The White House announced a new effort this week to combat coronavirus misinformation on social media, particularly Facebook. It’s an effort that carries legitimate questions about what role the government should play in policing (or, in this case, helping to police) such things.

But that’s quite different from what Doocy accused the government of doing. And he did so based upon nothing but innuendo and a dumbfoundingly apparent lack of research.

Psaki had offered a statistic Thursday in her daily briefing: “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook.”

When Friday’s briefing began, Doocy was raring to go. He accused the government of spying on people to obtain this stat.

“Speaking of misinformation and the announcement from yesterday,” Doocy began, “for how long has the administration been spying on people’s Facebook profiles, looking for vaccine misinformation?”

It wasn’t exactly clear what Doocy was talking about. But after Psaki responded that his premise was inaccurate, he made clear that this was about the “12 people” stat. Doocy cited the number and suggested that the government must have been snooping around people’s Facebook pages to arrive at it.

The vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originated from just 12 people, a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) cited by the White House this week found.

CCDH, a UK/US non-profit and non-governmental organization, found in March that these 12 online personalities they dubbed the “disinformation dozen” have a combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms, with Facebook having the largest impact. CCDH analyzed 812,000 Facebook posts and tweets and found 65% came from the disinformation dozen. Vivek Murthy, US surgeon general, and Joe Biden focused on misinformation around vaccines this week as a driving force of the virus spreading.

As long as compassion and concern are bullshit, your lack of either can’t be seen as a character flaw — it’s you who are normal and well-adjusted, while the person who wishes to improve the world must be a con artist, a phony.

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This is what conservatism has become: a movement of people who presume the worst in others because they see the worst in themselves. And they wish to re-brand their pathological indifference as a positive good — shameless self-interest as the only legitimate human impulse. At least they, the thinking goes, can be honest about their motives, unlike social justice types who are just as greedy but not as willing to ‘fess up about the things that drive us.

The thought that people may actually believe injustice should be fought for moral, ethical, or even practical reasons — that there are purposes to life other than personal gratification and enrichment — is too much for them to bear. For if it’s true, then they have chosen their path, not because it’s normal or natural, let alone healthy, but because their values are narcissistic to the core.

They must assume we are signaling phony virtue because they know they are signaling genuine vice.
They cannot face those they deride as social justice warriors because doing so honestly would mean having to face themselves. And that would mean acknowledging that what drives them are the most base and primitive of human impulses — impulses that make them unfit to be parents, friends, partners, lovers, or respected citizens.