As I sit here browsing the internet I am concerned. I am concerned because I try to be an informative and responsible information aggregator and opinionist, and yet I know that it is likely to be a fact that I get goldfished or catfished or whatever fish they are calling getting hoodwinked these days. It is just far too likely and too hard to tell fact from fiction. Let me give you a recent example.
I came across this article the other day that caught my eye. Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison said, “If conservatives do not like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot instead.” Now, I have been around the block a time or two and I have heard a lot of CEO speak and I was a bit put off by this. We have been covering Robby Starbuck lately and seeing how he is managing to get companies to move back toward the middle of the political spectrum. I have also known that most CEOs are very big fans of saying nothing. They can yak and yak and fill up an entire press conference not saying nothing. They are coached on how to say noting by their public relations department. Marvin Ellison is saying something, and it struck me as unusual. I did an internet search for his quote seeing what else is out there. I was sent to Fact Check and an article by Jordan Liles. Jordan writes for Snopes and it seems that they fact checked this quote and it was not true. I went to the next article, and it was from PolitiFact and Loreben Tuquero also writes that this quote did not take place.
She describes the process as such, “An Aug. 23 Threads post showed an image of a CNBC logo with this purported quote from Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison: “If conservatives do not like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot.”This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
This is a fabricated quote, and the image is altered. A CNBC spokesperson told PolitiFact the network did not air the screenshot. In response to the claim, Lowe’s also posted Aug. 26 on X: “This statement is false. Lowe’s CEO did not make this comment. Everyone is welcome at Lowe’s.” When reached for comment, a Lowe’s spokesperson also pointed us to this statement.”
I went back and read more of the Snopes article by Liles, “on Aug. 23, X user @SuzyLiberty2 posted (archived), “Lowe’s went and got woke.” The post received over 500,000 views and featured a screenshot that purportedly showed CNBC aired the quote on its TV channel in the form of an image graphic.”
So, what happened was this use SuzyLiberty2 shared a fake quote on top of an infographic that was actually used on CNBC making the fake quote look very realistic and then social media did what it does. The comment section was awash in dirty language, and everyone was fired up and ready to go build a home from scratch with materials from Home Depot. Now if I am in the AI business, and I type in make me an infographic using this quote from this CEO from Lowe’s I am guessing that this new product is going to looking identical to the one that SuzyLiberty2 shared. Do I know if she used AI to create this, no. Could it be done very easily and fool 500,000 people, yes. Whoever created this and put it somewhere on the internet where people could share it sure stumbled on a great way to get users and clicks didn’t they? I find a reputable logo design that people will recognize and trust and then I make up an inflammatory quote and then cast the story like a dry fly into a Montana stream and let the current take it down stream. Waiting for a bite and when someone does, I watch the clicks go up and the splashing around begin. They could even use the C Thomas Printer Cooperative as such a carrier. As a trusted source of historical and financial gossip and speculation, this offends me greatly. Now here is what Liles shared as the kicker, “@SuzyLiberty2, one of the users who shared the fake quote, later replied (archived), “It turned out to be false never mind.”
So after all that, the retraction is never quite covered with the rigor of the original story now is it? We learned that lesson from Covid now, didn’t we? Just last week we talked about Ted Williams and narratives and how narratives can often get in the way of facts. Old SuzyQ Liberty2 got her facts wrong but the narrative right now didn’t she? Why do I say this?
On Tuesday Robby Starbuck announces that just last week he contacted Lowe’s and said he was going to expose some of their woke DEI policies and on Tuesday they revealed that they are going to do away with them. This from Giulia Carbonaro, “I messaged Lowe’s executives last week to let them know that I planned to expose their woke policies,” Starbuck wrote. “This morning, I woke up to an email where they preemptively made big changes.” This was interesting and we have covered the work of Robby before, but what I found interesting is something else Carbonaro wrote, “While criticizing Lowe’s on social media, conservative users shared a fake quote by Marvin Ellison, the retail chain’s CEO, that said, “If conservatives do not like our values, they should take their money to Home Depot.”
I sat back and grinned like the cat that just ate the canary. Social media sites pushed fake narratives down the throats of its users so badly during Covid, and now the tables are being turned on them? This is kind of amusing to say the least. Ahh, the student has become the teacher. My favorite scene was when one of the big whigs at Twitter was in front of Congress and they asked her where she went to medical school and this technologist hadn’t and said as much, and then they asked her why she blocked the quote from a doctor that had gone to medical school. Doctors couldn’t disseminate good and sound information during Covid because the radical left controlled the MSNs, Youtubes, Facebooks, and Twitters of the world but now they are the biggest supporters of AI. They probably just had AI just use their platform to push a fake left wing company using DEI back toward the center using a fake quote that went viral on one of their platforms. This is confusing to a country boy like me that still prefers the wall telephone with the long cord.
Just like in Covid when I did a couple hours’ worth of research and found out the diameter of the Covid bug and the diameter of N95 masks, I think common sense can prevail. I may not be a doctor but I know that you can put a picket fence up to keep cows in, but that fence doesn’t stop bees. The same thing applies here. AI will be putting out fake news stories to push agendas both ways now and these social media sites will be racing to try and say this wasn’t true, that wasn’t true etc. The news agencies themselves will see their graphics and say wait a second, he never said that on our platform. The believability lies in the credibility, and this concerns me very much. We are already a society that does more swiping and clicking than sitting and thinking and now we are going to bombard it with a bunch of fake news stories, quotes, and infographics. That’s a problem.
It turns out I am not alone in my assessment. Arjun Kharpal writes for CNBC, “The Biden administration “pressured” Facebook parent Meta
to “censor” content related to Covid-19, the social media giant’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, alleged, adding that he regrets some of the decisions taken in relation to the U.S. government’s requests.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the letter’s authenticity to CNBC.” I love how they had to put that last line in there. He goes on to say “Zuckerberg said Meta made some choices that, “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” the tech giant would not make again.
“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg said.”
Now here is another problem that we have. I am not sure if you are aware but Mark Zuckerberg is smart, really smart. He was perfectly willing to kowtow to the Biden administration when they were in office, and now Trump has been a big critic so now the Zuck is calling Trump’s actions after being shot badass and now he is saying that he would push back against liberal influence. Mark, who ya kidding, you are hedging your bets dear boy in case Don gets in office aren’t you now. This is sweet but a lifetime of sinning an angel you won’t make.
Let me get this straight, lifetime liberal and New Yorker trust funder Donald Trump is the conservative candidate for president and he is being wooed by the now conservative environmental saving tax credit harvesting Elon Musk that just bought a social media site and the social media censorship bastion’s leader in Mark Zuckerberg? What sort of backwater hell did I wake up after a three day bender into? Musk and Zuck are in business, and they know that Trump is likely to win and unless they want to take their companies before trust busting boards and investigations, they had better kiss the ring. Don wants them to kiss his ring. They know that Joe Biden was done, and they know that Kamala was put out to pasture to chew grass to keep her from talking for three and a half years and it seems they don’t believe that she actually has much of a chance despite what these media types are telling you including on their sites. Musk has veered a little further to the right than Zuck has yet, but they are driving social businesses and they had damn well better be social to both sides about it or they are going to find themselves facing the real Home Depot.
A couple decades ago or more there were lots of different newspapers in lots of different cities and they were all populated with stories by journalists that had went to schools that had taught them to get two sources that were independent and there were editors that tried to verify that everything that went into the paper was true or at least factual. Season four of the television show The Wire showed us that newspapers could be corrupted as well, but I would have to say that they tended to do truth pretty well. The problem with everyone being a journalist today, and I include myself in this problem although I don’t report facts just reveal them, is that there is often little training, little vetting of sources, little vetting of any kind going on. If everyone is a journalist, then no one is a journalist. This goes against every social media belief there is, I am sure. But drawing another breath is not journalistic credibility. We discussed last week what happens at the intersection of social justice and social media and that is known as empty thought intersection. I don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry bringing me my information. I want Tom Brokaw, Dick Schaap, and Harry Reasoner.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 1548 years ago to be exact, Romulus Augustulus was defeated by German Odoacer completing the fall of one of the greatest empires in world history. Hubris and inflation were driving forces in the decline.
Also born on this date … Stifler’s mom Jennifer Coolidge.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.