It Is Really Sad To See How So Many Are So Poorly Informed and Educated That They Believe This Sort Of Nonsense.

I am really getting sick of all these 5G, COVID-19 denying. antivaxxers who are putting us all at risk with their demonstrations and terrifying ignorance. Sad how easily they are manipulated by those who actually know better!

Two articles from just last week.

Experts warn of new strains of misinformation as COVID-19 seeds conspiracy theories

By Tim Biggs

June 8, 2020 — 3.33pm

The collision of 5G and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories could negatively impact both the 5G rollout and prospective COVID-19 immunisation programs, with experts warning the unscientific narratives linking the two topics are continuing to gain traction online.

Recent protests have brought emerging conspiracy theories out of cyberspace and onto the streets of both Melbourne and Sydney, with demonstrators variously claiming that 5G radiation is harmful, that COVID-19 is part of a global conspiracy and that 5G can be used to infect people with COVID-19.

Anti-vax and 5G protesters rallied in Melbourne and Sydney today, defying coronavirus restrictions.

All these theories are disputed by broad scientific consensus — with a link between virus and radio waves debunked as physically impossible — but they are propagated by a growing number of YouTube videos, Facebook pages, Twitter posts and celebrity Instagram stories.

Fringe claims that 5G mobile networks can harm or kill people and animals have persisted since before the technology's rollout began in Australia, despite extensive existing and ongoing research showing no evidence of harm. However, the coronavirus has sparked fresh fear among people who were already primed to be distrustful of the technology and resulted in new hybrid beliefs, said La Trobe University research fellow Dr Stanley Shanapinda.

"They might say look, we know that radio waves interfere with oxygen molecules, and people have difficulty breathing when they have the coronavirus. So you've got these bits and pieces that go together but the end result is there's no scientific proof for these claims," he said.

Conspiracy theories are also increasingly weaponised by foreign state actors and promoted by opportunistic scammers, with Dr Shanapinda saying the anxiety caused by them could make things tough for governments and telcos.

It may be a bit of a struggle to get community buy-in to continue with the rollout.

Dr Stanley Shanapinda

"It may be a bit of a struggle to get community buy-in to continue with the rollout," he said.

There have been several instances abroad of anti-5G activists destroying telecommunications equipment, while Australian telcos have said they're working with authorities to monitor potential attacks. Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher and Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy have both denounced 5G-coronavirus myths as baseless.

Chris Althaus, chief executive of industry body the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, said the "fake news" about COVID-19 and 5G was not currently inhibiting the rollout and he hoped that would remain the case.

"It would be a tragedy to be slowing down the rollout of this important technology on the basis of a conspiracy theory that is demonstrably false," he said.

"We respect the community's view and even if it's a minority, there may be others in the community that hear that concern and need reassurance. The industry absolutely has a responsibility to provide the factual basis of information to reassure people."

Meanwhile, a study commissioned by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology found that, in March, networks of Twitter bots created and disseminated misinformation framing COVID-19 as a Chinese bioweapon, generating an estimated five million impressions.

An Essential Research poll last month suggested that significant numbers of Australians had bought into the theory, with 39 per cent of respondents believing the virus was engineered and released from a lab. Additionally, 13 per cent thought the virus was not dangerous but being used to force people to vaccinate and 12 per cent believed the 5G network was used to spread the virus.

When asked if they believed Bill Gates had played a role in creating and spreading the virus (a theory being widely disseminated online via the viral video Plandemic), only 55 per cent said definitely not.

More here:

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/experts-warn-of-new-strains-of-misinformation-as-covid-19-seeds-conspiracy-theories-20200603-p54yyl.html

and then there is this:

Twitter's plan to challenge 5G conspiracy theories backfires

By Laurence Dodds

June 10, 2020 — 7.34am

One month after promising to impose warning labels on misleading tweets about coronavirus, Twitter is still failing to accurately distinguish factual information from fake news.

Starting in early May, the company has been using artificial intelligence to identify misinformation and apply mild or strong warnings depending on how "dangerous" it is, aiming to expand them to other topics in future.

The policy is part of an ongoing attempt to clean up Twitter's service, which has already entangled both it and its rivals Facebook and Snapchat in a furious row with Donald Trump.

But since then, Twitter's misinformation labels have frequently lapsed into farce, wrongly catching obscene jokes, factual news headlines and complaints about false claims while leaving diehard conspiracy theorists untouched.

Experts said that such erratic enforcement raises questions about Twitter's ability to prevent the spread of misinformation, with one cautioning that the labels could "backfire" and have the opposite effect.

Paul Barrett, a professor at New York University and the author of a new report on social media firms' moderation policies, said: "The basic inclination to root out conspiracy theories on significant topics of public interest is to be applauded and not made fun of or scorned. However, if you're finding that high an error rate they clearly need to be paying closer attention. And they probably need to be paying more human attention."

The AI appears particularly sensitive to mentions of 5G and coronavirus, causing confusion and mockery as it labelled innocuous or nonsensical tweets that featured both words.

In a survey of search results for the phrase "5G coronavirus", the London Telegraph found that only two out of 79 had been labelled correctly, as opposed to 23 that had been wrongly labelled and seven that should have been labelled but were not. Overall, the error rate was 38 per cent.

That led many Twitter users to deliberately bait the system into labelling their tweets, posting streams of meaningless key words such as "5G coronavirus Dracula UFO Mr Bean" or joking claims such as "5g corona killed my neighbour's dog".

By contrast, a tweet by Mark Steele, a doyen of the anti-5G conspiracy movement, claiming that "5G IS LINKED TO THE CORONA VIRUS PERIOD", did not receive a label.

A spokeswoman for Twitter said that the labels were a work in progress that would need more testing and calibration before being rolled out to other topics.

More here:

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/twitter-s-plan-to-challenge-5g-conspiracy-theories-backfires-20200610-p5511w.html

where we find there are some who are so stupid they are trying to have Twitter send on their nonsense while evil actors work to invent even more bizarre misinformation.

I really do fear for our polity and democracy when there are so many dingbats with the right to vote!

The level of scientific illiteracy and educational failure is really terrifying. Having them in mass demonstrations is just plain dangerous. Demonstrating against real injustice and prejudice is one thing – demonstrating to reveal one’s stupidity is surely another!

David.