The coronavirus pandemic has re-introduced the conversation around mandatory vaccinations and, believing that their civil liberties are at stake, many have taken to social media to discuss the matter and their fears about it. But there are also large groups of people that are spending hours each day to flag anti-vaccine content on social media platforms and they’re about to organize.
With the pandemic and lockdowns having had a large effect across the world, governments as well as pharmaceutical companies are now ramping up their efforts to develop a vaccine at the soonest.
That being said, a recent survey found that 7 in 10 people worry about the safety of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Mandating that people must get inoculated with “new” vaccines is (still) pretty much a no-go in any semi-decent democracy. So what else can be done? Maybe convincing people to take part of their own volition?
This lengthy Wired article provides us with a glimpse into how that process may work and details how an online army of users who plan to help it along.
Public Good Projects (“or PGP”) CEO Joe Smyser is quoted heavily in this article. The case of the “Plandemic” video is taken here as an example of conspiracy theories. Now Smyser says his “group” has built “online surveillance tools for tracking outbreaks of misinformation, disinformation, and downright conspiracies.”
This “PGP” also wants to recruit pro-vaccine activists. Their job would be to be alerted by “PGP” that some misinformation was out on the internet, to then mobilize into “an army of debunkers” who will also receive recommendations on what language to use in their “counter-postings.”
“PGP” wants to create “an army of debunkers who can quickly be mobilized into action. Having enough people is paramount; there’s safety in numbers when posting on a topic that’s likely to spawn a vigorous online battle.”
The plan is to use the army of users to mass flag anti-vaccine content on social media platforms in order to try and get the content removed and kill the conversation: “PGP plans to conscript the vast but largely silent majority of Americans who support vaccines into any army of keyboard warriors trained to block, hide, and report vaccine misinformation.”
Reads almost like a war-time infomercial in some “novel” digital Orwellian era, doesn’t it?
