A Billion Broken Clocks Now

Somewhere in the reaches of the tech industry, or perhaps during the interview portion for a position in the tech industry, there's a question of how to tell time with a billion broken clocks. Maybe there's a solution that actually works and maybe there's a solution you can sell to the rubes to make $. Who knows what gets you hired. 
But looking over this piece in Nature about Qanon and conspiracy theories leaking into reality. Well, this kind of thing was happening a while back in Obama's time, especially coming from the right. I noted it here and had a run in with normal people evacuating because of Jade Helm. 
So if you're me, many of the insights in the article don't come as any surprise:

“We see this interplay between the elites and their audiences, who are actually collaborating with each other to create false narratives,” says Starbird. Social media becomes a testing ground for ideas that then gain momentum and are often picked up by conservative media outlets such as Fox News, she adds. “What we’re learning is that mass media and social media are actually very integrated.”

Well, of course, the mass media and social media mixup has been happening for a long time (probably coming of age in Obama's second age). Also that high up GOPers have propagated it is no surprise. This was true with Fox News and the crazies back in Obama's time, though now with the President spewing tripe it has only become more clear. 

I do feel annoyed that the scientists here decided to use party-neutral language as well as conflating all conspiracies together. Again, there are issues with the MSM (and I note them) but the crazy conspiracy theories are basically a phenomenon on the right. Sure there's a little  on the left, but many of those are actual researched insights into real conspiracies (though left anti-vaxxers aren't that). 

Of course, this picture of left vs right vs crazy right networks (no talk of crazy left networks) is quite the statement of our times:

Beautiful stuff. Good article on bots as well as understanding the human mind and social networks through things like Facebook and twitter et al. That being said, what people do online may affect what people do in reality, but to say it's indicative or even parallels what is done in reality seems a bit too far to me. It's a whole different paradigm and that's about it. Sure, tracking people through their phone GPSs will make a big difference (rather than asking them) but I fail to see how it's exactly how people act in reality. That being said, extremists can make a difference in the margins. Your thoughts?

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