A360
Key Takeaways✦ Atlas AI
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Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks are triggering widespread conspiracy theories in the US.
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Social media and AI are accelerating the spread of these misinformation campaigns.
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Conspiracy theories range from 'plandemics' aimed at elections to bioweapons and resource exploitation plots.
Atlas AI
Ever-growing influence of social media and AI means such ideas spreading at faster rates than before, experts say
Hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks carry with them familiar attendants in the US: extreme conspiracy theories about a planned pandemic, or “plandemic”, designed to upend midterms elections or push new vaccines or any one of a myriad of wild ideas.
Ebola, which the World Health Organization warned Friday is spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and poses a “very high” risk at the national level. In the upside-down world of conspiracy theories it could be a bioweapon, a financial plot, or a scheme to extract national resources.
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