Interesting story from the BBC. It looks like Russia may be paying social media influencers to frighten people away from the Pfizer vaccine in order to sell more of their Sputnik vaccine.
The YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plot
I'm not surprised. Businesses attempting to sabotage the competition is not exactly a new phenomenon. However, on the internet, it seems that one has to be able to be discerning enough to tell who is speaking from the heart versus those who are following a script.
I would wonder, though, why they would pick on just the Pfizer vaccine and not also on the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
I think they may have got the motive wrong. I doubt it is narrowly commercial.
Russia has a policy of using disinformation to sow social discord in the West, to weaken democracy and thus the authority of its leaders. It has worked a treat in the USA, thanks to their (witting or unwitting) stooge, Trump and latterly the entire Republican party, which has been pulled into treating anti-vax rhetoric as a sign of tribal loyalty. So now they are trying to widen the cracks in Europe too.
I don't think they would have been able to be as successful if we had not already undermined and weakened our own democracy in the decades leading up to Trump. I don't notice as many free thinkers as there used to be. Instead, people have fallen into one or the other boxes of thought and limit their worldview to whatever is inside that box, regarding anyone outside that box as some kind of "adversary" that they must attack, ridicule, and subdue.
I've noticed a greater tendency towards intimidation and peer pressure - a kind of "love it or leave it" and "those who are not with us are against us" attitude which has pervaded the overall political culture - on both sides. That's what should be addressed most of all. The information is faulty because the methods of dissemination, expression, and argumentation are malignant and manipulative.
Social media have a pervasive culture of intimidation, peer pressure, malignancy. Heck, there have been incidents of kids committing suicide because of being bullied on social media, yet people act like they're powerless to do anything about it. Yet, in that kind of environment, it makes it all the more easy for false flags, agents provocateur, and other troublemakers to operate.
