The scourge of disinformation

EDITOR, The Tribune.

If the Bahamas and other nations were to be honest to themselves, COVID-19 could have been handled far better than today.

The only reason for this disaster is not only placing political interests above human lives, but a military-style disinformation campaign against healthcare experts by other people or organisations willing to extend the pandemic and create more chaos to meet financial goals and gain more power.

First it was defying lockdown mandates in the first few months of the pandemic, which eventually ruined recovery efforts at the end of Summer 2020 and made lockdowns less effective in the long run.

Secondly, the vaccination rates plummeted thanks to further efforts from anarchist type groups on social media who falsely portray themselves as doctors and healthcare experts. These efforts have further set recovery efforts back and have also made restrictions worse in other countries like Australia.

It’s clear that these activities aren’t random, isolated incidents of internet pranksters but rather multiple groups of people willing to create more unnecessary suffering and destabilise economic growth. This style of mass disinformation is very similar to the tactics employed by military intelligence services during the Cold War and in other places and now various groups on the internet has learned to inflict the same level of damage to nations by means of deception and exploiting uneducated citizens for their own agendas.

What’s more tragic is that the major social media platforms has consistently failed to combat the problem, and they even allow them to exist to spread their lies until they decide to remove them. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and new right wing social media platforms are the grounds where disinformation campaigns are born and where they spread to society at large.

Now the question is: How do we stop this in the Bahamas?

The answer is that we’re out of options to negotiate for these organisations to stop spreading these lies, and it is the time for action against the social media platforms who gave them the ability to run free.

The Bahamas has allowed itself to be on the losing end of negotiations for decades, but it isn’t too late to stop disinformation from reaching the Bahamas. The government must give an ultimatum for the owners to either set up a national firewall to remove political groups from being accessed in the Bahamas or if these conditions aren’t met within a year, all social media platforms will be forever banned from this country until further notice.

People may think these measures are draconian, but the level of damage inflicted on the pandemic recovery efforts is too high to risk these groups to spread propaganda in the Bahamas, which will make our restrictions and lockdowns worse. The Western world has already allowed itself to be deceived by military disinformation campaigns by rogue groups and social media should have never allowed themselves to be used as political pawns, but we must be the ones to change this tide and show them that we’re better than this.

AMMAKA RUSSELL

Nassau,

August 31, 2021.

Comments

ohdrap4 says...

⬆️ Heil Hitler.

Misinformation is relative. Ask Megan Markle.

Posted 1 September 2021, 7:37 p.m. Suggest removal

DWildermuth says...

What do the people of the Bahamas think about the idea of going without social media?

Posted 1 September 2021, 8:01 p.m. Suggest removal

ohdrap4 says...

They prefer it to sex. Followed closely by talkshow radio.

The people in Australia are being led by a freak woman. They even shot 15 rescue dogs to prevent adoption and covid transmission.

Posted 1 September 2021, 8:39 p.m. Suggest removal

truetruebahamian says...

The majority of Bahamians do not have the intelligence to discern facts from fiction. It doesn't help when we are trying to achieve betterment for the whole.

Posted 2 September 2021, 8:06 a.m. Suggest removal

happyfly says...

The easiest solution is to let this Russell person move to a communist state like Cuba where all of the media is 110% controlled by the government and nobody will ever hear about anything other than what the government chooses to allow, or not. Free will, personal choice and freedom of expression is obviously too scary for this person

Posted 2 September 2021, 9:26 a.m. Suggest removal

ohdrap4 says...

Let's crowdfund his ticket to North Korea.

Posted 2 September 2021, 10:23 a.m. Suggest removal

jammydodger says...

There are many esteemed scientists, pathologists, MDs who have spoken out about the the current mishandling of the pandemic and have faced complete censorship. The US government has spent billions on marketing propaganda rather than on researching treatments and prophylaxis for COVID.

Posted 2 September 2021, 10:06 a.m. Suggest removal

Dawes says...

It must be nice to live in the world that the letter writer does. Someone they feel we can tell others to jump and they will. Thats not how the worlds works. But good luck. I'm sure all that will happen is we will all use VPN's to logon as they will just say no service from Bahamas ISPs.

Posted 2 September 2021, 11:19 a.m. Suggest removal

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