To be effective, disinformation needs to spread to a receptive audience. But how does it happen? And what can regular people do to stop it? The scale and reach of disinformation through social media is a testament to human cunning, new technology, and old tricks. Let’s learn more.
How disinformation spreads
The decades-long move away from traditional media (TV, radio etc.) to online media, like Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and Youtube, has allowed people to get their news in new ways. In the less regulated world of social media, it’s easier than ever to spread disinformation.
By sharing a post, one person can expose all their friends and followers to the message, allowing it to spread like a virus. And with every interaction, whether positive or negative, the post is given more and more visibility by the social media platform. Through social media adverts, it’s possible to ‘push’ content that you and your friendship group wouldn’t normally see.
But stopping disinformation is simple.
Don’t share it.
As you’ll see in the video below, the effect of doing nothing can be huge. By not interacting with a post, you prevent its spread to potentially thousands of people.
3 ways disinformation spreads online
- Inauthentic amplification: Using trolls spam bots, sock puppets, paid accounts and sensational influencers to increase the volume of malign content.
- Micro-targeting: Exploiting targeting tools designed for ad placements and user engagements on social media platforms to identify and engage the most likely audience that will share and amplify disinformation.
- Social engineering: Providing a framework to mischaracterise and manipulate events, incidents, issues and public opinion in favour of a certain agenda.
Inauthentic amplification
Cheap yet powerful technology can exploit a social media platform’s algorithm in a way that’s fast and totally automated. Today, most social media platforms have tools in place to identify and ban fake accounts, they’re not 100% effective. In response to this defence, some people use influencers to boost their posts and narratives for them. This makes their tactics look more organic and less engineered.
Troll Farms
Imagine a shelf with ten smartphones on it, all connected together and controlled by a single unit. When the central unit sends a post, all ten smartphones automatically log into fake social media accounts, find the post, and start liking and sharing it with each other. That’s a troll farm.
Troll farms began life more organically and still goes on today. Literally rooms full of people are paid to log into social media accounts and share posts. The organic approach is most commonly seen in the political arena as parties fight over control of a particular story.
But as technology has advanced, its now possible to use bots to totally automate the process – making it cheaper and easier.
Bots
A bot is a social media account that is preprogramed to do things without people pressing a button.
Bots played a pivotal role in the spread of false information through the pandemic. A 2020 study estimated that around 50% of the Twitter accounts posting about COVID-19 in the early months of the pandemic were bots attempting to spread disinformation.
Sock Puppets
Sock puppets are fake accounts controlled by a person or group. Some journalists use sock puppet accounts to undertake investigative reporting. They use fake accounts to infiltrate closed groups and learn more about them.
When it comes to spreading disinformation, sock puppets allow people who are banned from platforms or are personally mistrusted to spread their message. The sock puppet account gives them a level of authenticity because the account looks like a real person – unlike a bot account, a sock puppet may have a real profile photo and appear to do normal things on social media (even have friends!)
Micro-targeting
Platforms like Facebook, X and Telegram make a lot of money on advertising. And for that digital ad space to be attractive to customers, it needs to be perfect at showing the right person the right product at the right time. But the power and effectiveness of these ad platforms is just as effective at spreading disinformation as it is for selling trainers.
If you’ve ever seen a post from a Page or a person that you don’t personally follow, and it wasn’t shared by someone you do, that’s an ad. It allows people to disrupt your social media environment with content that they think will interest you.
Disinformation disseminators use this to share content that they think will get an emotional reaction out of you – causing you to stop, read the post and feel something negative. The goal is that you’ll engage with it, then share it with your friends.
This powerful technology allows advertisers and disinformation disseminators to send targeted messages to vulnerable groups. But to be effective, they need to get their message right, which is where old tricks come into play.
Social engineering
Social engineering isn’t new, in fact, it’s as old as civilisation. Social engineering is when a large group of people is collectively steered to think and behave in a specific way. At a country-wide level, social engineering starts from the top, controlling the narrative by silencing opposing views and incorporating supporting views that might appear naturally.
How social engineering is amplified
In this environment, social engineering is easy because the state controls every source of information. Over time, as enough voices advocate for the same activity, thoughts, or behaviour, society starts to change.
This is because if one person claims that cats are actually dogs, you’d think they’re crazy. But, if a large fraction of your network argues for the same thing, it not only makes the argument seem more authoritative, but you may also feel the need to conform to your social group. Because if you become the only person who thinks differently, someone might think you’re crazy.
Stopping disinformation is easier than you think
When you choose to not share fake news, you’re helping the fight against disinformation. All the tactics that disseminators use to spread disinformation online rely on people sharing their content.
Remember, the goal of disinformation isn’t to convince you of anything – it’s to confuse the issue, widen divisions in society outside of social media, and create distrust and powerlessness. When this goal is achieved on a national scale, the result is a state that’s fractured and more susceptible to control from rival states.
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