounded by immoral material.

So, does this mean that these extremist sites are not important, because they cannot really expand?

No, unfortunately it plays an important role.

And platforms such as "Parler", "The Donald", "Breitbart" and "Anon";

These are sites for testing ideas.

And if extremist influencers see that something is gaining momentum, they increase it.

It can be said that these platforms act as a vector, like germs that spread disease to other public forums.

Do you mean that Parler operates as a research and development laboratory for new and improved conspiracy theories?

Yes, and at some point a major influencer takes an issue from one of these extremist forums and puts it before a wider audience.

It works like a disease transmitted by a vector, like malaria, in which mosquitoes carry out the transmission.

So, perhaps a Hollywood actor, or an influencer who knows nothing about politics, takes an idea and publishes it on the biggest and most popular platform.

These ideas move from "Parler" to "Reddit", and from there to "Twitter", "Facebook", "Instagram" and "YouTube".

We call this a "chain of misinformation."

Is this a one-way road?

No, it's more like an echo room, because many users use multiple platforms.

Sometimes the chain of disinformation bounces back from country to country, between the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, for example.

Therefore, the reverberation resonates back and forth.

So, if the conspiracy theory is disproved on a platform or language, it may be a rebound from another network or country.

In fact, many platforms function as reservoirs of infectious disinformation, which can spread elsewhere.

Within Europe there are two reservoirs of disinformation, in Poland and Hungary.

And this is where the conspiracy theories go, before they spread to other places.

It is really difficult to contain this chain of disinformation, such as that related to "Covid-19".

Extreme websites play an important role.

And platforms such as "Parler", "The Donald", "Breitbart" and "Anon";

These are sites for testing ideas.

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