
Let's Stop the 5G Hysteria: Understanding Hoaxes and Disinformation Campaigns - weinzierl
https://www.troyhunt.com/lets-stop-the-5g-hysteria-understanding-hoaxes-and-disinformation-campaigns/
======
wyldfire
Since Troy commands a lot of attention, he would do well to reference the
legitimate controversy over adjacent-channel interference among some 5G bands
and weather radar. The weather radar is sampling a physical phenomenon and
cannot be 'moved' to another band.

I haven't seen the 5G hoax promotions, only the legitimate journalism articles
describing the fallout. I presume that none of the hoaxers actually reference
the weather radar issue? Let's hope it stays that way because it's much harder
to dismiss it all as a hoax if they mix in real truth with all the other bogus
stuff.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
> I presume that none of the hoaxers actually reference the weather radar
> issue?

I have never seen them do this, and I think it's unlikely they will do enough
research on 5G (despite telling everyone else to "do the research") to learn
about this.

> Let's hope it stays that way because it's much harder to dismiss it all as a
> hoax if they mix in real truth with all the other bogus stuff.

I'd say they already do this, but I'm not sure they do, and I'm not sure they
need to. Conspiracy theorists don't rely on facts to bolster their narrative;
they rely on things that _sound_ like facts.

------
sagitariusrex
As a side note: My biggest disappointment regarding the 5G discussion with
respect to potential health implications is the widespread lack of
acknowledgement about the fact that we have not yet conducted any meaningful
scientific experiments (let alone ones whose methodology is robust) to even
hold a meaningful debate.

It's derailed into a political debate between those who "know for a fact"
there are zero health implications and those who "know for a fact" that you'll
certainly die within a week from a 5g antenna being placed next to your
apartment.

~~~
vardump
If the energy isn't enough to ionize, then what is there to study?

(Extreme) heating effects can cause cancer, but the source of heat is
irrelevant. The power levels 5G uses make even this point completely moot.

If you _really_ have to search for something that _could_ cause you cancer,
perhaps those rather carcinogenic compounds your phone is made out of could be
studied instead? Although I prefer just not to pulverize my phone and breath
in the resulting dust. :-)

~~~
willis936
There has been a fabled danger of low levels of non-ionizing radiation without
an explained mechanism for decades. There is no data to support it, but there
will never be enough “studies” to disprove it.

~~~
cogman10
What gets me is that these people still walk out in the sun.

We are talking about orders of magnitude weaker radiation than what you get
dosed with every time you go outside. But further, sunlight does contain
ionizing radiation (hello UV).

~~~
willis936
I can’t believe people are still flying on commercial airliners; over the
poles no less!

~~~
fsh
Flight attendants indeed have a significantly increased cancer risk which is
most likely due to radiation exposure:
[https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...](https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-018-0396-8)

~~~
willis936
Yes, commercial airliners do pose a real health risk. There’s an understood
mechanism and impact. I know I was joking about it, but only to highlight how
crazy it is to push personal electronics use down for radiation health
concerns, while airplanes continue to operate with no changes.

------
s9w
The only 5G campaign I can see are the flood of articles over alleged
5G-Corona conspiracies. Those however are not popular even in "dirty" corners
on the internet and if so mostly for fun. It's like flat earth.. it's fun to
see people embarrass themselves on Twitter when they tout their superior
intelligence because they don't fall for that.

There are however concerns about 5G itself, without corona. I haven't really
dived into the matter but it passes at least a cursory smell test, see for
example
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22317998)

~~~
vincnetas
Well, im probably living in really "dirty" corners of internet, as i see
constant stream of "Burn all 5G towers because they cause corona" in all "Eco"
"spiritual" "nature" facebook groups. Im not saying anything about 5G safety
here, just saying that this "5G + corona" conspiracy is really getting
traction.

~~~
s9w
Fair enough, I don't know what's on FB etc. I meant more like conspiracy
subreddits, 4chan and so on.

~~~
Jonnax
4 Chan and Reddit aren't the real world. Internet users put way too much stock
in their societal impact.

Facebook and group messaging apps are how a lot of people communicate.

~~~
pjc50
But there's no hard boundary. 4Chan is the viral breeding ground, occasionally
some particularly well-developed memetic pathogen is weaponised onto Facebook
or Whatsapp where it spreads among a non-immune population.

------
mothsonasloth
The same hysteria happened with the first steam powered trains travelling at
12mph in the UK.

Farmers thought their cows milk would turn sour from the train noises and
people thought their heads would explode or body damage would happen
travelling that fast.

[https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-
were-...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67806/early-trains-were-thought-
make-womens-uteruses-fly-out)

[https://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/11/women-and-
child...](https://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/11/women-and-children-
first-technology-and-moral-panic/?re)

------
jacquesm
So, last night in NL a number of telephone base stations was destroyed because
of this. This seriously impacts the availability of the local emergency number
so this hoax is now costing actual lives at a time when the chance of a
particular base station being required to call emergency services is quite
high.

Sick and tired of these idiots. The people in this thread who are arguing for
research into the 'potential health implications' of 5G: you are part of the
problem, you are giving cover to the idiots by allowing them to argue that
there very well may be such implications so better safe than sorry before
we're all going to be mind controlled.

------
newcrobuzon
I try to examine everything with an open mind.

For instance couple of years ago after a surgery I had plenty of time and I
watched some conspiracy documentaries (like 9/11 or chemtrails), and I was
almost disappointed how quickly they crumbled (within minutes) as they were
completely lacking any data or proofs - and I really was curious and open-
minded and was looking forward to learn something :)

This issue however becomes much more complicated when discussing environmental
and health issues - there usually the technology at hand actually should and
needs to prove its safety.

However deranged some of the 5G theories are, it should not hide the fact that
- afaik - there is no proper safety study for continues exposure to >24GHz.
Even thought _theoretically_ we _might_ think it is safe, it is still
paramount to fully safety test it.

So lets stop with all the straw man stuff and do some real studies (or find
them if they are already out there).

------
foreigner
My strategy is even simpler: if I see a long Facebook post, especially
"shared" from a source other than my Facebook friend, I quickly scroll to the
bottom and check if it says something like "copy and paste this post". If so I
simply ignore it.

------
andarleen
Any psychologist here able to explain a bit why some people are prone
believing conspiracy theories? I can’t for the life of me figure out why some
people, even highly educated, have a tendency to lean towards a mystical or
conspiratory explanation for anything just slightly difficult to understand.
Is there a part of the brain responsible for this?

Edit: I live in a country where people will find such an explanation for
anything ranging from bad weather, to a bad economy, to even covid. And such
theories are so prevalent that “normal” people are basically outliers.

------
lnsru
My colleagues call me Luddite and laugh at me when I don’t show enthusiasm
about 5G. Apparently, there are somewhere some very smart people, that see
great benefit of 5G. Maybe it’s just another important reason to force people
buy more phones. Maybe a am not right buyer persona using same phone for as
long as it works (5+ years).

Germany cannot get good 4G coverage, why think about 5G!? It was a nightmare
to drive and to talk to clients on the phone while driving in a field role. 30
miles outside of any city I had connection problems.

~~~
Jonnax
Because 5G is more efficient.

Here's a graph of predictions of data usage over the next few years:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-
dat...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-data-traffic-
forecast/)

People use their phones for data and the data consumption is increasing. You
might not but people live stream sports, games, TV to their mobiles.

Frequency bands are like radio stations. Better algorithms/etc to transfer
more data at an instant means that more people can have a better experience
using the airwaves.

Like in busy train stations people will often have full signal but unusable
internet connectivity.

Faster speeds means that people are not using the airwaves for as long.

Also mmWave is a way to get an extra density of data pushed as higher
frequency means more throughput look at 2.4Ghz WiFi Vs 5Ghz WiFi. Of course
the issue is that it gets blocked very easily.

It's a progression. 3G masts have been switched to 4G and it'll start in a few
years for 5G.

But honestly it's a long multi year process. And it's not like 4G is going
anywhere.

Other things that 5G does is latency is lower so it could open up use cases
such as data for autonomous cars, AR and VR (I'm a bit dubious on that tbh).
Reason being that the break out to the internet can be at multiple points
rather than a single point as it often is with LTE.

But yeah, honestly from a user perspective there's not really going to be much
of a difference. I don't think many operators are going to try selling 5G
plans like they did for 4G

~~~
catalogia
> _Because 5G is more efficient._

Not in the towers/coverage metric. I don't see how 5G could help in places
that already have poor coverage (e.g. outside cities.)

~~~
JibJabDab
Those areas would probably still be relying on 4g/LTE much like how you can
still get 3G signals out in the countryside. You're right though. it probably
won't help (and may not be cost beneficial in the near-term)

------
lucideer
The biggest worry about the raft of covid-5g conspiracy theories is not that
people will believe them (some may, momentarily, and quickly move on to the
next viral thing) but rather that there'll be a backlash of blind, uncritical
5g support.

Troy's article, while not explicitly defending 5g, is much more likely to
encourage such a backlash than anything.

Please be critical.

------
guerby
The main issue I see with 5G is the frequency grab by private operators, this
happens without any data about actual bottlenecks being shown and discussed.
Private operators already have a huge share of public spectrum and I suspect
it's nowhere near saturated except may be in very small and dense areas.

------
hubadu
It is a fact that a 5G network will consume three and half times as much
electricity as 4G.

~~~
lcam84
I recently bought a Nokia 800 Tough to have internet at home. It is advertised
as having up to 43 days on stand by but if you connect 4G with internet
sharing, the battery lasts about 5 hours. I wonder what will happen with 5G.

~~~
hieloz
No matter 4G or 5G,your hotspot waste battery to a large degree, It advertised
43 days only to standby mode.

~~~
lcam84
Yes in fact the 43 days is in stanby but I don't use the phone for anything
else, so I thought it would take more than a few hours between charges. I
thought that the difference in battery time between old and new mobile phones
was due to the touch screen, but now I don't know to what extent 4G
contributes to that difference.

~~~
kalleboo
Does "internet sharing" not imply turning on WiFi as well, which usually goes
to sleep during standby

------
PudgePacket
Did this get artificially pushed down the HN list? Lots of other items with
lower scores and earlier posting times are on the first page while this is on
the third....

------
hncensorsnonpc
It is not a hoax to be concerned! To say it causes C19 is something else but
even on this highly biased HN I have seen people with brains link to the
studies that show how it clearly can be harmful! This urge to focus on people
who spin it further and use them to dismiss valid concern pisses me off!

------
dekken_
No mention of the surveillance potentials of 5G?

Or it's ignored as it's true?

~~~
BenjiWiebe
No more and no less than 4g, and 3g before it. Probably even much the same as
2g.

~~~
dekken_
I think the necessity for more masts is a big difference no?

------
kartoshechka
These urgent copypastas are funny as hell and they are not going anywhere
simply because it's much faster and convenient to fall for this pseudo-
counter-popular opinion that expose these nasty technologies than make your
own. In the end of the day none of these boomers give a damn about 5G unless
it is criticized on national TV or in WhatsApp groups.

------
yakshaving_jgt
Try as we might to combat this insanity, no amount of facts will ever make
these idiots stop being idiots.

Aside from the 5G hysteria, I've also noticed a large uptick in people
believing that COVID-19 is engineered and patented by Bill Gates, as part of
his project to reduce the global population. _Why_ exactly would he want to do
that? Well the _why_ is not important, apparently. The Gates stuff is quite
well explained in the associated Snopes[0] page.

Sharing that article with an acquaintance brought her to respond with:

> this Article is a Total BS

> All i can say. I dont trust anything that i read anymore. Only What i hear
> from people that are completely Free and independent. And no, im not wrong.
> If you still cant see it then go to YouTube do your research , when you
> still can. Cuz it might be censored one day

I explained that _I_ am "completely free and independent", but apparently
that's not the way it works.

Like Troy Hunt, I too have been trying to figure out why conspiracy theorists
believe in _some_ utterly insane ideas, but not others. And what if I start
some of my own conspiracy theories? Would they be plausible? Would they catch
on? Why? Why not? The first thing I came up with was:

> The African giraffe is actually a genetically-modified animal, engineered by
> the CIA. It was a covert government project to see if the necks of animals
> could be elongated — the ambition being to then apply this research to
> humans, making their brains develop less (because the biological development
> would now go to supporting their longer neck muscles) as a means to more
> easily mind-control the global population

So, if that one ever makes the rounds among the semi-literate on Facebook, you
heard it here first.

[0]: [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-
de...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-gates-vaccinations-
depopulation/)

------
bjoyx
If we can’t trust epidemiologists to protect us from an epidemic why should we
trust radio wave scientists to protect us from radio waves?

~~~
TeMPOraL
You're wrong. We could and can trust epidemiologists. It's the
administrative/political layer that fucked up.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, I think the government scientists who've been front and centre on UK news
have been peddling a politically perverted message. So perhaps we can trust
their peer-reviewed output, but the "masks are useless" and "closing schools
won't reduce infection transmission" messages came from scientists. Scientists
are still human, and still will push their ideals and beliefs ahead of
scientific non-falsehood.

Also, epidemiology is an interesting one. As in all public health there are
balances, but moreso here. Often anti-antivax people will claim "vaccines are
entirely safe" which is unscientific. Their goals are noble, but they
discredit themselves because data on negative outcomes is pretty easy to come
by. The temptation is the same, public health is served by convincing people
to take certain actions (eg not buy masks, because they're needed by
healthcare workers). Sometimes these actions are contrary to individual needs.
Governments will need to tell people to do things that are against those
people's best interests ("don't seek medical care") because those actions
preserve the population. Epidemiology is about preserving populations, not
about keeping individuals healthy. That means there's always a tension, and I
don't think _one_ can trust epidemiologists, but _we_ can trust them in
general.

Would you like to save lives? Would you lie, knowing 100,000s would die ...
because there was a high probability that it could save millions, but also a
possibility that the deaths wouldn't help, or wouldn't be necessary?

~~~
bjoyx
1\. They should have stockpiled masks in advance of this epidemic 2\. People
can make their own masks at home

------
lcam84
The undeniable reasons for not going ahead with 5G:

\- It will contribute to the planned obsolescence. There we're going to get
insatiable with what we have and pay a ton of money for a new mobile phone
model, this on account of the exploitation of children in the cobalt mines of
Congo.

\- It will make us even more addicted to screens. If we think we can no longer
pay attention to anything, get ready for 5G.

~~~
FartyMcFarter
> It will contribute to the planned obsolescence.

In what way? 2G and 3G phones still work.

The only way that I see this as a valid point is that software will become
more wasteful with higher bandwidth. But if we thought like that, things would
never progress.

~~~
mkl
2G is already shut down in many places:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Past_2G_networks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G#Past_2G_networks)

