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For some time now, serious researchers have been looking into the realities of how much disinformation is on the Internet, how effectively it is spread, and what its effects are on politics, events and people. A major addition to this growing body of work has just been made by a paper by three European academics published in the journal Social Media + Society. (Here is a link to the study; it contains scores of links to other studies that support the findings I am summarizing here.
Some of its findings: Continue reading
Of all the mathematical concepts humanity has invented to help deal with reality — such as zero, infinity, numbers, etc. — surely the least useful and most toxic is the notion of “average.” Like empty calories — food that has no nutrition — the idea of an average something is without any real utility. In a heartbeat I can look up the average high temperature for today and it will not tell me what the actual high temperature will be, five or ten degrees above or below the average. So what use is it to know the average? 
The biggest, loudest, most expensive scam ever perpetrated on the American people is underway right now and people seem not to recognize that it is, in fact, a scam. This despite the fact that they are being hammered with advertising promoting it 24/7. The TV ads feature broken down football quarterbacks and elderly actors and comedians pitching “Medicare Part C.” (At the end of each spot there is a shot of a bunch of tiny type that, should you stop the playback, get a magnifying glass and read it, informs you that the sponsor of the ad is not, in fact, a government agency. In other words, when it says it is offering Medicare Part C, it is lying.) 
A Republican candidate to represent Georgia in the United States Senate, Herschel Walker, had this analysis of global climate change this week:
The raging inflation that is grinding this country down is not monetary, it is rage inflation. Everybody, it seems, is outraged by everybody else; foaming at the mouth over tweets, texts, posts, remarks, books, 40-year-old high school yearbook pictures, items of clothing, wearing or not wearing masks, getting or not getting vaccinated, race, religion, politics, real or imagined insults, assaults, and multiple other umbrages. 
My name is Chingachgook. I am an editor. I am the last of my people. 
Call me obtuse (or something worse), if you wish, but I simply do not get the mantra about Facebook wielding immense power — a mantra being parroted by every talking head and stenographer-journalist in the universe right now: that millions are getting their information from Facebook, and Facebook is spreading disinformation, duping those millions into trashing their country. 