[ATTW-L] The deceptive brochure

[Duncan, Michael]

Colleagues:

In the spirit of sharing interesting examples of TC ethics, I've been following a developing news story that claims a fake brochure was used by Florida officials to help persuade migrants to board a flight to Massachusetts. All these links have images of the document in question, "crudely designed to resemble a government document," as the second source describes it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-officials-made-fake-brochures-for-migrants-lawsuit-ron-desantis-2022-9

https://popular.info/p/the-smoking-gun-in-marthas-vineyard

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/09/marthas-vineyard-migrant-pamphlet-ron-desantis-fake-brochure.html

If this document was used deceptively (as the relevant lawsuit charges), It falls into an interesting gray area. Some information is accurate by virtue of being pasted from a state website, but it's irrelevant to the asylum-seeking audience. The transparency of the deception might be an example of filtering for easier marks, as in other text-based scams, although it could just be, well, an awful 3-panel designed without much thought.

Mike Duncan
University of Houston-Downtown