As we head toward the November election, it’s painfully obvious: social media isn’t much fun anymore.
Instead of neighbors sharing local events, asking for recommendations, or debating issues in good faith, many community pages have become flooded with endless political posts, fake outrage, and intentional misinformation. Whether the topic is city budgets, taxes, homelessness, BART, data centers, low-income housing, zoning, or local elected officials, trying to separate fact from fiction can feel like drinking from a firehose.
That’s not an accident. It’s a tactic known as the Firehose Strategy (firehose of falsehood).
Rather than persuading people with facts, the strategy overwhelms them with volume of misinformation. The playbook is simple: flood Facebook groups, comment sections, and community pages with a nonstop stream of memes, screenshots, selective facts, emotional arguments, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Repeat the same claims over and over until they’re impossible to ignore.
The objective isn’t accuracy, but rather exhaustion.
The strategy counts on fact-checkers becoming overwhelmed, moderators getting buried, and residents giving up because they simply don’t have the time to verify every misleading post. Eventually, people throw up their hands and say, “I don’t even know what’s true anymore.”
That’s exactly the point, make fact-checkers and the people who know what they are talking about appear as villains.
Confusion creates distrust, and distrust ensures facts become just another opinion.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen this tactic take hold in local politics and in multiple cities.
For example, a local city councilperson has perfected this strategy and it still continues with the help of a few useful idiots. In fact, this councilperson has repeatedly pushed narratives that many argue omit important context, data and unintended consequences. When questioned or disagreements occur, dozens of supporters, or minions as I call them, pounce on people to make them go away. In another city, it was recently pointed out the impact misinformation was having on the city council and now impacting meetings.
Do yourself a favor and perform an audit.
You find that a handful of people seem determined to hijack every conversation by posting the same talking points across multiple pages, replying to everyone who disagrees, and treating Facebook like a full-time job. They rarely provide complete context, often rely on screenshots instead of original documents, ignore corrections, and simply move on to the next controversy when proven wrong–even deleting those posts that exposed the inaccuracies. (Note – when on NextDoor, this is amplified x10)
Then comes the predicable defense: “I’m just asking questions.”
Sure Pal, its called manufacturing confusion.
The irony is that many of the loudest voices claim to be defending transparency while actually making the truth harder to find. Remember, truth welcomes scrutiny because facts hold up. Propaganda relies on emotion, repetition, and volume because those tactics discourage people from digging deeper.
Most people don’t have hours every day to fact-check Facebook posts. They have jobs, families, kids, businesses, and hobbies. The Firehose Strategy depends on wearing those people down until they simply stop participating, leaving the loudest voices to dominate any conversation.
That doesn’t make those voices credible. It just makes them loud and online bullies.
As November approaches, people should recognize this tactic for what it is. Ask for original sources. Read complete documents instead of cropped screenshots. Demand context. Be skeptical of anonymous accounts and people who seem to spend every waking hour online — ask them why?
Don’t confuse repetition with credibility. Just because someone has too much time on their hands doesn’t mean they’re informed—it usually means they’ve mastered the art of being annoying. In some cases, they’re simply riding a power trip after appointing themselves the newest sergeant in the No Fun Police, determined to patrol every comment section instead of contributing something useful.
Our community deserves better than manufactured outrage, intentional confusion, and professional online agitators whose only goal is to make everyone else as miserable as they are. We should demand and defend honest debate based on facts, context, and integrity—not whoever can flood Facebook with the most posts before dinnertime.
Stay curious Contra Costa County.
Mike Burkholder
Publisher of ContraCosta. news
[email protected]
