I wrote about facts and expertise some time back at THIS link. But another aspect of facts has currently grabbed my attention. At least three or four times a day, someone I know unknowingly posts misinformation that’s part of a disinformation campaign on their social media feed. My friends and colleagues aren’t trying to be dishonest. They see something that makes sense to them, so they re-post it. But, often enough, it’s not true. I only have a few hundred connections in social media, and it’s maybe a few dozen of them who regularly post. So if I’m seeing this much misinformation, I’m guessing that the problem of posted misinformation is pretty widespread.
There are vast networks of AI bots and troll factories that are creating much of this content. Topics range from politics to pop culture to sports; from people to organizations. As you can see from the five links in the previous sentence, the same person can be a source of misinformation and the subject of it. Misinformation subjects and people get selected by the creators based on how well they can polarize people reading it. It seems weird that anyone would create a campaign around misinformation, and it may seem harmless. But it’s not harmless, and there are bad intentions behind it. The intent is to blur the lines between reality and lies so that readers come to mistrust any information. These are organized campaigns created by groups or governments seeking to disrupt what people believe. If you want to know more about how and why this happens, the World Economic Forum published an article in 2024 worth reading.
As you’ll see in that article (and many others like it), disinformation campaigns intend to disrupt societies for economic, social, or political ends. And the disorder and mistrust these campaigns create are a significant threat to democracies especially. Nations’ governments have been toppled by these campaigns; and in the U.S., they’ve led to more widespread beliefs in quackery and distrust of longstanding science. Passing along a story that makes sense to you, but isn’t true, helps to replicate and amplify the confusion that these campaigns intend. As a result, people mistrust expertise and become more vulnerable to quackery and anti-democratic sentiments. So your posting is never harmless.
If I see misinformation posted by a friend, I tend not to correct it publicly by posting a reply. Instead, I’ll send a private message to my friend to share what I know – and usually a link to a site with the correct information (I encourage you to do the same). But by the time my friend removes the posting, dozens of people may have seen it, and others may have shared it on their own feeds. The people who saw it may not ever know that my friend removed it. Once people have seen it, their reaction can further a viral spreading of untruth. The solution? Like any virus, the best way to prevent its spread is for you personally not to be a carrier.
Important: Don’t just re-post something without verifying it first.
I’ve waited for a while to post this. I didn’t want any one person thinking I was writing about something they did. Actually, inadvertently re-posting misinformation is something that a lot of folks on my social media feeds have done. It’s not that they intend to pass along something that’s not true. But people see a statement with which they agree, so they re-post it. Unfortunately, a lot of the time what appears as “fact” can either be completely made up or it stretches the truth. Something that’s not true gets posted and re-posted and re-posted again until it becomes an Internet fact.
The solution: To avoid becoming part of the viral disinformation ecosystem, verify before you re-post.
It only takes a minute to look at one of the fact-checking sites like Snopes.com. Or you can take the phrase that caught your eye and paste it into a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo. You can even search for images in Google Images to see where else a photo has been posted. See if any legitimate sources confirm the posting you want to share. If the only places where you see a confirmation is from social media platforms, it’s most likely misinformation that’s spread from one user to another.
Think of this as viral hygiene for your digital life.
Just like we all learned to wash our hands often and avoid going out if we were ill during the COVID pandemic, we need to take steps to check ideas before we re-post them. I’ve added lots of links above so that you can read more fully on this topic. Take the time to educate yourself. After all, there’s a lot at stake. Life is confusing enough without compounding the general confusion with misinformation. And none of us wants to be part of spreading a viral disinformation campaign.
