Meet "Misinformation Expert" Kate Starbird

"Misinformation expert" is a fake credential designed to appear as if any person can be the arbiter of truth and falsity. It’s a ridiculous idea, and yet many people fall for this scam.

And to make matters worse, the whole industry is biased:

Harvard scientists decided to survey “150 academic experts” to tell us about how they are the judges of “misinformation”. I won’t bore you with their opinions, but this was interesting from Appendix A:

Experts leaned strongly toward the left of the political spectrum: very right-wing (0), fairly right-wing (0), slightly right-of-center (7), center (15), slightly left-of-center (43), fairly left-wing (62), very left-wing (21).

I would never have guessed it.

What is even more ridiculous is that these fake experts don’t even hide the fact that they are political activists. Here’s one of Kate Starbird’s “academic” papers:

Claims of election fraud throughout the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and during the lead up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt have drawn attention to the urgent need to better understand how people interpret and act on disinformation.

This neutral arbiter of truth brazenly claims that the protests on January 6th were an “insurrection attempt”. These people have no shame. They have such a low opinion of the American public’s intelligence that they think they can persuade them that people without guns can take over the American government. And how can they claim with a straight face that America is not plagued by election fraud? Don’t people watch TV or YouTube? It took me 2 minutes to find these stories:

Here’s another story:

Here’s another story:

Here’s another story:

Here’s another story:

Here’s another story:

Here’s another story:

And this story:

I could go on, but you get the point. The US election system is messed up. Let’s be clear, the US will never be able to trust its elections until:

1. Everyone is made to vote in person and with proof of identity.

2. No computers are used, just pen and paper and representatives from all political parties counting the votes together.

There are just too many opportunities for corruption and too many corrupt and dishonest people.

Presumably, if 60 Minutes, Kate Starbird, and the Democratic Party got their way, all of those reports above (and hundreds of others) would be removed from YouTube and social media generally and the people might be persuaded to believe that they had voted for the power elites who are destroying their country.

If the laws are upheld, the platforms could be forced to carry hate speech, and false medical information, the very content most big tech companies have spent years trying to remove through teams of content moderators. But in the process, conservatives claim that the companies have engaged in a conspiracy to suppress their speech.

As in this case: a tweet in 2022 from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claiming that there were…
"Extremely high amounts of COVID vaccine deaths."

With social media moderation teams shrinking, a new target is misinformation academic researchers who began working closely with the platforms after evidence of Russian interference online in the 2016 election.

Lesley Stahl: Are researchers being chilled? 

Kate Starbird: Absolutely. 

Lesley Stahl: This campaign against you is meant to discredit you. So we won't believe you.

Kate Starbird: Absolutely. It's interesting that the people that pushed voter fraud lies are some of the same people that are trying to discredit researchers that are trying to understand the problem.

Lesley Stahl: Did your research find that there was more misinformation spread by conservatives?

Kate Starbird: Absolutely.

Congressman Jordan's Judiciary Committee produced a report that concluded there's a "censorship industrial complex" where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives, which Kate Starbird vigorously denies.

But Congressman Jordan says her group unfairly flagged posts like this tweet by Newt Gingrich: 

"Pennsylvania democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election" 

He complains that government officials put pressure on social media companies directly –

Rep. Jim Jordan: A great example, 36 hours into the Biden administration, the-- the Biden White House sends-- a email to Twitter and says, "We think you should take down this tweet ASAP." 

Congressman Jordan argues that the tech companies shouldn't remove most of what they call "misinformation."

Rep. Jim Jordan: I think you let the American people, respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what's accurate, what isn't.

Lesley Stahl: Well, what about this idea that they-- the 2020 election was stolen? You think that these companies should allow people to say that and individuals can make up their own mind and that there should be--

Rep. Jim Jordan: I think the American people are smart. Look-- I've not said that. What I've said is there were concerns about the 2020 election. I think Americans agree with that. 

Lesley Stahl: No they don't--

Rep. Jim Jordan: You don't think they think there were concerns with the 2020 election?

Lesley Stahl: Most people don't question the result.

Perhaps she should ask some regular Americans:

Clearly, the vast majority of Americans don’t trust the election system. Why would they? They’re not stupid.

The irony, of course, is that the leader of these power elites will call foul if things don’t play her way:

"There was a widespread understanding that [the 2016] election was not on the level. We still don’t know what happened … but you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, ‘Whoa, something’s not right here.’" 

With each election, the trust in the system gets less and less. At some point, the American people will lose all confidence in the system and then what? I can only imagine, and it’s not pretty.

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