Some keen-eyed viewers of Tuesday night’s first—and likely only—presidential debate paid very close attention, but not to what the candidates were saying; rather it was to the earrings worn by Vice President Kamala Harris. It wasn’t the style of the pearl earrings that caught their attention, however.
On Wednesday a new conspiracy theory took hold on social media that suggested the VEEP was wearing an earpiece that allowed the answers to hard questions to be delivered to her. Some users noted a similarity to the Nova H1 Audio Earrings, which were created by German-based startup NOVA Products.
Other users on social media have noted the similarity to the Double Pearl Hinged Earrings sold by Tiffany & Co. Harris has been spotted sporting the same style of earrings in at least one campaign video that has run on national TV.
According to Newsweek, the NOVA Products earpieces were launched in a Kickstarter campaign in May 2023 but have never been released.
“This is likely a huge reach this 2021 Kickstarter product had limited sales, they were again showcased at the 2023 CES but the product doesn’t appear to have been successful,” said technology industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.
“Only 323 people backed this project initially and the picture on the Kickstarter page looks different to what she wore,” Enderle added. “To my eye—and apparently The Verge has confirmed this—what she is wearing is not this product, the mounting is very different.”
It is also doubtful that an earring earpiece would deliver satisfactory results, Enderle added, noting he has tested similar products.
“Generally the person next to you or a microphone would pick up the sound, only bone-conducting headsets work relatively silently this far from the ear canal and this doesn’t use that technology,” he emphasized. “The earrings she was wearing look like pearl earrings with a real gold mount that is too small to conceal the tech used, even if it had been custom built for her, which is unlikely. Earbuds that are intended to be secret are always in the ear and very small so you don’t see them at all and so they don’t bleed noise, 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 began following a 2004 debate between then-President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry that Bush was wearing a hidden transmitter. The story gained enough traction that it was widely covered by 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 quickly gain traction.
“Theories like this are quick to develop and spread. Sometimes they develop because a person truly thinks something is true, or misinterprets a situation—which falls in line with mistaking earrings for headsets,” explained Dr. Cliff Lampe, professor of information and associate dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.
“Other times, we will and do see adversarial states trying to spread bad information clearly for the purpose of sowing dissension,” said Lampe. “One mistake people make about purposeful disinformation is that the goal is to convince people 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 because there is so much information flowing and depend on their identities and other heuristics to tell what is true. In research, we call that ‘manufactured nihilism.'”
The fact that anyone is discussing the earrings instead of what the candidates had to sis it noteworthy, and for that social media is also responsible, as it has become a propagation channel for such misinformation.
“People see information, and share it which reinforces the content whether it’s true or not,” said Lampe. “Any media can be used to share bad information, but because there are no gatekeepers at all on social media it’s particularly effective at it.”
