Please Don’t Join the Mercenaries of Disinformation

One of the defining characteristics of technology is its ability to quickly eliminate barriers to entry. We’re becoming increasingly used to what was once cutting-edge technology, only available to users or institutions with highly specialized means, being made available to practically anyone in an astonishingly short period of time.

Just a few decades ago, a computer was an expensive asset whose use required extensive training. Now, the vast majority of the world’s population carry one in their pockets, infinitely more powerful, and use it around the clock with no specialist knowledge.

When social networks first appeared, a small number of astute politicians saw a way to access huge numbers of potential voters. They hired experts in technology, social networks and marketing, and used that resource, whose use was not so widespread at that time, to get their messages to segments of the population that were difficult to reach.

But within a few years, as social networks attracted millions of people, other politicians began using them in a much more sinister way: instead of sharing their ideas, they spread fake news, lies and bias with the specific intent to polarize society, to provoke confrontation, encouraging people to weaponize their vote and defend their country.

Certain regimes around the world refined these techniques, taking advantage of every opportunity to interfere with elections in other countries. This might involve creating thousands of fake accounts in those countries, an army of ghosts with fake photos and names creating a kind of parallel reality and trying, through social engineering, to make it seem real.

Now, these kinds of techniques and tools are already available to anyone who wants to use them for any purpose. This week, there have been reports of French and German YouTubers being offered money in exchange for spreading anti-vaccination disinformation. While they turned the offer down, other YouTubers in India and Brazil did accept the offer and have posted videos putting forward dangerous and untrue arguments against vaccination. Journalists who tried to find out who was behind the campaign could only track down an unknown agency with a fake address in London.

We are seeing more and more campaigns of this type that are spreading all kinds of disinformation. Until recently this was almost exclusively the domain of government intelligence agencies, but can now be done by anyone, whether to damage the reputation of a potential competitor or to create a groundswell of opinion. Micro-influencer management, which was originally developed for marketing, is now being used for much more sinister purposes. Simply put, you come into contact with an idea through social networks, from a person you follow or a rumor that spreads among instant messaging groups, and you reaffirm it when you see it commented on by friends or the media. These are carefully designed campaigns with arguments that, in many cases, can be quickly dismantled with a minimum of research, but which many people choose to believe.

The mercenaries of disinformation take advantage of a society unaccustomed to verification, to checking information, of trigger-happy people who share messages because they chime with their beliefs or perhaps reflect their anger about a particular issue. They are everywhere: they don’t have to be an influencer, and in many cases, they are happy to do it for free.

Please, be careful about what you share, you may very well be unknowingly working for the interests of a third party. And after all, only a dumb mercenary works for free.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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