In 2021, Jigsaw posted an article on Medium embracing “psychological inoculation” as an essential new technique to fight online extremism. Working with American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL), Google’s masters of mind-manipulation announced they had conducted research into the effects of “pre-bunking.”
These included basic warnings to users that the content they are about to consume contains misinformation, but also the more advanced “inoculation” technique described by Van der Linden, of presenting users with a straw-manned version of a disfavored argument.
As outlined in the diagram below, produced by Jigsaw, the method works by priming users to stay on their guard against manipulation, and to associate “extremist” messages with a deliberately-weakened “microdose” of the argument.
Dude, this is un-fucking-believable! Make sure to check out Mike Benz’s, Foundation for Freedom Online,if you haven’t, it’s a really excellent website if you are interested in finding out what’s really going on.
