In what must be the latest effort to “fortify” future elections, it seems that Big Tech is ablaze with the idea of “pre-bunking” —using a proactive campaign to pre-empt political narratives that could supposedly lead to disinformation.
On Wednesday, Google released a new study that claimed showing simple cartoons discussing things like how ad hominem attacks are bad could ward off gullible rubes from believing things that are not true, according to NBC News. The leaders of the study also found that changing which words are used to discuss facts could also lead to better results for those who want to control the narrative protect safe and secure elections.
“Words like ‘fact-checking’ themselves are becoming politicized, and that’s a problem, so you need to find a way around that,” Jon Roozenbeek, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University’s Social Decision-Making Lab, told NBC.
So for example, instead of seeing an ad just prior to a YouTube video, individuals might see a cartoon for 10 seconds talking about a broad topic. The idea is to “inoculate” the viewer, similar to a vaccine, NBC News explained.
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