Electric Vehicle Disinformation (FUD) – What, Where, Why, Who is to Blame – And How to BEAT IT
There are a ton of cliched phrases to pick from that express the idea that things generally get worse before they get better that people will and regularly do rage against something new before they decide it’s not so bad after all be it advances in civil rights a new
Technology or even a change in political leadership there will always be someone somewhere looking to spread fear and misinformation in order to protect their own interests make people feel uncertain about what lies ahead or cast doubt on whatever the brand new thing is fear uncertainty and doubt thud and in
Today’s modern politically charged world there’s a whole lot of it going about from fud about immigrants and or refugees to FUD about the lgbtqia plus community fud about people whose political leanings are different from your own and yes even fud about covid-19 vaccines and preventative Healthcare it honestly feels like we’re
Living in a world where fud drowns out a whole lot of common sense and critical thinking and just like all those other areas where fud is seemingly growing we’re seeing more fud than ever before when it comes to electric vehicles so today I’m going to examine how and why
Fud is worse than ever before ask what you can do to counter it and examine if things are going to get better anytime Soon it’s no secret that there’s a massive rise in electric vehicle and renewable energy misinformation and while you might be forgiven for thinking it all comes from just one place we actually think it can be boiled down down to three main groups which are all in some way or another interconnected
Some of the misinformation comes from nefarious sources whose sole purpose is to benefit from the status quo that currently exists and controls much of the energy and transportation Market let’s call this group The vested interest group some of it comes from poor journalism or sensationalist reporting that for whatever reason fails
To capture the Nuance of the city situation maliciously or innocently leading to large groups of people becoming misinformed about the topic at hand let’s call this group The Click Chasers and finally some of it comes from people who are either willfully ignorant lack the motivation skill or
Time to get a more balanced nuanced understanding of the situation or are societally brainwashed to have a particular standpoint be it from a political leader a friend a co-worker or a social media post let’s call this group they’re brainwashed there are also of course trolls and Bots but they are
Particularly tricky to categorize and you’re going to see them popping up in multiple context throughout the video the toughest misinformation to counter is that from the first group The vested interests group that’s not only because this group contains large corporations willing to spend as much money as it takes to retain control of
The market but it also contains corporations organizations and sometimes individuals who are morally comfortable with the concept of pay to playay I can’t discuss fud against the EV industry without bringing in the Spectre of Big Oil the now accepted unofficial name for the group of misinformation that includes the
World’s oil companies and some oil producing nations in OPEC not to mention a significant s of Legacy automaker shareholders and Executives who have become very wealthy on the status quo who would rather not upset the metaphorical apple cart and instead they’d like us to continue to reap the
Rewards of keeping things just as they are they would very much like it if EVS didn’t exist so they can continue to extract refine and sell petroleum products to the world at the same time continuing to suck in massive subsidies to do that big oil represents trillions
Of dollars of wealth around the world and Big Oil even though it likes to publicly make big promises about going green is still very much vested in extracting as many carbon intensive fuels from the earth as possible and to up the cynicism a few gears let’s look at the fact that
The majority of the world oil companies knew more than half a century ago that increased burning of fossil fuels resulted in an acceleration of anthropogenic climate change but rather than try to stop opted to lie and obfuscate the fact since katew Elliot did a really amazing video on that about
A year ago I’m not going to rehash the topic here and instead I’ll link to her video in the dubly dubry and you don’t need to be an avid watcher of Mad Men or any other period drama set in the advertising world to know how much sway
Advertising can have on the opinions of The Wider population Don Draper helped sell cigarettes at a time when there was significant push back against the tobacco industry due to the known effects consuming tobacco products have on the human body for every Don Draper selling cigarettes there’s another one happily selling fossil fuels espousing
The benefits of internal combustion engined vehicles and dismissing the proposition of switching to an EV sadly as well thanks to decades upon Decades of fossil fuel subsidies and pro- fossil fuel policies in most of the world’s most influential countries oil company profits far outpace many other Industries just as pharmaceutical
Companies in the US have managed to buy and cajo and advertise their way into the minds of consumers so too have big oil done the same and as electric vehicles have become more of a worthy competitor to traditional ice Vehicles so too has the heat been turned up
Against them this is all before we even look at the impact of politics in last week’s video on the National Auto Dealer Association conference in Las Vegas again Link in the description below I pointed out that lobbying in the US from auto dealers in the auto dealer industry as a whole
Already sat at $2.879 million for for the current election cycle and that automakers have also donated more than 1.56 3 million to the same election cycle those figures though pale into insignificance when compared to the money that’s been sent to politicians by the energy sector mostly oil and gas
Companies over the same period of time more than 60 and a half billion US has been spent on political campaigning with $1.6 billion going to Dem Democrats 1.8 billion to Liberal groups 8.8 billion to Republicans and just under 48 a half billion dollar to conservative groups
And if you can’t Gro that large a number don’t worry because I can’t grock it either but let’s try $60 billion or thereabouts is enough to fund the retirement accounts of between 20 and 30 thousand generation X’s with the2 to3 million dollars that most Financial analysts now say each of
Us should have in our savings account in order to comfortably retire into old age or to put it another way it’s nearly 970 times the gross domestic product of tuvalu one of the world’s poorest Nations and the country most likely to not exist if our obsession with burning
Stuff continues unabated or it’s the 1.3 times the amount of money spent by Elon Musk to establish X as the most hated social media network of 2023 you pick that kind of immense money buys a lot of influence and bless your Elon Musk and it’s no wonder that
Politicians are lining up to take pot shots at Eevees as a consequence and while yes there are some lovely people people to the right side of the political Spectrum who identify as fiscal conservatives and are socially liberal and very supportive of clean vehicles and clean energy because electric vehicles are a more
Sustainable and fiscally sound way to move people around than digging more oil out of the ground using increasingly costly and dangerous methods the majority of right leaning politicians and conservative identifi voters are on M less likely to be Pro EV but before you think this is just a
Us thing think again political parties around the world generally although not always follow the same kind of pattern those who are more focused towards traditional conservative values tend towards being less enthusiastic about EVs and are more likely to want fewer environmental controls and policies designed to safeguard the planet we live
On and are more likely at the same time to to want to allow corporations the freedom to do whatever they’d like to do with minimal consequences meanwhile political parties that are more liberal or socialist in their Outlook and yeah I’m using the actual definition of socialism rather than the
Often bizarre us concept of it which tends to basically Encompass anything that people think is in some way quote unquote woke or has any kind of restrictions on businesses doing what they want and and the consequence for the rest of us tend towards policies that are more EV friendly push for more
Environmental Protections and are more likely to spend at least some money in terms of abatements and incentives to get those things to happen it’s no wonder then that the majority of campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry and the automotive industry as a whole go towards Republican and conservative causes
Except and this is really important there are some interesting exceptions to all of this first in the US at least there are more EV factories in traditionally conservative States this is primarily because even though traditionally Democratic states are likely to represent more EV sales they’re also states with the toughest
Laws for worker protections workplace safety and Environmental Protection it’s generally cheaper and less hassle for automakers to build factories in traditionally red states where they are less likely to get fined for dumping toxic waste in a ditch and you can bet that there’s some significant campaign fund donations taking place to ensure
Those factories get green lit and if you consider where the US Auto facilities currently making EVS or EV battery packs are based you’ll note they’re almost exclusively in the US’s South Southwest and Midwest areas known for having more conservative political leanings in fact while Elon Musk has viously claimed
Multiple times he wanted to move Tesla to Texas to avoid California’s Wok mind virus it’s an Open Secret that Texas is nowhere near as strict on employment law health and safety and Environmental Protections as California Environmental Protections that California is currently claiming Tesla has run a foul
Of next I’d be remiss for not acknowledging the fact that even though the current incumbent of the White House is a Democrat and the US is promising a transition to EVS it is also currently producing more fossil fuels per day than at any point in its history despite what some
Republican Presidential campaigns would like you to believe so like I said while there are generalizations about which parties are likely to be proe they’re not it is not as clear-cut as you might think it is and politics wherever it is taking place is a messy convoluted pile
Of greed and money trying to exact control over whomever is currently in control and whoever might be in control next but look we’ve gone off piec a little so let’s get back to the source of the actual problem people with money seeking to influence people who aren’t
Going to do due diligence which brings me to the second group media of which obviously we fit in the gold standard of Journalism expects that whenever a journalist is covering a news story they do substantial research trying to uncover the truth of whatever it is they’re reporting on rather than blindly
Accepting one side or another’s take a good journalist asks why someone has the opinion they does does some background research and figures out exactly what the real story is except we all live in a world of late stage capitalism where everything is about money and how much money you can
Make in a shorter amount of time as possible a world where there’s increasing pressure on reporters and journalists to focus on volume of output rather than quality of output and a world where both sideris is a plague that allows news organizations to portray controversy and gather clicks by
Using descent from four mouthy folks on Facebook and claiming its widespread opinion that challenges the scientific consensus on climate change or EVS or trans healthare or whether coffee is better than tea and having worked in traditional broadcasting magazine publishing online journalism and YouTube I can tell you there’s been a March in
The last three decades away from what many of us would consider traditional journalism and that’s before we even get into editorial biases which we will in a second simply put underpaid overworked stressed reporters are going to make more mistakes than they might if they were well paid had a moderate workload
And we’re given more time to do actual journalism but it’s a dying art in many parts of the world and that means they’re less likely to be able to spend the time and energy working on a story they might like newspapers just like news channels and radio stations have to
Make money to pay their staff and commercial pressure dictates more of the by line than you might think add into that the fact that most Regional and some national news outlets don’t have experts on staff who know the first thing about EVS or often any local staff
At all and you’re left with a bit of a malays of uselessness surrounding many eveve stories many Regional news networks that were also at one time completely independent have been purchased by large Mega Media organizations like the Sinclair group I will link below to an expose from John
Oliver on that very topic and it’s easy to see how corporate interests get put before facts and real journalism and even if a journalist tries their best they’re often subject to the same misinformation and misunderstandings that the rest of the population suffers from and without proper information about EVS from the
Auto industry and auto dealers see last week’s video misinformation is high I have frankly lost track of the number of times that EV misinformation has been spread either because of journalist wasn’t aware of where to go for information or they were given incorrect information by a dealership or automaker or they weren’t
Given enough time to properly research the thing or you know maybe they were given an editorial remit to push a particular angle which believe me also happens which brings me to the concept of Talking Heads I have semi-regularly at least been a talking head guest on various BBC Radio 4 and BBC World
Surface programs giving my opinion on particular breaking news stories in the EV world the interviews are usually pre-recorded and they do get edited before they go on air meaning an editor torial team can shape what you the expert is recorded as saying online that can dramatically change the context and certainly Aid in
Misinformation but let’s be clear here that misinformation and editorial control is usually as a consequence of one person an editor making decisions about what the story is and that means that they can often be different decisions to what the expert or the original journalist might have St sted
And I don’t want to labor the point on this I’ve also been the victim of an editorial rewrite before an article I wrote for a news site was completely Rewritten by the editor to say the exact opposite of what I had originally said because the editor felt that it was a
More interesting and or controversial angle but they kept my name on the by line and again editors are under pressure often from their bosses to be controversial and sensationalist because as the British tabloid press is more than happy to admit salaciousness and sensationalism sells now to confuse and compound this
Problem let’s add in the wonders of AI the chat gpts of the world which are pretty crap at traditional journalism ask any chat gpts bot to write you a story about electric cars and they’ll happily Trot out out some tired old tropes because sadly most AI systems are
Trained on scabs of text illegally scraped from the internet and unlike at least some of the population they’re not so Discerning at figuring out what’s factually correct and what’s not there have been tons of evidence-backed investigative pieces actually well written too often by academics or citizen journalists showing that AIS
Have the same flaws as much of Society they suffer from implicit racism implicit gender biases and many more terrible things because the data they were trained on has those same terrible tendencies in it garbage in garbage out the problem AI can generate stories faster than a human it doesn’t fact
Check and that’s led to a whole host of horrible online content created and promoted by AI uh you can spot the Articles and the videos fairly easily at this point because they’re often completely full of nonsense for videos they’re often completely full of Boll with no actual a roll of a human talking
To a camera they also contain computer generated voices and usually don’t site their sources or b-roll we see videos like this on our daily basis pop up in our YouTube feed and on Facebook often with hundreds of thousands of views in a short period of time and that’s not
Because people are gullible enough to click but often because the content is created by Ai and then AI Farms click on the video and metaphorically watch adding computer generated comments to boot the AI that runs YouTube or other online platforms counts that bot activity as a positive engagement doubly
So if the comments are controversial and before you know it you’re seeing the content pop up in your timeline and it’s not just anti stuff science educator Kyle Hill has been battling YouTube content scammers and spoofers for some time now and he’s doing everything he can to battle computer generated
Misinformation online again links below sadly like this channel he’s struggling beneath the sheer volume of disinformation and here I add in the obvious with journalism and the Free Press under attack both commercially and politically more and more traditional journalists are giving up and we have considered it multiple times this
Year and it’s only the second week of February the amount of nonsense we have to tackle on a daily basis from our comment section is several orders of magnitude higher than it was a few years ago and the signal to noise ratio is terrible and we don’t make enough money
From our platform to keep doing this those with money be they political or from companies are more than willing to spend thousands on AI content that makes them look good and others look bad and in many cases they’re also willing to pay real humans a pittance to spread misinformation through human Farm armed
Spam operations people who work for these will often make hundreds of posts a day using many many different fake accounts that are often tied with more traditional spam operations in countries around the world where international law enforcement efforts are impossible or at best really difficult and sadly platforms like YouTube while they
Publicly claim they’re doing everything to fight misinformation and spam honestly do do not care about small creators who are being inundated with this kind of stuff in this case we’ve actually been punished by the mighty YouTube algorithm for moderating misinformation even though YouTube has told us multiple times that’s not how
The AI generated algorithm Works which brings me to the final part the misinformed the willfully ignorant the gullible with misin at an all-time high it is no wonder that a large proportion of people don’t understand the first thing about electric vehicles and many of them don’t want to either because they’re just too
Busy just surviving paying bills or getting by or are mentally exhausted from the nightmarish news cycle that exists every day or they are themselves fearful of change it might appear that willfully ignorant people are in the majority but I usually find that people who are willfully ignorant are that way because
They’ve been conditioned to believe a particular Viewpoint rather than being incapable of change people who consume one particular type of media like Fox News for example are much more likely to have a negative view of electric vehicles than those who consume a variety of different media sources
That’s actually the same as it would be for political viewpoints and there are a bunch of surveys and studies showing that over the last 20 years or so exposion to opinions other than your own has dropped as it’s become increasingly easy to find and then lock yourself in
Metaphorical Echo Chambers but it’s not just EVS hot button topics of all types are treated in a very similar way online and thanks to a lack of policing when it comes to misinformation not to mention people misunderstanding what the First Amendment of the US Constitution is
Really about we are seeing more and more misinformation passed off as fact when it’s anything but by the way the First Amendment isn’t about freedom to say whatever you want without consequences as the recent court case between former president Trump and author EEG Carroll has shown defamation and disinformation is not protected
Under the First Amendment basically if you’re going to say something aor and terrible or something truthful and accurate you need to have evidence to back that thing up I could at this point bring up the scads of misinformation past office fact about immigrants refugees and lgbtq plus folk or
Indeed whatever the latest political Scandal is and just as we get people commenting in our comment section about how terrible Eves are and how they’re a fire risk and how they’re never going to take off so too do we have people making vile abor comments about migrants and
Queer people and trans people often those making the comments are completely unwilling to listen to anything other than what they believe to be the truth and aren’t interested in facts they’re only interested in whatever it is they have been told to believe or paid to believe all of this misinformation is
Made even worse by the fact that and I’m going to say it however unpopular it is not everyone really knows how to research I consider myself lucky I was a nerd before the internet became popular and while I wasn’t always a straight A student I kind of got distracted quite a
Lot in class I did at least learn how to research things in the library and how to evaluate evidence for factual ual accuracy those skills transferred to the internet Because the Internet was still growing as I was in high school and University I very quickly learned that not everything online was trustworthy or
Accurate I worked on my University papers using old-fashioned books and I still use the skills I learned in school to evaluate and research to this day if you are a nerdy gen XA like me or perhaps a nerdy Millennial the ansers are that you’ll be in a similar place
But if you are less nerdy or your experience of the internet is primarily social media you are probably less likely to evaluate what you read especially if the information you are consuming comes from people you know or associate with it’s easier to Discount something you read online if it’s from someone you don’t
Know but it’s much harder to discount it if it comes from a family member trusted friend or colleague Le and that sadly is the Insidious nature of fud today we are in a metaphorical Perfect Storm a storm where political donations are at an alltime high driven by record profits where misinformation is
Consequentially at an all-time high because of the money being spent on it and where those who don’t want people to like electric cars and a bunch of other things have huge amounts of money to spend on ensuring that their opinions are the ones being shouted the loudest combine
That with the power that political donations can now have over elected officials and it is bad all round and on top of all of that we have a bunch of disinformation from Eevee fans eager to spread misinformation about any Legacy automaker that isn’t Tesla and people who aren’t willing to examine or
Investigate things for themselves they have a them versus US mentality that portrays Legacy auto as all bad and to Tesla as all good and again that is not how the world Works especially of late and yes again I’m sorry I’m going to make the connection between this and
Lgbtq plus rights because I’m seeing this same kind of hate spread as I am seeing in the Eevee world and because of what our company does and who works at this company we get it twice over it sucks but don’t worry I think there is a solution join me at the main
Camera this is where you come in and get involved misinformation is Rife it comes from all sides but with some basic skills you can dig down ask who is spreading the information information where does it come from if it is a politician saying it who’s paying them to say it if it’s a
Company ask where they interests lie and look for evidence of spin because it is everywhere most importantly be critical when consuming information and ask yourself if what you’re seeing or reading or hearing is plausible and verifiable often it’s not or there’s missing context that’s not immediately obvious a good example is what happened
Earlier last year when the Sun newspaper took a perfectly okay test drive from our Channel and made it sound terrible if in doubt dig deep before you share be critical you will notice that when we make videos we regularly site our sources specifically so that you can go
And check out the veracity of the source for yourself and of course while human content creators and journalists are just that only human if they do make mistakes look for Corrections Outlets that publish Corrections are generally more interest in being honest than ones that don’t next we should look for signs
Of AI either through lots of badly written Pros or poorly produced and narrated videos narration where the vocal patent feels off or the voice seems to randomly rise or fall for no reason is a good indicator of a video script narrated by a computer videos that feature no actual human on camera
Is also a good sign of AI generated content which sadly is often fud so are phrases like you won’t believe what we learned or they couldn’t believe their eyes or something similar and if a video contains footage from another Channel without any citations or use a disclaimer in the description that says
Please contact us here for copyright concerns you are most certainly dealing with AI generated or spam content additionally don’t get suckered into the mindset where criticism equals bad it is possible to accurately report a news story in a way that results in a negative overall impression to the
Reader or viewer without assuming the person who produced the story is a bad person or somehow wants the company they’re covering to fail in our case we are often accused of hating on Tesla because we are willing to be critical as well as give praise when Tesla on Elon
Musk does something we professionally think isn’t a good thing we do the same for other automakers and news stories too but you wouldn’t believe the number of people who claim we’re being pro or anti- something because of one positive story or one negative story and that is
Not how the news World works and where possible the more context offered the more likely it is that someone is trying to be fair rather than hyper partisan or hateful finally and this is a big one be wary of stories shared by friends and family on social media that appear very one-sided
Or have an ulterior motive be willing to challenge people who share misinformation but please don’t get into a screaming match at each other provide evidence to counter misinformation rather than just screaming into the void and be patient with someone whose world view to that point hasn’t been the same
As yours good dialogue facts and empathy go a long way to helping someone who has been fed fud deal with the fact that what they thought was true isn’t it’s also a much nicer thing to do as a human than just shout each other down at least it is when the alternative
Works thanks for joining me today and if you’ve got thoughts make sure you leave them Below in our Discord chat room or you can reach out to us on masteron thanks to the amazing list of people scrolling right by on your screen right now they are some of the more than
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There’s been a significant rise in anti-EV sentiment around the world in the last few months, and with election year now in full swing in many of the world’s democracies, we think it’s going to get worse.
With social media platforms failing to properly moderate comments and differentiate between facts and misinformation, we felt it was time (again) to dig deeper into anti-EV FUD, explaining where it’s coming from, why it’s getting worse, who is to legitimately blame – and how we think you can help combat it in your everyday life.
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00:00 – Introduction
01:46 – Where the FUD comes from
03:20 – Vested Interests
05:41 – Advertising Dollars
07:18 – Energy Sector Political Lobbying
08:40 – Money Buys Influence
10:55 – Exceptions for the political divide
12:23 – Drill baby drill – even in a Democratic White House
13:36 – Media Concerns
17:06 – Talking Heads and Editorial Control
18:42 – The dangers of AI
21:34 – Journalists giving up
22:29 – Human farmed spam
23:25 – The willfully Ignorant
26:31 – Not everyone does critical thinking or research
29:39 – What You Can Do
33:55 – Thanks, and Goodbye!
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Links:
– Watch last yer’s video on Anti EV FUD – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn6TiPUxoAg&pp=ygUYRlVEIEVWIFRyYW5zcG9ydCBFdm9sdmVk
– Watch Kate’s video on how Oil Companies knew about climate change a long time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO7KviuUh0Y
– Watch Kate’s video debunking anti-EV FUD from FOX news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2vpyApk-_I
FUDbusting anti-EV rhetoric:
– https://youtu.be/Xn6TiPUxoAg
– https://youtu.be/R2vpyApk-_I
– Kyle Hill’s frustration with Science misinformation from AI generated content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McM3CfDjGs0
– Watch John Oliver cover Sinclair’s control over news networks – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
Buy our latest T-shirt: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/157873541
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Script: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
Presenter: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
Editor, Colorist: Michael Horton
Art and Animation: Erin Carlie
Producer: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
© Transport Evolved LLC, 2024
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