Foolproof by Unknown

Foolproof by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company


QAnon and inoculation: A missed opportunity

In 2020, the US-based furniture company Wayfair found itself in the middle of a bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory – the outlandish idea that a group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles in the ‘deep state’ were undermining former president Trump. One prominent Twitter user noticed that some of Wayfair’s cabinets were outrageously expensive and all using girls’ names. A conspiracy theory quickly emerged on social media that the furniture in question must therefore have young girls hidden in them as part of an international child-trafficking ring (of course, what else could it be?). This theory was bolstered by the fact that when typing the product’s ‘stock-keeping-unit’ (SKU) into a Russian search engine (Yandex), images of young women would appear in the search results.

I am sharing this story because I was asked to join a select meeting with a high-level executive of Wayfair and several PR experts to discuss what exactly had transpired and what lessons were to be learned. I was surprised by what the executive ultimately took away from the conversation: that Wayfair had not sufficiently instilled their ethics and values in the minds of their customers. Like the captured US soldiers who had forgotten their American ideals, if consumers only knew that Wayfair was an ethical company, then surely they would have never believed the conspiracy theory in the first place?

I begged to differ. The problem was not that Wayfair customers somehow failed to understand that Wayfair is an ethical company. The problem is that they had no mental defences against the misinformation attack that Wayfair was involved in some sort of child-trafficking conspiracy. If Wayfair had pre-emptively warned their customers that they might hear of some ludicrous story that the company is involved in an international child-trafficking conspiracy (akin to preparing the body for invading agents) and prebunked the conspiracy by giving people the facts and arguments they needed to dismantle the conspiracy (for example, it turns out that when you enter any string of random numbers into the Yandex search engine, the same images of young women appear), then customers would have had the ability to counter-argue and resist the misinformation (akin to generating specific antibodies).

You might ask, is it not a bit far-fetched to assume that Wayfair could have somehow anticipated a story this bizarre? It may seem so at first but let’s not forget Hillary Clinton and #PizzaGate. This is not the first time someone has created an outlandish child-trafficking conspiracy theory. Moreover, we know that conspiracy theories have a defined structure to them. Using the CONSPIRE guide, we can find evidence of ‘Reinterpreting random events’ (any random string of numbers would return the same set of images); ‘Persecuted victim’ (young girls); ‘Something must be wrong’ (those expensive and suspiciously named cabinets!), and ‘Nefarious intent’ – (the ‘evil’ company).

It is not too surprising that Wayfair was caught off-guard. Although few corporations had imagined they could be vulnerable to such misinformation attacks, the stock price of a company can easily be tanked by viral misinformation.



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