Deliberate misinformation weaponized for profit or power can outcompete true news

Evidence

As we saw earlier with the example of science denial, there are those who are lying and those who are lied to, but both are dangerous to the truth. Climate change denial may have started with the economic interests of oil companies, but it quickly became a political ideology with potentially catastrophic impact. Similarly, fake news about the 2016 election may have started as clickbait, but it was soon weaponized as political sabotage. Fake news is a deliberate attempt to get people to react to one’s misinformation, whether for the purpose of profit or power. But in either case, the consequences can be dire. … Buzzfeed reports that in the three months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, the top twenty fake news stories on Facebook got more shares than the top twenty real news stories. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 218

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on ritual sacrifice and moral panic themes where fabricated or amplified beliefs drive real-world action. — connects to: Humans, not bots, drive the faster spread of false political news — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 347; Being inside an echo chamber raises one’s odds of encountering misinformation — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 447; Fixing misinformation requires changing revenue incentives, not just content exposure — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 470 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Fake news transitions from a profit motive to political weaponization #expands (0.82) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 213
• Even fully exposed disinformation strategies succeed because facts cannot override trained media habits #corroborates (0.78) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 79