
5G Virus Conspiracy Theory Fueled by Coordinated Effort - rbanffy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/covid-19-link-to-5g-technology-fueled-by-coordinated-effort
======
dmix
> There has been a “significant uptick in inauthentic amplification” of posts
> on social media linking 5G to the coronavirus, UzZaman said, indicating that
> there could be a coordinated campaign and bot accounts involved.

Is there a correlation with _anything_ that gets popular then sees an uptick
in 'inauthentic activity'. I know most of the attention is going to be looking
into 'dangerous' buzzwords but I'm curious to see what the standard baseline
is for every trend, then seeing how it compares. Especially FUDy topics.

Social media 'bots' by their very nature would be picking up on any trend in
order to boost their positions from which to seed other stuff. Assuming that's
what they do (and actually have an audience beyond other bots which follow
them)...

One thing being spread by bots doesn't point to a cause/effect by itself.

> the previous 24 hours, there had been more than 50,000 posts about the topic
> on Twitter and Reddit

I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making light
of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now commonly being
cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.

The raw statistics don't really scare me much, especially 50k".

I remember since I was in high school when the first cell towers (well before
3G) were going up and there was a small campaign by a girl in my class who
lived on a farm next to another farm which got one. They were claiming it
caused cancer and other stuff.

5G/cell towers aren't a very unique point of blame as much as people flailing
about in the face of a mystery and pointing the finger at the same small group
of common enemies from the past (not that the real 'enemy' isn't actually
among them, but it's safe to be skeptical when they are brought up...).

~~~
jacquesm
> I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making
> light of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now
> commonly being cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.

But even that adds up to a large amount of lost energy and time that could
have been used to discuss other things.

~~~
catalogia
You may as well level the same complaint against video games. If those people
find it fun to mock conspiracy theories, who are you to say that's a worse use
of their free time than any other unproductive pursuit?

~~~
jacquesm
That at least it does not devalue communications media.

~~~
catalogia
Why does people mocking conspiracy theories devalue reddit more than people
discussing video games?

Edit for response:

In what ways might mocking 5G conspiracy theories on reddit have a negative
political effect?

~~~
jacquesm
Because video games are not used as tools for political influence. And Reddit
is. Social media are a huge thing in the political landscape these days. Video
games are - as far as I know - not.

------
tzs
What I find interesting about this one is that RT.com has run a few stories
about how it is a baseless conspiracy theory that scientific studies have
failed to find any support for.

What's interesting about this is that RT.com in 2018 and 2019 was a big source
behind the "5G will give you cancer" disinformation. Links to several of those
stories, and to their current stories disputing the virus claims, in this
earlier comment [1].

Why would Russia flip from trying to get people in the US afraid of 5G to
trying to calm 5G fears? I have no idea.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22785716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22785716)

~~~
jacquesm
They are not even bothered by arguing two sides of the same issue at the same
time. All that matters is to stir the pot, to make more foam because foam
obscures what is actually important. It isn't about 5G or pizzagate or the
fact that 9/11 was an inside job by the mossad. It is about distracting you,
me and a ton of other people from the things that are _really_ going on and
that then makes you look like just another conspiracy nut.

This is just one giant misinformation campaign directed towards derailing
informed consent and an informed electorate. Every little bit helps in that
overarching plan.

~~~
Patentlywong
>This is just one giant misinformation campaign directed towards derailing
informed consent and an informed electorate

alternative theory: they look for fringe topics trending and picked up the
narrative to drive views.

~~~
jacquesm
Quite possible, why not amplify the shit already out there, that outsources
the one part that is hard to do with bots.

~~~
Patentlywong
Because it adds no value to the mission of RT news (which is to spread
influence) since it doesn't expose the targeted audience to the other articles
on RT news with higher propaganda value (like coverage on syria).

------
phantom_oracle
These articles don't address the critical aspect of WHY.

Why are these conspiracy theories about 5G being spread?

If the why involves geopolitics and economics, you just have to look at who
has the most to lose from this, factoring in that China is now the cheapest
option for this tech(not sure if they are the leaders, but certainly will be
the cheapest with a state-funded subsidy).

HN being a critical thinking community, it is fair to postulate theories from
an economic perspective. I don't think anybody will try to sell "long-life
milk powder" during such discourse.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I hate to say it, but we have entered a time where information has been not
only successfully weaponized, but can also be easily spread throughout the
entire population with stunning penetration results. Quick example, I have
recently found out about Yulin celebrations. I have zero to no doubt that it
happens to be a part of anti-Chinese propaganda ( what are the odds of guy
like me finding out about a local custom in a Chinese province organically ),
but I simply cannot help reacting emotionally to its content.

I am sure 5G is spreading like wildfire for similar reasons ( though
admittedly, this one is kinda silly, when there are actual things to worry
about ... like say Mnuchin suddenly being able to disburse billions of dollars
with a friendly IG, but I digress ).

~~~
knzhou
Indeed, the machine works so well that, as a US citizen, I have little
confidence in being able to stay in this country in the long term. Doesn't
matter if I speak out, nothing will stop it.

It is amusing that the typical "skeptics" and "critical thinkers" online never
notice. Their skepticism consists of swallowing the narrative whole, then
insisting that the conspiracy is real but _twice as evil_ as reported.

~~~
twomoretime
>as a US citizen, I have little confidence in being able to stay in this
country in the long term

You're likely in for a rude awakening if you expatriate. Things aren't perfect
in the US but for someone in the middle class on a dev salary it's naive to
think there are many places where you'd be substantially better off.

~~~
knzhou
I didn't say I would be better off elsewhere, I said I wouldn't have a choice.
And I don't make even 20% of a standard dev salary.

~~~
rbanffy
Pretty much everywhere else in the developed world you'll have a decent
compensation and free universal healthcare. Depending on where you land, your
kids will have free college tuition and you'll be able to retire without fear
of some clever banker will destroy your pension fund.

~~~
knzhou
> in the developed world

So what? No matter where I go, I'm still going to be ethnically Chinese. If
the US expels people like me, I assume Europe, etc. will follow suit.

~~~
rbanffy
Why would we expel you? Most of us have very sane governments, that respect
human rights and don't make decisions based in conspiracy theories

~~~
knzhou
As I said, given how information flow works, when you do it you'll think you
have an excellent reason. When the time comes, you'll be hearing about
something like the Yulin celebrations every single day, and in a month you'll
hate whoever you're supposed to. That is the standard playbook, and it hasn't
failed once yet.

~~~
rbanffy
I am sorry you feel like that, and, as an immigrant myself (Brazilian born,
with Hungarian heritage, living in Ireland), I hope our species learns to
embrace our cultural diversity.

I'm often reminded that we are just a couple hundred thousand years of human
on top of many millions of years of monkey, and that we should be patient with
ourselves.

------
pacomerh
A friend of mine insists so much on this theory he sends me articles and
videos from super unreliable sources of random people claiming its science,
but all of them fail to include actual proof, or really an explanation that
makes a little sense. When I try to bring up the "show me coherent info" to
him, he just avoids the question and continues to say that we are being shut
from freedom of speech and from the truth. Almost like a cult where they need
to believe this otherwise their reality would suck a lot

~~~
aaron695
This applies equally to most religion or politics talk.

------
jacquesm
For the first, formative parts of our lives we are told all kinds of lies and
we then later find out that these aren't true and for many people this is
traumatic. For instance, stories about father Christmas, the Toothfairy and
other such characters. Then of course there is religion, which starts out by
conditioning children to believe things that are entirely unsupported by facts
from a very early age. And advertising and so on.

This conditioning spreads, children are literally meme machines. Bit by bit
faulty pieces of information get lodged in gullible little brains. By the time
you reach the age where critical thinking skills become important the whole
world around you has become infested with lies and half truths, and the bits
stored in your head are full of logic holes and trash.

So then, at the ripe old age of 25, a person with no scientific background
receives from a number of directions at once something that is not supported
by facts. By default, they are going to do what they've always done: accept it
as though it is true. And they will spread it around, a click here, a retweet
there, a like over here. Then, once they are invested in it, just like with
Santa Clause there are always going to be some individuals that refuse to give
up the lie. They persist in believing it because that's easier than to give it
up.

It's how cults are formed and how people end up with false beliefs that cause
them to do really bad things. Like kill others. The 5G Virus Conspiracy is
falling into very fertile soil. Against a backdrop of low level continuous
distrust of the authorities, the vast gap between poor and rich and the number
of absolutely outrageous things that we have told people to accept as fact
this is not all that surprising.

If we want to change this we will have to start by ensuring that what we tell
people from a very early age is the truth, and that lying and spreading a
falsehood as such would be - again - seen as something dishonorable.

This of course is entirely not acceptable to large fractions of society. So we
will have to live with the fact that some people become so gullible that they
will believe anything that they are being told by some guy in a frock, a
labcoat or who they happen to resonate with. Critical thinking skills are like
other skills: you have to learn, and then you have to practice them the rest
of your life to make sure you retain them.

Until then you will see these conspiracy efforts have great success and this
should not surprise us at all.

~~~
carapace
Did you ever read Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus Trilogy"? It's basically
all about this process and the higher-order manifestations of it. (It's about
a lot of other things too.)

Specific to what you're talking about there is a bifurcation (really a series
of them) when the system detects the invalid data and re-calibrates. Often
this takes the form of a "conversion experience", and some people build
specific rituals (initiations) to try to engineer them artificially.

He once described society as "open warfare between competing gangs of
magicians" or something like that. By "magicians" he meant people who
deliberately program the "reality tunnels" (his jargon) of others.

What you're talking about, in the context of RAW's models, is a kind of
transcendent goal: allegiance to _truth_ itself. (And critical thinking,
evidence-based data collection, etc. All that good stuff.) You're part of the
great _anti-conspiracy_.

\- - - -

Now that I think about it I seem to recall that RAW had a piece where he talks
about experienceing the Santa Claus disillusionment. I think George Carlin
does in his autobiography.

------
luxuryballs
I think the more precise surveillance capabilities are the greatest threat of
5G and being near the wrong tower at the wrong time accordingly.

The greatest strength is perhaps the lower impact of a single tower failure.

------
mimsee
Highly recommend watching Bigclivedotcom's video on the issue. Especially if
electromagnetic spectrum isn't your strong suit

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk)

------
whatshisface
> _There has been a “significant uptick in inauthentic amplification” of posts
> on social media linking 5G to the coronavirus, UzZaman said, indicating that
> there could be a coordinated campaign and bot accounts involved. The company
> says it uses a system that analyzes language, communication patterns, post
> volumes and bot activity in order to identify social media posts that are
> “inauthentic” and attempting to manipulate online discussion._

Do we have any reason to believe or disbelieve their methods?

~~~
throwanem
The comments on any 5G-related YouTube video I've seen, e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du8yQeQdMBk),
tend to bear it out. You see a lot of accounts with no content posting the
same thing over and over in comment threads, to a point where it's almost
absurd to imagine them being anything _but_ bots. No argument, no defense of
whatever point they're trying to push, no engagement whatsoever.

For anyone curious, the conspiracy theory seems to have some varieties, with
the one I've most often seen pushed not so much claiming that 5G masts somehow
directly cause coronavirus, but rather that coronavirus is a false-flag
campaign designed to create broad popular support for a vaccine which, thanks
to magnetic particles and/or nanotechnology depending on who's telling the lie
right now, will enable mass population control via 5G masts.

I've been a hobbyist collector of conspiracy theories since high school. From
that perspective, and absent any sort of context, I have to admit this one's
inspired. But I gradually lost my pleasure in that hobby, as thoughtless
social media operations turned conspiracy theories from a cute but harmless
fringe preoccupation into a means of disinformation with the power to move
whole societies. From _that_ perspective, this is truly vile.

~~~
whatshisface
The majority of those comments are laughing at people who believe 5G causes
coronavirus.

~~~
throwanem
I wonder if the ones I'm talking about have been deleted since I watched the
video last night. I'll have to check again after work; it'd be nice to think
Youtube is responding.

------
phendrenad2
I believe the goal of this disinformation is to cause democracy to undermine
itself. I think that whoever is spreading this thinks that once we're all
accustomed to YouTube and Twitter banning mostly harmless urban legends, then
soon they'll fall down the slippery slope toward more advanced silencing of
politically unpopular opinions or whatever. I don't think it'll work, but it's
the only sensible explanation I can think of. I mean if a state actor is
pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into promoting this disinformation,
there must be some anticipated ROI. And other possibilities like "make people
in the west distrust 5G so Huawei can stay ahead" and "promote general
distrust of people in power" don't seem as plausible to me.

~~~
jacquesm
It is much simpler than that: it is to make sure you won't trust _any_ kind of
communication anymore. And that in turn will undermine democracy more than
anything else. If 99% of the stuff on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and for all I
care HN is nonsense, why would you continue to believe in that 1%? At what
ratio do you stop to absorb new, potentially faulty facts simply to protect
yourself? The 5G/Coronavirus one is easy to dismiss. For us. For my mom, not
so much.

------
im3w1l
I agree that it does seem insincerely promoted. Furthermore I think think the
article is foolish to connect it to 4chan trolls. This goes deeper than that,
more likely it's the same group that's promoting it on twitter is also
promoting it on 4chan and other channels too.

~~~
throwanem
I don't know why this is getting downvoted. 4chan isn't what it once was, but
given that what it once was was the most powerful organic meme amplification
engine on the Internet, anyone developing a strategy like the one the article
postulates would be missing an incredibly obvious trick not to include it,
whether it's all it once was or not.

------
jameslk
I guess I've been on the Internet too much, but this "conspiracy" sounds like
trolling to me. I mean really... coronavirus from 5G? This sounds like
something created by a trolling operation to get the media to pick it up for
the lulz.

~~~
jacquesm
And now people are setting antenna masts on fire. Just like with pizzagate
which sounded totally ridiculous to any thinking individual it was apparently
not crazy enough that one person took a weapon and decided to go and liberate
the children.

------
_red
Preface 1: I think the evidence points to that 5G is probably safe

Preface 2: I do think we should tend to err on the side caution. I fear in 40
years we will look back at our blind rush into many forms of tech
incredulously (ie. can you believe in 2020 everyone had wifi installed in
their homes? next to their kids?!?)

Having said all that, who benefits from the "anti-5G" coordinated effort?

~~~
meowface
If 5G is dangerous, then non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation in general is
more dangerous than we thought. I don't think this is impossible, but so far
the evidence doesn't seem strong.

~~~
ip26
The evidence isn't strong. That said 5G does expose you to more base station
radiation than ever before, with cells of up to 120W and a cell every
neighborhood block. Compare to 4G with cells of 20W and a cell every city
block or two.

So to me it's always seemed rational to at least revisit the question and
reaffirm it's still fine.

We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine,
_or_ once believed to be harmful! Trans fats, asbestos, lead, sun, saturated
fats, sugar, exercise, etc etc.

Though, the antenna in your phone exposes you to more radiation than the base
station, so that's probably the more important question. Perhaps with higher
base station density, the mobile devices actually reduce output.

~~~
_red
Typically the debate centers around "non-ionizing radiation is safe" and
strictly speaking that's probably 100% true.

>We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine

That is my concern. Specifically that the "non-ionizing radiation" is a red-
herring. Its possible that EMF exposure effects cells in another way that
we've yet to realize. As a poor analogy: Arguing that being exposed to
constant visible light on the basis that "Light is non-ionizing" misses the
fact that constant visible light disrupts the circadian rhythm which has a
host of other ill-effects.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we ban something on a fear, but given the
enormous potential cost if we get it wrong, it should be thoroughly studied.

~~~
catalogia
The big difference between visible light and 5G in this case is humans are
known to be capable of sensing _visible_ light, while no person has ever
demonstrated the ability to sense radio waves like 5G signals. Of course we
can't sense gamma radiation either, but in the case of ionizing radiation we
at least have solid evidence humans can be harmed by it. But for radio waves?
There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur, short of being put in a
microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.

~~~
meowface
> But for radio waves? There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur,
> short of being put in a microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.

To preface: I don't think there's any evidence at this time that standard
levels of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation are harmful to humans.

But it's not _inconceivable_ that there could be some harm caused which we're
not aware of yet and which is eventually discovered in the future. The body
and brain are extremely complex and not fully understood, etc. Molecular
biology is sensitive. It's not implausible that there could hypothetically be
certain chemical reactions or cell processes which are subtly disrupted by
certain frequency bands at certain amplitudes.

I personally don't think there will be such a finding, but people still need
to keep an open mind, I think.

------
api
Could ISPs threatened by 5G be involved? Just something I've wondered.

------
luxuryballs
If anything I could see people who want to discredit negative 5G sentiment as
loony conspiracy theorists finding it useful to pump this one.

------
kylek
Pretty meta. I wonder how this article will contribute to it.

~~~
pacomerh
Contribute to what?. It's important to mitigate disinformation, this article
is part of this effort.

------
beloch
There is a factual link between COVID-19 and 5G, in some countries at least.

Huawei is in danger of being locked out of 5G network infrastructure in some
countries, such as Canada. Aside from pressure from allied countries to bar
Huawei from participating in its 5G network, public opinion is also
overwhelmingly against Huawei thanks to the ongoing Meng affair, China's
taking of hostages to secure Meng's release, as well as Huawei's legacy of
corporate espionage targeting Canadian companies such as Nortel.

Huawei is now donating medical masks as part of a charm offensive. It's
possible that whoever started this conspiracy theory is attempting to counter
that charm offensive.

Edit: People above are wondering what might motivate people to start these
rumours. Here's a likely reason, and it has been downvoted. Go figure.

