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In the still-unfolding story of social media’s impact on society, Donald Trump’s sudden flight to hospital would make a perfect season finale: the ultimate testament to social networks’ importance, and yet also their moment of utmost danger.
As the President’s condition rapidly worsened, with little clear information from the White House, people around the world had little choice but to read, share and collate the scraps of information and speculation flying across Twitter, Facebook and other services.
But the panicked atmosphere of the crisis, coming on top of an already febrile and conspiratorial national debate, was the perfect environment for misinformation to spread like a forest fire across networks that already stand accused of having lost control of their own algorithms.
"In a time of breaking news people gather on social networks looking for as up to the minute information as they can get," says Renee DiResta, a disinformation researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. "When there is no verified information, what rises to the top is often the post that’s gotten the most engagement.
"Right now we’re in an environment where there is a phenomenal amount of distrust between the two sides, which is reflected in the media environment… there is an assumption of bad faith, and that’s the kind of content that is being produced and [that] people are engaging with."
Naturally, both Twitter and Facebook quickly flooded with posts from opponents or Mr Trump wishing fervently for his death. The two companies’ responses diverged sharply: Twitter began removing such statements as contrary to its rules against "wishing or hoping serious harm", while Facebook allowed them as long as they did not tag Mr Trump himself.
tweets that wish or hope for death, serious bodily harm or fatal disease against *anyone* are not allowed and will need to be removed. this does not automatically mean suspension. https://t.co/lQ8wWGL2y0 https://t.co/P2vGfUeUQf
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) October 2, 2020
Meanwhile, in private Facebook groups devoted to the QAnon conspiracy movement, believers shared complex diagrams and collages pointing out secret symbols in Mr Trump’s tweets, which they claimed as evidence that his quarantine was actually a charade unfolding in line with a prophecy made by an anonymous forum poster back in 2017.
Even outside the confines of Q-world, many on both the Left and the Right refused to believe the President’s test result – announced, fittingly, in a tweet at 1am by Washington DC time – was real. Even relatively mainstream pundits, branded as trustworthy by Twitter’s bright blue badge of verification, raised doubts.
At their height on Friday morning, tweets questioning the infection were arriving at a rate of five times per minute, according to the social media analytics service Dataminr.
The White House exacerbated the situation by giving little detailed information about the President’s progress. Reportedly, Mr Trump’s team did not even inform his opponent, Joe Biden, who had endured a face to face shouting match with the President only last week during the first presidential debate.
CONFIRMED: There was no contact from the Trump campaign or the White House to alert the Biden campaign of possible exposure. The campaign learned of the situation from the news reports, a Biden campaign aide tells me.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 2, 2020
Researchers call this kind of vacuum a "data void". The term, first coined by disinformation academic Danah Boyd, refers to a situation where so little information exists about an obscure topic or phrase that search results, as well as social networks’ content selection algorithms, can be easily dominated by cranks.
"This is something we saw with Covid: when there is not proactive communication by authorities, what people consume instead is whatever the media or influencers put out," says Ms DiResa.
Of course, some of the nonsense was also paid for. Facebook’s vast advertising engine continued to chug through the chaos, and by the evening was spitting out numerous adverts seeking to capitalise on Mr Trump’s health, which were seen by thousands around the US.
Two posts using #TrumpHasCovid were shown to around 5,000 people across America, funded by a Democratic political group and a comedian and radio host Dean Obeidallah. One Democratic campaign group, A Progressive Voice, promoted a message saying it was "very entertaining to see how the right ring try to twist this or it messes with their mind" was shown to 2,000 people.
In some cases, the adverts too pushed conspiracy theories: an "entrepreneur and activist" called John Anthony Castro got about 45,000 hits on an advert that described Mr Trump as "the Great Deceiver" and accused him of "trying to distract the the disastrous debate performance, bait his enemies into ridiculing him to lose the moral high ground, and lock-in support from his base with sympathy support".
For their part, local Republican candidates boosted posts urging their followers to pray for the President and his family.
In the universe of Donald Trump’s own campaign, there was no sign that anything had gone wrong. Although Mr Biden promised on Friday to suspend all negative campaigning, Mr Trump continued to blast supporters with angry text messages, emails and Facebook ads, including one which accused Mr Biden without evidence of wearing an earpiece during the debate (a spokesman said those adverts were "parody").
One email with the subject line "Lyin’ Obama", shared by CNN journalist Jake Tapper at 3:17pm DC time, said: "We all know that Sleepy Joe isn’t fit to be YOUR President… [he] is probably already asleep in his basement." At that moment, Mr Trump was in his presidential helicopter, on the way to hospital.
Almost simultaneous to Obama remarks expressing best wishes to the Trumps, the Trump campaign sends out a fundraising email attacking “Lyin’ Obama” https://t.co/pGLafZ0Wdz pic.twitter.com/Wzye6Pt2aG
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 2, 2020
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