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[Thread] Yesterday @MrJDWalsh wrote that "In September, Sinan Aral published The Hype Machine. Five months later, the book might be described as prophetic" he went on to say "This month alone at least two of Aral’s three predictions have come to fruition." https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/is-the-gamestop-horde-a-mob-or-a-movement.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1
The two predictions he was talking about were 1. The Capitol Riot and 2. The wild ride stocks like GameStop and AMC experienced this week... I had made relatively specific predictions about both possibilities.
With regard to the Capitol Riot, I wrote the following 
With regard to equity markets I discussed how information flowing over social media could disrupt markets and how misinformation specifically could be destabilizing (I still believe this remains a threat)
But this morning, I was sickened to see the third of my predictions rearing its ugly head. The subtitle of my book The Hype Machine is "How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and Our Health" http://www.sinanaral.io/books
http://www.sinanaral.io/books
The health disruption I discussed is the possibility that Coronavirus misinformation distributed over social media could raise vaccine hesitancy and derail our ability to control the pandemic, just as it did with measles in 2018 and 2019.
Our most recent research showed information shared over social media affects Coronavirus behaviors at scale https://www.pnas.org/content/117/33/19837
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/33/19837
This morning I read that "Anti-vaxxer and far-right protesters blocked the entrance of a mass vaccine site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles Saturday, forcing officials to temporarily shut down the operation." https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6015fe2cc5b653f644d4517e
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6015fe2cc5b653f644d4517e
And that" The protest was apparently organized on social media. The “Scamdemic” march organizers warned participants to “refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple,” the Times reported."
These are troubling developments given the level of carnage the pandemic has left in it's wake.
As I told Ali Velshi, I don't consider myself an oracle because the writing has been on the wall for those who are looking for it. Experts have been warning for months if not years about the disruptions social media could cause. https://twitter.com/sinanaral/status/1349723318488862720?s=19
https://twitter.com/sinanaral/status/1349723318488862720?s=19
But now more than ever, we need solutions. I wrote The Hype Machine to move us past the debate about whether social media is good or evil (the answer is "yes"), to ask and answer a different question: What do we do to solve the social media crisis? http://www.sinanaral.io/books
I hope we can take this critical conversation more seriously than we have been, starting now. And i mean right now. @JoeBiden: We need a National Commission on Democracy and Technology. Today.
