The Troll War in 2020: Misinformation At Home But Mostly Abroad (Part 6)

Part 6: Living It Local At FOX 13 News 

FOX 13 News is a channel out of my hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. In this day and age of the virus though, its reach is global as well. Very global, as I would soon find out. While most of the news posts on this page had a local slant, it didn't take long for me to realize that--aside from the occasional poster from Africa requesting money and/or a hot date--the battle was personal as well. Maybe moreso than on larger national and international news sites. 

For example, on a post celebrating a new antibody test from ARUP Laboratories, which is owned by the state of Utah and operated by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, an anti-vaxxer troll talked about how the virus was a hoax--which I know is untrue because I had it, duh--so, this troll posted a video link to a movie on YouTube. 

I watched this movie called "Plandemic," which at 26 minutes in length I can never get back a single minute of, sadly, and then perused the 38-page memo PDF accompanying the film, just to get an idea of what this lady's counterpoint might be. As a journalist, my job is to report the news, you know, not share my personal opinion on the contents therein. So, I responded to the troll and tagged her. "______ is not very smart," read my tag line. Again, my job here is to pull the animal out of their shell. 

Within a minute, I received not one--but three--responses. One implored, "Find the light before it's too late! " (Again with the time element. Didn't I see this on the Bloomberg page as well?) More doomsday predictions followed. “You don’t want to get this vaccine! Whatever you do, RESIST!” On this page, there were lots of exclamation marks and all caps. The worst part was they were all from Utah and frighteningly real. 

In sum, people were just yelling their opinions--to heck with any healthy debate. And it wasn’t just a few people; it was a vast majority. So, in a situation where my view would be largely outnumbered to begin with--frankly, I kind of felt like the poor troll on CNN who dared speak on Gov. Cuomo--where would I turn next? Well, the next part may surprise you. 

“______ is a troll bot,” I added. “How dare you!” came the response. (Hmm, that phrase sounded oddly familiar.) Within minutes, and after 15 other comments to mine from other posters I received a notice from Facebook that my account would be suspended for 24 hours due to my comment on FOX 13 News "violating community standards." 

Violating community standards?!? What the heck did I do? My social experiment of sorts appeared to be over, confound it all. The weight of this moment sure wasn’t worth losing all contact with the outside world though. After all, Mother’s Day is coming up. So is Father’s Day as well as several birthdays in my family. I have more photos to post and things to say. Facebook has been my lifeline to the world since I got saddled up with this God-forsaken virus, anyhow. 

But, this short-term ban Facebook imposed begs a greater question--more than a few anti-vaxxer proponents, pro-Trump and pro-Biden supporters, and pro-China supporters and whomever-supporters could ever. What in the world is actually going on here? Why didn't FOX 13 News handlers see that they were, in fact, destroying their own ability to effectively manage their troll population? 

Or, did they prefer that the trolling continue unabated? I checked out these anti-vaxxer profiles, and it turned out that 3 out of the 4 who responded to me weren't fakes. As for the fourth troll the same pattern emerged from the previous profiles on other sites: very few pictures, a day-old history and a small cash donation to a charity of their choice. So, why isn't a local channel taking the time to find this information out like I had? 

What did I actually do to violate these so-called community standards other than call out someone who was clearly using the comments section to drive a wedge into the conversation and create this division between us? Did I disagree with all the posts on the FOX 13 page? No. But, I did learn that what might fly for a community standard in a thriving metropolis like London might not in tiny Salt Lake City. It was certainly a fascinating and morbidly interesting social exercise in tolerance and culture. But, as I soon discovered unbeknownst to me, this trolling would even strike an app on my cell phone as I neared the end of my 48-hour journey into the land of misinformation.