The Troll War in 2020: Misinformation At Home But Mostly Abroad (Part 4, Act 2)

Part 4, Act 2: NowThis Is Part Deux, Eh? 

Since I felt I had some luck uncovering the science behind our fascination with these trolls on NowThis I decided I'd stay put for a a few hours this April morning and check out the scene for a while longer. It was during a press conference featuring Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that I found myself yet again surprised as I watched it unfold on Facebook. 

An interesting aside took place, and it's one worth mentioning in some detail. A troll attacked Trudeau in the comments by saying in part that "Trudeau sucks and he's a f**," and other threats I cannot mention on this blog. However, instead of going at the troll with a vengeance, a Canadian poster attacked the troll with good old-fashioned logic. 

"Well, we've been more successful than the US on Covid response," the Canadian said. "Remember when we got the CERB (Canada's equivalent of the American stimulus payment) and you guys gave the stock market $1 trillion? That was awesome." The troll, who may or may not have been American--more on this phenomenon later in the series--did not respond for the rest of that thread. 

Trudeau continued his press conference in two languages, French and English, for the next 45 minutes as the snow fell in Ottawa. One other surprising thing I noticed was that for this being a Canadian production, a slew of Americans were on the feed. Almost all were real and had profiles dating back years. Two-thirds of these Americans though, were middle-aged women who fawned over the Prime Minister's hair, his policies and the way he speaks--but mostly his hair. The other third were American men fed up with the current state of affairs in their own country. They all wished Trudeau was their President, and all were on red bot alert. 

When another troll chimed in later towards the conclusion of the presser, an American female admirer came to Trudeau's defense in the comments section not with anger--but reason and a bit of humor. "Look, Trudeau doesn't need to read from a script!" the woman added, taking a swipe at our American President. When the troll--whose profile was a day old and had pro-Trump memes up--fired back asking if Canada wanted the real truth, another American poster responded. 

"No. Because people don't want others spreading conspiracy theories THAT HARM PEOPLE," she yelled, delivering another thinly veiled shot to the troll, this time in the arm with a virtual disinfectant. That exchange was as close to anger as you would see from any poster on NowThis. But, if you're looking at how we in America might fight our own troll war during our own pressers and win these misinformation battles, the manner in which Canadians are handling it may provide valuable clues Americans can use. 

Okay, so now that I've been to two global sites, and seen plenty of misinformation campaigns in the first 24 of 48 hours to last me a lifetime, I thought it might be a nice change of pace to study something more ultra-national in scope--something more in line with what the actual national sentiment might be towards this growing issue of misinformation in our own country. Although you can see outrage politics in some posts on NowThis, it's not as apparent. But the next one I checked out sure was.