Coronavirus conspiracies like that bogus 5G claim are racing across the internet – By Taylor Hatmaker (Techcrunch) / April 10 2020
As the U.S. and much of the world hunkers down to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, some virus-related conspiracy theories are having a heyday. Specifically, a conspiratorial false claim that 5G technology is linked to COVID-19 gained ground, accelerating from obscurity into the rattled mainstream by way of conspiracy theorists who’d been chattering about 5G conspiracies for years.
While there is scientific consensus around the basic medical realities of COVID-19, researchers are still filling in the gaps on a virus that no one knew existed five months ago. That relative dearth of information opens the way for ideas usually relegated to the internet’s fringes to slip into the broader conversation about the pandemic — a dangerous feature of an unprecedented global health crisis.
According to Yonder, an AI company that monitors online conversations including disinformation, conspiracies that would normally remain in fringe groups are traveling to the mainstream faster during the epidemic.
A report on coronavirus misinformation from the company notes “the mainstream is unusually accepting of conspiratorial thinking, rumors, alarm, or panic” during uncertain times — a phenomenon that explains the movement of misinformation that we’re seeing now.
While the company estimates that it would normally take six to eight months for a “fringe narrative” to make its way from the edges of the internet into the mainstream, that interval looks like three to 14 days in the midst of COVID-19.
Continue to article: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/10/coronavirus-5g-covid-19-conspiracy-theory-misinformation/
