Disinformation is on the rise. How does it work?

How does it work? Reach out to media and technology platforms to silence competing narratives.

How odd, there's no mention of the campaigns to falsely deny that hunter biden's laptop was real and that there was us-funded gain-of-function research on coronavirises that had been farmed out to the Wuhan lab.

The irony of all the comments here is just wild. Makes it all feel a bit futile. Why bother discussing anything?

Why don’t it get through whenever I support a certain media company on HN?

Media outlets reporting on disinformation, as if they were neutral observers rather active propagators, is another method on how disinformation really works.

The way it works is that the government or a billionaire (or both in partnership) completely though indirectly fund a dozen nonprofits that push their own current agenda. They also pump money into universities, or into individual projects run by people important within universities, in order to endow "The Freedom Chair for Injustice Studies" or some equally vapid shit. They then generate papers through the universities to support their agenda, and use the nonprofit to write press releases, that then are published in media outlets that will publish any rich man's claim, such as the NYT or WP, and other outlets that they have partial or complete ownership of.

This generates enough bullshit smoke to nominally justify a federal investigation, which they use to harass anyone who disagrees with them, and threaten their businesses or jobs. The combination of active investigations and 10 different stories in every paper every day about "potential dangers," and 24/7 coverage of the non-issue, gives politicians enough cover to pass laws against expressing opinions against the interests of the people who pay, and other laws for more surveillance to make sure no one has a wrong opinion secretly.

Eventually you get an Economist article explaining how the Chinese are poisoning America's youth against clean coal through Tiktok.

I do wonder how many of these comments are disinformation bots trying to undermine the tech communities faith in established media

Yesterday and today I was battling two guys who think that viruses are fake, held my ground until one gave up and the other one switched to insults, then an actual scientist showed up. It's annoying and really hard work to keep asking questions until they don't make sense anymore.

The first one said viruses don't exist. 4 Million+ papers on google.scholar are completely dismissed as evidence.

The second one say, viruses are just poison and can be treated as such.

What I've noticed is a tendency to just replace the meaning of words itself. Like Virus means poison in greek, so that's what it is.

The sources of their stuff are usually some anti-semitic right wing-websites, seemingly and it's the same thing that the left does with all that inclusive language.

How does it work? Make it look like a consensus

You don't directly spew disinformation. Instead, you find the craziest but sane sounding nut you can, and donate anonymously, or via proxies, to whatever funding methods they have.

Then when they start a nonprofit, or grow in other ways you donate there too.

You give the crazy cat lady a super loud voice, and all the freedom and time to express it.

Disinformation isn't as important as just "crazy".

Disinformation...

Looking at the rotting tail of the fish when then head stinks is missing the point.

Sicence, the temple of truth, has rotted its own foundation. The reproducibility crisis that started in psychology turned into the President of Harvard being caught plagiarizing.

Meanwhile we have plenty of fair science that gets swallowed by ego, or stolen from its creators by their "betters" (In a shock to no one, a bunch of marginalized women are mixed in there).

Disinformation will flourish as long as the foundations of information is built on a marsh.

Paywalls, mostly. A juicy hot take followed by greying text and a 'subscribe' button.

Or am I just telling you this because I have some deeper agenda?

By mainstream media losing credibility in an online age and being unable to reinvent itself, thus grasping for correct-sounding thought terminating cliches such as "disinformation is on the rise", with no substantiation?

And, published by the outlet that has claimed China is near about collapsing just soon since 1990. The most credible MSM outlet there is.

Reading Twitter, or YouTube comments, or FT comments or any comments section, is pretty much the most pointless thing to do these days unless you want to marinate your brain in Russian/Chinese/Israeli/far right wing disinformation. There is far left disinformation too but that is usually the Russians or Chinese co-opting the political left, which seems to be really effective. For instance Jill Stein more or less parrots Russian propaganda.

To me it's fairly obvious but I know some people just look at whats the most prevalent view and put weight in it. The paid trolls are not very sophisticated, they're rigid and repetitive, make numerous cultural mistakes, even as they claim they are American/European/the victim/the perpetrator, but they are legion.

Comment sections should have a warning these days: "For entertainment purposes only, do not base anything important on what you read here".

Make unsubstantiated subjective assertions like "disinformation is on the rise"?

Just a guess... =3

Ironic considering The Economist is a major source of warmongering disinformation

The issue is not about disinformation as such. Who controls the flow of disinformation? Media, of course. When media moans about the rise of disinformation, it says that they can't control the disinformation the way the-powers-that-be want to.