It's their job to warn residents about destructive storms — but political polarization has made them targets online.

As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, meteorologists are staying awake for days at a time trying to get vital, life-saving information out to the folks who will be affected. That’s their job. But this year, several of them tell Rolling Stone, they’re increasingly having to take time out to quell the nonstop flow of misinformation during a particularly traumatic hurricane season. And some of them are doing it while being personally threatened.

“People are just so far gone, it’s honestly making me lose all faith in humanity,” says Washington D.C.-based meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, in a phone interview conducted while he was traveling down to Florida for the storm. “There’s so much bad information floating around out there that the good information has become obscured.”

Cappucci says that he’s noticed an enormous change on social media in the last three months: “Seemingly overnight, ideas that once would have been ridiculed as very fringe, outlandish viewpoints are suddenly becoming mainstream and it’s making my job much more difficult.”

  • Weirdmusic
    41•1 month ago

    How easy would it be for a foreign power to use inexpensive bot nets to amplify misinformation on a truly industrial scale on what are, essentially, unregulated social media platforms? Turns out the results are in and (a) it’s very easy and (b) it’s incredibly effective at sowing distrust and fear.

    It’s time to regulate social media folks. The “free speech” excuse has been proven demonstrably false by Musk, Zuckerberg et al.

  • @snekerpimp
    38•1 month ago

    Sounds like the Russian and Iranian misinformation campaigns are working.

    • @Frozengyro
      12•1 month ago

      They’ve been working for a long time.

  • Flying Squid
    25•1 month ago

    Weird how the Democrats and/or Jews made Milton come across Florida from the opposite side of Mar-a-Lago so it wouldn’t face the maximum amount of damage, isn’t it?

  • @[email protected]English
    16•1 month ago

    I was watching a stream on YouTube last night (Ryan Hall) of the storm coverage. I had to just close the chat entirely because the amount of ridiculous statements and questions people were posting was legitimately starting to upset me. Some notable ones i remember “I hear theyre sending this storm to africa after florida”. “this is the democrats taking out pockets of trump supporters”. “Calling this a ‘hurricane’ is a way for ‘them’ to funnel ‘dark money’ into the state. its not actually a hurricane so it doesn’t qualify for federal money”.

    It was maddening to read and the only way I was able to not lose more faith in humanity is just telling myself they were all disinfo bots. Anyways, hopefully those of you who were affected by the storm are doing ok. Remember your neighbors, people. We’re all in this together.

    • @1995ToyotaCorollaEnglish
      6•1 month ago

      I was watching a live stream of cams in the Tampa area and the chat was all people arguing whether or not the hurricane was made with HARP :/

  • @HootinNHollerin
    16•1 month ago

    The hurricane didn’t spur misinformation, donald did

  • @[email protected]
    11•1 month ago

    Next up for MAGA to threaten trash collectors because why not! MAGA is a terrorist organization.