A Vietnamese YouTuber Is Filling Information Voids with Newsmax and Breitbart

i'd say particularly since COVID began, there's been a marked uptick in the severity of hard-right, far-right propaganda being shoveled into minority communities in the US, with predictable and disastrous results. this is a part of that pattern and uh, especially since there's not a developed apparatus to counter it yet it's not great!

That was a disturbing read, although very interesting. In Canada, or at least Toronto, we have news broadcasts in almost every major language that’s spoken here, which is a lot. This definitely makes me appreciate the value of that a lot more.

John Oliver did a segment on this phenomenon awhile back

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=l5jtFqWq5iU

(skip to 00:05:05)

This reminds me of the free newspapers I would see being handed out to anyone in cities I’ve been to that were available in a myriad of languages.

I remember visiting a country and people told me that they had been told if a democratic nominee became president that they would be invaded and other misinformation like that. It breaks my heart.

The Markup found that news aggregators and commentators like Ohlala often omit information that would give the news cultural or historical context, and, in Ohlala’s case, her content is repackaged from right-wing organizations.

I just checked out a few of her videos and can confirm she was spewing right-wing talking points. Older Vietnamese who went through the Vietnam War, like my parents, often gravitate towards conservative news sources even before YouTube channels like these blew up. It's extremely frustrating trying to talk current events with them now.