Greg Morris

Who Knows What Is True

Steven Lee Myers, Paul Mozur and Jeff Kao writing in Bots and Fake Accounts Push China’s Vision of Winter Olympic Wonderland:

While China’s control of what its domestic viewers and readers consume is well established, the country has spread its own version of the Games beyond its borders, with an arsenal of digital tools that are giving China’s narrative arguably greater reach and more subtlety than ever before.

When dealing with world events now one of the things you have to navigate is truthfulness. The article above is surrounding the reach of Chinas government and its ability to sway a narrative, but this could be about any government or private company.

The ability to dictate the way you want things to appear seems to be getting easier. You can lead people already in certain belief structures down any path you choose. It doesn’t matter if it is a tech review, voting strategy or as we are seeing now a war being waged. What some would refer to as PR spin, or to give it the correct term propaganda, is rife everywhere.

Thankfully we also live in a time where information is at our finger tips and the fast flowing, free publishing nature of the internet usually comes out on top. The issue is when some people can’t, or won’t, fact check the stories they read.

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