That’s why you have to get in their faces for lying. Anybody with public influence or power needs to be held accountable. Question them, and mock them if they dissemble. Brigade and troll the fuck out of liars. It’s social correction for the greater good - it’s counter disinfo.
If you can get in the middle of a disinformation campaign and explain where it originated, what their goals are, and what they are likely to do next, and bring along a bunch of your friends to call them out publicly (online or offline) and just dunk on its purveyors en masse,
you can short-circuit it completely. It is also probably the most wholesome thing you can use social media for at this point.
If you aren’t confrontational, no problem. Just get a bunch of people to join you in reporting disinformation purveyors as others are calling them out publicly. Force social media to really take a good long look at what it enables and encourages.
Oh, and if you’re on the brigade/mock/troll side of things, don’t stay around to argue. If they draw you into a thing, they win. Go say something scathing and then laugh if they respond. Don’t give those fuckers a single inch.
This is what I’ve learned from years and years of shitlording it up in flame wars all across the internet as well as my disinfo work in the past few years. I was an early “it’s just a social experiment” asshole. I can’t believe it’s actually turning out to be useful.
Uh, sorry about that btw. In my defense, I tried to only troll sexists and racists, who deserve it
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Community college (education, really) should be free and available to all, no question about it. I dropped out of high school at sixteen, and never would have been able to go on to university years later if it hadn't been for the @SDCCD transfer program.
Side note: I can provide you with a compelling reason not to stay in high school. Being a thirtysomething student at UCSD, where the student body skews very young and overachievery, was completely personally mortifying and being asked regularly if I was a professor did not help.
I mean literally no one else gave a shit if I was old or young or anything else. But my ego couldn't handle it lol
Here's a more credible story. I was sharing the top article, such as it is, as an example of what weaponized disinformation about masks can do and the power grabs that ensue at all levels. It looks like there's a lot more nuance here:
My grandfather was really good friends with Dennis Hopper's mother and we're all pretty sure that we're related to Hopper's family somehow because of it
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher who swung pretty conservative and always complained about long hair on "pretty boy" men... but he never once complained about Dennis Hopper, in his columns or anywhere else.
1.) You have the right to record LEOs.
2.) Be obvious, not covert.
3.) Keep recording as long as you can.
4.) Lock down your phone and upload to the cloud if possible.
5.) Don't make public without thinking through ramifications to those victimized.
The article also touches on the potential dangers of doing all these things. Bad LEOs are often deadly, as we all horribly know. I would personally add that it is best of all if people who are already privileged step up whenever possible.