The Rules of Contagion

essentially free. In some cases, popular false articles can even make
money by bringing in advertising revenue. Then there’s the potential
for ‘algorithmic manipulation’: if a group can use fake accounts to
manufacture the sort of reactions that are valued by social media
algorithms – such as comments and likes – they may be able to get a
topic trending even if few people are actually talking about it.
Given these new tools, what sort of things have people tried to
make popular? Since 2016, ‘fake news’ has become a common term
to describe manipulative online information. However, it’s not a
particularly helpful phrase. Technology researcher Renée DiResta
has pointed out that ‘fake news’ can actually refer to several different
types of content, including clickbait, conspiracy theories,
misinformation, and disinformation. As we’ve seen, clickbait simply
tries to entice people to visit a page; the links will often lead to real
news articles. In contrast, conspiracy theories tweak real-life stories
to include a ‘secret truth’, which may become more exaggerated or
elaborate as the theory grows. Then we have misinformation, which
DiResta defines as false content that is generally shared by accident.
This can include hoaxes and practical jokes, which are created to be
deliberately false but are then inadvertently spread by people who
believe them to be true.
Finally, we have the most dangerous form of fake news:
disinformation. A common view of disinformation is that it’s there to
make you believe something false. However, the reality is subtler
than this. When the KGB trained their foreign agents during the Cold
War, they taught them how to create contradictions in public opinion
and undermine confidence in accurate news.[109] This is what
disinformation means. It’s not there to persuade you that false stories
are true, but to make you doubt the very notion of truth. The aim is to
shift facts around, making the reality difficult to pin down. And the
KGB wasn’t just good at seeding disinformation; they knew how to
get it amplified. ‘In the quaint old days when KGB spies deployed the
tactic, the goal was pickup by a major media property,’ as DiResta put
it, ‘because that provided legitimization and took care of
distribution.’[110]