It’s a common tactic, partly manipulative, to take advantage of moderate groups reluctant to condemn extremist groups aligned with them.

Think peaceful protestors refusing to condemn violence in their protests.

>But it is really interesting to note how difficult it was to restart the conversation once the lab leak theory was "debunked"

Modern journalists are used to observing social media to determine and reinforce trends. When something won't trend on twitter or propagate on FB because those platforms have added it to their hardcoded lists of 'topics that will never trend even if literally half the userbase tweets the hashtag' it's almost impossible to get the media to pay attention to it.

This is really a bad argument. There is plenty of non-profit media and they have not produced anything directly contravening the mainstream for-profit media on this topic. Even in any respectable for-profit news outlet, they wouldn't let a PR firm dictate coverage and convince them to run something untrue for money. They can and frequently do alert them to something newsworthy in the interests of their clients. Think about something apolitical like movie reviews. PR can definitely influence the volume of coverage, but it can't generate positive reviews.

The method described wouldn’t be as overt as all that.

Does this non-profit media also believe in a technological society? Perhaps with an allergy to challenging the concept of this type of science in the first place?

The non-profit media is made up of the same human beings as every other endeavor on the planet. Just without an explicit profit motive. One of my favorite shows, On The Media, has done a few segments breaking down coverage on controversial topics like lab leak or ivermectin. How they became controversial and how some coverage was overly zealous in dismissing evidence too quickly.

> Something I think is plausible is that they've figures out a technique for controlling the narrative in the internet age where they take the range of opinions in a group with positions they don't like, identify a really wild one, debunk it, then tar the whole group with that opinion.

exactly. "5G causes covid" "5G transmits signals to nano-carbon transmitters delivered through vaccines to mind-control the vaccinated" et al. were this to any far more reasonable criticism of 5G technology—now any such criticism is lumped in with these wacky, now-"debunked" claims.

The name is the straw man fallacy

> The technique really needs a well known name.

The weak-man fallacy: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...

This fallacy might be useful in a debate, but it's useless in real life. It tells us to ignore basic pattern recognition in favor of treating everyone as an individual, despite our brain's hardware being incapable of effectively doing so.

There exist for everyone a hypothetical black man on a spectrum from Ice Cube in "Are We There Yet" to Ice Cube in "Straight outta Compton". If you see this hypothetical person coming towards you, you will feel uncomfortable because your reptile brain wants you keep you alive.

Everyone's lived experience is different. Everyone is entitled to a version of Ice Cube that scares them and the freedom to not associate with the people who they don't trust. Everyone is entitled to think a self-diagnosed mental disorder is disgusting and steals light from the actually afflicted.

> Everyone's lived experience is different.

Most opinions are not based on "lived experiences", but journalism and movies. They will select the pattern for you.

Sadly, yes. A lot of people consume and regurgitate manufactured opinions. Manufactured consent wouldn't work if it weren't the case. We've struggled with this problem since Plato and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future.

We still need to remind the lemming that pattern recognition isn't the boogieman that pop culture makes it out to be.

>The technique really needs a well known name.

The Roenxi Fallacy :)