Some astute viewers of Tuesday night’s first — and likely only — presidential debate paid close attention to the earrings Vice President Kamala Harris wore. But it wasn’t the style of pearl earrings that caught their attention.

A new conspiracy theory emerged on social media on Wednesday suggesting that VEEP was wearing an earpiece that could be used to relay answers to difficult questions. Some users noted a resemblance to the Nova H1 Audio Earrings, made by German startup NOVA Products.

Other social media users have noted the similarity to the Double Pearl Hinged Earrings sold by Tiffany & Co. Harris has been spotted wearing the same style of earrings in at least one nationally televised campaign video.

According to NewsweekNOVA Products’ earbuds were launched in May 2023 via a Kickstarter campaign, but were never released.

“This is likely a huge reach. This 2021 Kickstarter product had limited sales and was re-introduced at CES 2023, but the product does not appear to have been successful,” said Rob Enderle, technology analyst at the Enderle Group.

“Only 323 people initially backed this project and the photo on the Kickstarter page looks different than what she was wearing,” Enderle added. “To my eyes—and apparently The Verge confirmed this—what she’s wearing is not this product, the montage is very different.”

Enderle adds that it is questionable whether an earring will produce satisfactory results. He has tested similar products.

“Generally, the person next to you or a microphone will pick up the sound, only bone-conducting headsets work relatively quietly this far from the ear canal and this does not use that technology,” he pointed out. “The earrings she was wearing look like pearl earrings with real gold trim that are too small to hide the technology used, even if they were custom made for her, which is unlikely. Earphones that are meant to be covert are always in the ear and are very small so that you don’t see them at all and they don’t let any noise through, this would be the wrong technology for this use case.”

Another case of disinformation

Harris is just the latest candidate to be accused of wearing an earpiece. An unsubstantiated rumor arose after a 2004 debate between then-President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry that Bush was wearing a concealed radio. The story gained enough traction that it was widely reported in the mainstream media, and to some extent debunked.

Such stories have long circulated to undermine a candidate. What is different today is how quickly social media allowed such a rumor to gain traction.

“Theories like this develop quickly and spread quickly. Sometimes they develop because someone genuinely believes something to be true, or misinterprets a situation, which is like mistaking earrings for headsets,” explained Dr. Cliff Lampe, professor of information and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Michigan’s School of Information.

“Other times we will and do see hostile states try to spread bad information, clearly with the goal of sowing division,” Lampe said. “One mistake that people make with deliberate disinformation is that the goal is to convince people that something is true or not. Often the goal is to get people to give up on the idea of ​​truth. They throw their hands up in the air because there is so much information flowing and rely on their identity and other heuristics to tell them what is true. In research, we call that ‘manufactured nihilism.'”

The fact that the earrings are being talked about instead of what the candidates had to say is remarkable. And social media is also responsible for this, because it has become a channel for the spread of such misinformation.

“People see information and share it, which amplifies the content, whether it’s true or not,” Lampe said. “Any medium can be used to share bad information, but because there are no gatekeepers at all on social media, it’s particularly effective at that.”