At the Gem State Patriot News blog on September 4, 2023 there is a bad article (post) by their publisher, Bob ‘Nugie’ Neugebauer, titled The Manipulation of America and subtitled Social Media Platforms & Google are turning us into a Banana Republic. It’s typical ‘Viewing with Alarm,’ and it obviously wasn’t proofread. His first paragraph opens by claiming that:
“Wikipedia describes Manipulation (psychology) as the action of manipulating someone in a clever or unscrupulous way Crowd manipulation — the use of crowd psychology to direct the behavior of a crowd toward a specific action Internet manipulation — the co-opting of digital technology (algorithms, automated scripts) for commercial, social, or political purpose. So you have to ask the question, is this happening in our country today, how bad is it and how long has it been going on?”
That first run-on sentence that doesn’t match what Wikipedia says. Their page on Manipulation (psychology) actually says it is a:
“subterfuge designed to influence or control another, usually in a manner which facilitates one’s personal aims.”
Bob instead had referred to the generic page on Manipulation, which under Crowd Manipulation lists categories of Internet manipulation, Media manipulation and Market manipulation.
His second paragraph begins with this sentence that misspelled Larry Sanger as Larry Sager:
“According to a recent interview on Rumble by Glenn Greenwald with Larry Sager Wikipedia’s founder, manipulation of Wikipedia has been going on since around 2006 when we saw the establishment take exception to and become dismissive of the relative value of eastern/natural medicine compared to today’s establishment science.”
And his fourth paragraph misspells cues as ques.
Bob says he was inspired by Dr. Joseph Mercola, and links to this article at the AMERICA FIRST Report on September 2, 2023 titled Wikipedia Is an Information Warfare Tool. It has an embedded YouTube video from Glenn Greenwald titled Wikipedia Co-Founder Condemns It: “Most Biased Encyclopedia in History | SYSTEM UPDATE.
But Dr. Mercola is a notorious jerk, and always should be ignored. There is a page about him at the Encyclopedia of American Loons way back on December 31, 2011. That’s not a good sign. And the page about him at the RationalWiki begins by stating that:
“Joseph Mercola (1954-) is an American anti-vaxer, conspiracy theorist, pseudoscience promoter and absolute quack, best known for making false and misleading health claims.”
One of those claims cost him millions of dollars. There is a press release from the Federal Trade Commission on April 14, 2016 titled Marketers of Indoor Tanning Systems to Pay Refunds to Consumers.
More recently there is an article by David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine on July 28, 2021 titled Joe Mercola: An antivaccine quack tycoon pivots effortlessly to profit from spreading COVID-19 misinformation. There also is another article by Joe Schwarcz at the Montreal Gazette on August 20, 2021 titled The Right Chemistry: Beware of these examples of COVID quackery.
My graphic was assembled from a rubber duck and a flag donut at Openclipart.
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