Disinformation, Explained

the cryptkeeper speaks

Disinformation is a garbage standard applied by an absurd process, and I’m going to show you that in less than five minutes.

I wrote last week that the Southern California lawyer Julie Hamill was about to depose Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, a local official who has had a remarkably high national profile during the pandemic. That deposition happened today, and Hamill has already posted a rough draft transcript online. The county’s lawyer, a partner in a corporate law firm brought on as outside counsel, bigfooted all the action, and the transcript ends with Hamill promising to seek sanctions for his interference. We can learn some remarkable things nonetheless.

Health expert Barbara Ferrer

The lawsuit is about behavior like this:

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health successfully asked social media companies to take down posts that questioned and criticized county officials — as when, for example, people posted that the much-interviewed Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the high-profile health and disease expert, was “a fake doctor.” They said that because Dr. Ferrer has a PhD in social welfare studies, not a medical degree, but the media interviewing Dr. Ferrer as an expert on disease rarely made that point. So people spread disinformation, and the county government told social media companies to delete those social media posts.

In three brief excerpts from the transcript, here’s what a crock the disinformation scam is. Hamill asked Ferrer how county public health officials determine which claims are disinformation or misinformation. You’ll find the heart of that exchange around pp. 41-47 — here’s the link to the whole transcript again — and especially on pg. 42, where you can see an example of the county’s hired lawyer jumping in as Hamill tries to make sure she’s heard Ferrer’s description correctly. Ferrer is speaking at the top:

At the top, Ferrer is defining misinformation: “information…not aligned with what we’ve determined is accurate information.” That’s the basis for an email to a social media company demanding that a post be removed. Misinformation is not agreeing with the county health department’s assessment of a factual matter.

So who does this? Page 43:

And now the big finish, pg. 45, with the county’s lawyer jumping in again to squash the discussion:

So:

1. County government has misinformation removed from social media.

2. Misinformation is anything that “is not aligned” with what a team of officials sitting around a table in a county office have “determined is accurate.”

3. But sometimes the county officials who make that determination don’t agree with other experts — including other public health officials.

Disinformation is not agreeing with our assessment, even when we disagree with other experts on the same topic. By this standard, if the CDC says X, county public health officials say Y, and you also say X, following the guidance of the CDC, you’re spreading misinformation. Your statement “is not aligned” with the county, so. There goes your Twitter account, loser.

They told social media companies to remove citizens’ public posts on that basis. That’s the standard they used to silence the public. And we owe Julie Hamill our thanks for showing us that.