David Erickson: Did you see or
see a sharing of the Plandemic
conspiracy theory video?
BL Ochman: Uh-huh, I read about
it. I didn't watch it, but I
know all about it. Yeah.
David Erickson: So um...
BL Ochman: Conspiracy theories.
David Erickson: Yeah. So the New
York Times does a great in-depth
story by Sheera Frenkel, Ben
Decker and Davey Alba  on how it
spread, on how that video went
viral. I had seen it in my
Facebook feed, and some people
that I know had shared it. So
what they did with the
article--they compared how the
Plandemic video compared to
other videos that went viral or
other content that went viral
during the same period. And so
on Facebook, Plandemic was
liked, commented on or shared
nearly 2.5 million times.
BL Ochman: Wow.
David Erickson: And that's
compared to Taylor Swift's May
eight announcement about her
City Lover concert, which
plateaued at about 110,000
interactions on Facebook. And
then there was The Office
reunite on Zoom for a wedding,
which was posted on May 10, and
reach 618,000 interactions. And
the Pentagon had released
videos--UFO videos on April 27,
and had one 1 million
interactions. So comparatively,
that's how they stacked up. They
also had a timeline of how it
went viral. So it was first
posted in a QAnon Facebook group
of 25,000 members QAnon is this
lunatic right-wing conspiracy
group. And then more than 1500
of those members shared the
video to their networks. Then
there was a physician named Dr.
Christiane Northrup, who is a
celebrity physician. She's
vaccine skeptic. She shared it
on her Facebook page and more
than 1000 of her followers
shared it, many of them to
antivaxxer groups. And then the
video was posted to Reopen
Alabama Facebook group which had
more than 36,000 followers. And
that's part of a network of
Reopen-insert-your-state-here,
groups that's organized by a
right-wing astroturf group and
that spread to the political
realm. There's a guy named Nick
Catone--I think is how you
pronounce it--he's a
professional mixed-martial arts
fighter, celebrity, prominent
antivaxxer. He shared it with
his 70,000 followers on
Facebook. And then a candidate
for Ohio...for the Ohio
Republican Party primary--she
lost--her name is Melissa
Ackison...shared it to her
20,000 Facebook followers. And
by then it went mainstream and
BuzzFeed was reporting on it; in
fact checking it, debunking it.
But you can see how it goes from
conspiracy--major, lunatic
fringe conspiracy theory
groups--to other
interested...antivaxxers,
political groups, etc, etc. So
it's a good long read put a link
to it in the show notes
