Disinformation is the growing trend for groups or individuals, sometimes with the help of bots, to deliberately spread false information (“fake news”, conspiracy theories and hate speech) with the intent to harm other. Other variants are misinformation which is also false but not deliberate, and malinformation which also deliberately creates harm but might be based on true facts.
We look at this trend from different perspectives: What helped the fake news market emerge in the first place? How does political trolling erode real criticism and the search for solutions? How did a fake news campaign help the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro come to power? And why did Facebook ignore a hate speech campaign that ultimately led to the genocide against the Rohingya?
Hindu nationalists have used social networks to whip up sectarian tempers against India’s Muslims for years. The Covid-19 infodemic is making this worse. As long as platform algorithms incentivize disinformation, no amount of fact-checking will solve the problem.
The intention with this post is to collect all relevant evidence regarding where humanity has ended up today when it comes to Big Data and artificial intelligence, understand rather those innovations serve humanity equally and what are the potential danger to keep in mind and try to prevent. As well as to leave some basis for further discussion and research for anyone interested in the same theme.
Before 700,000 Rohingya fled the genocide in Myanmar, the military had riled up millions of users against the group in a hate speech campaign on Facebook. Why did the company not intervene? And can this happen again? Interviews with two human rights experts, who both witnessed the events leading up to the genocide
Now that trolling has become the new normal in political communication, we better stop laughing for a moment and learn what this means for democracy.
As the fake news investigation of the Brazilian Congress reaches a decisive moment, data politics become a central arena of power struggle in the country. But it is not easy to see what is really happening.
If there is a science that understands the power of incentives, it is Economics. So maybe it has a thing or two to teach us about how our democracies are being NUDGED by the fake news market.
