On the internet, there is often a fine line between a healthy skepticism of new technologies and blatant misinformation. The recent claim that the radio waves from 5G cellular communication towers are causing mass bird die-offs is a perfect example of just how thin that line can be—and how quickly falsehoods can spread across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even in the comments of Audubon magazine’s stories.
The origin of this claim is as head-spinning as it is instructive, so let’s untangle the knot: Does 5G really kill birds, and if not, why are so many people shouting about it online?
The first part of this saga is fairly straightforward: No, 5G—the fifth generation of our mobile cellular network—does not kill birds. “Radio wave emissions above 10 MHz from radio transmission antennas (including cell telephone towers) are not known to harm birds,” says Joe Kirschvink, a biophysicist at the California Institute of Technology who specializes in magnetics, in an email.
The "5G kills birds" phenomenon was started by John Kuhles, who according to the fact-checking site Snopes, “runs several anti-5G conspiracy websites and social media pages.”
The article at https://www.audubon.org/news/no-5g-radio-waves-do-not-kill-birds is an excellent example of how some individuals seem to take pleasure (or profit) out of unfounded speculation. The willing public end up spreading the "news" until it become viral and then almost everyone just believes it. It’s these actions that kill off positive belief in the Internet. As usual, it is only a fraction of 1% that cause this problem, yet they are the one’s who get heard and believed…
#fakenews #5G
#^No, 5G Radio Waves Do Not Kill Birds
Here’s the truth behind a Facebook falsehood spreading across the internet.