It is said to kill a fire you must starve it from oxygen. Using the same analogy, one of the most effective ways to kill fake news (or at least reduce it) is to suffocate it by not engaging it, as engagement is its oxygen.
I have been amazed at how quickly the “5G technology is spreading COVID-19” fake news was spread and went on to be scaled across different countries in the world (for the record, it doesn’t). It is not just that it is an emotional narrative that people can relate to and it confirms their bias, it seems like even in countries where it wasn’t there before, it somehow managed to find a target audience that further went on to spread it even further.
This, in the past and currently, has resulted in real-life impact with petitions being signed to ask governments to halt deployment of 5G as well as, in some countries, 5G masts being physically vandalized as part of the protest that 5G technology somehow is spreading COVID-19 around the world.
However, apart from social media, how did this fake news narrative spread and scale so quickly that governments, the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and other organizations (including telecommunications companies) were forced to issue statements to refute it?
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