Combating fake news with facts doesn't work because humans are wired for emotion. It's time for more creative tactics.

WIRED
Digital disinformation is now a well-documented problem, but extensive documentation could actually be the downfall of the counter-disinformation movement. Data means nothing if you don’t do anything effective with it.

The situation becomes even worse as people tie themselves into knots deciding whether something is fake news or misinformation or disinformation or malinformation or conspiracy theory or trolling. “Disinformation” is sufficient to capture the whole landscape, and some of the other labels were invented by social media companies as a smokescreen to make their inaction seem less egregious. 

The disinformers themselves certainly don’t care what their work is called. Crucially, their audiences don’t sit there categorizing it either, and the effect on audiences is what matters. It’s difficult to care about semantics when people die because they didn’t take a vaccine or storm a pizza parlor because they believe the Democrats are hiding children there.

Counter-disinformation efforts are often too far removed from the everyday reality of those affected, which is to say everyone online. Those of us working in the field document disinformation so that policymakers take note and, if we’re lucky, pass laws. We archive so that prosecutors take on the (thankfully increasing) legal cases that are starting to crop up. We report so that social media companies are pressured to change their policies. This process of meticulous documentation and advocacy may be best described as the scientific method, and it has been hugely effective in countering state-sponsored influence operations at a grand scale, as we at Centre for Information Resilience have been able to do through our Eyes on Russia project. MORE