Ukraine-Russia resulted in a catastrophic information failure. People, including blue checks, deliberately sharing fake news, memes, and updates one the one hand, and then actually *demanding* no one push back on obvious propaganda aimed at NATO allies and the US on the other
Never seen anything like this before in any conflict in my life. This really is a new era of information warfare where the meme is more important than reality for people
Peoples' behavior toward this stuff really does mimic entertainment: they get angry when you point out some obviously fake thing is fake (ghost of Kiev), like you just got up and turned off the television
Blue checks stopped even pretending to be impartial (we know they're not) and just deliberately shared things that were obviously not true
Notably, the vast majority of the misinfo was on the Ukrainian side. Russia has been more or less dark -- there is no Russian "Snake Island"--some have argued that it seems as if they knew they wouldn't be able to compete, so they relied on hard power instead of meme power
I'm sure there has been Russian misinfo -- but nothing like Snake Island, ghost, the Zelensky photos, etc, all of which have gone viral and have fundamentally shaped people's perceptions of this conflict
Zelensky sat down with Sean Penn about a documentary at the same time that everyone was convinced he was on the front lines in body armor shooting at Russians. Zelensky knows how important the information war is
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