Read the original article here.

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Okay, here is a detailed educational resource on Disinformation, framed within the context of "The Dead Internet Files: How Bots Silently Replaced Us."

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Disinformation in the Era of the Dead Internet

The concept of "The Dead Internet Files" suggests a digital landscape increasingly populated and shaped by automated content, bots, and non-human entities, potentially overwhelming genuine human activity. In this environment, understanding disinformation – its nature, origins, methods, and impact – becomes crucial. When bots silently replace or simulate human presence and interaction online, they become powerful, scalable tools for the deliberate spread of falsehoods, making the digital realm a fertile ground for coordinated deception.

This resource explores disinformation through the lens of a potentially bot-saturated internet, examining its definition, history, operational methods, and the challenges of detecting and countering it in a world where distinguishing human from automated activity is increasingly difficult.

1. Defining Disinformation and Related Concepts

Understanding disinformation requires distinguishing it from similar terms often used interchangeably, especially in casual discussion about online content.

Disinformation: Misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, often to achieve economic or political gain, and which may cause public harm. It is an orchestrated, adversarial activity employing strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics.

Disinformation is characterized by intent: the content is known to be false or misleading by the sender, and the purpose is to deceive or manipulate.

Misinformation: Inaccuracies that stem from inadvertent error. The person spreading misinformation genuinely believes it to be true or spreads it without realizing it is false.

While misinformation is unintentional, it can become the source material for disinformation if someone knowingly picks up and spreads that unintentional error with malicious intent.

Malinformation: Factual information disseminated with the intention to cause harm.

This involves sharing something true, but doing so out of context or with the goal of damaging a person, group, or entity.

These three terms are sometimes collectively referred to by the abbreviation DMMI.

The term "fake news" is often used in popular discourse, sometimes categorized as a type of disinformation. However, scholars advise caution in using this term, especially in academic contexts, as its meaning has been co-opted and weaponized by political figures to dismiss any unfavorable information. While some content labeled "fake news" fits the definition of disinformation (deliberately fabricated stories presented as legitimate news), not all does.

2. The Origins of the Term: From Statecraft to Cyberspace

The word "disinformation" has roots predating the modern internet. While the Latin prefix "dis-" applied to "information" to mean "reversal or removal of information" appeared in English by the late 19th century, the modern understanding of the term is heavily influenced by Cold War practices.

The English word is widely considered a loan translation of the Russian word дезинформация (dezinformatsiya). This term was reportedly derived from the title of a department within the KGB, the Soviet Union's primary security agency. Soviet planners in the 1950s defined dezinformatsiya as the "dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion."

After this Soviet concept became widely known in the 1980s, the term "disinformation" entered the English lexicon more broadly. It came to mean "any government communication (either overt or covert) containing intentionally false and misleading material, often combined selectively with true information, which seeks to mislead and manipulate either elites or a mass audience." By the 1990s and early 2000s, "disinformation" became a common, slightly more formal way of referring to intentional deception or lying, and was often used synonymously with "propaganda" in popular discourse.

3. Disinformation in Practice: Actors, Tactics, and the Online Realm

Disinformation is not an accidental phenomenon; it is a deliberate and strategic activity.

Actors: While historically associated with state intelligence agencies, disinformation is now practiced by a wider range of actors, including non-governmental organizations, businesses, political groups, and even individuals.

Front groups, for instance, are a form of disinformation in practice. They present themselves as legitimate organizations but conceal their true objectives and who controls them, misleading the public about the source and nature of their activities.

In the context of the Dead Internet, the lines between these actors become blurred. Bots and automated accounts can be created and operated by any of these actors, or even by sophisticated proxies, making attribution difficult. A business might use bots to spread negative information about a competitor, a political group might use them to amplify a false narrative, or a state actor might deploy vast bot networks for large-scale manipulation.

Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Disinformation is often studied as part of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). While disinformation focuses on the content (the false message), FIMI is a broader concept concerned with the behavior of the actor, described through military doctrine's TTPs – the specific methods and strategies used to achieve manipulation.

Examples of TTPs relevant to the online environment include:

• Astroturfing: Creating the false impression of widespread grassroots support for a policy, person, or idea, often through fake accounts and coordinated messaging.
• Troll Farms: Organized groups of individuals (or increasingly, automated systems) who post inflammatory or disruptive content online to sow discord or manipulate public opinion.
• Paid Engagement: Paying individuals or using bots to artificially boost the visibility, likes, shares, or comments on specific content, making it appear more popular or credible than it is.

Disinformation campaigns are often coordinated and "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies." In a Dead Internet, bots can be programmed to identify and target individuals or groups based on their online activity and push divisive content tailored to exploit existing cultural or political rifts, dramatically amplifying these 'culture wars' online.

4. Operational Frameworks for Understanding Online Disinformation

Scholars have developed frameworks to analyze the complex nature of online disinformation, which are particularly relevant when considering the role of automation.

One proposed framework is the "ABC" model, later expanded:

• A - Actors: The entities behind the campaign. This includes state actors, political parties, corporations, and increasingly, sophisticated proxy networks utilizing automated tools. In a Dead Internet context, the lack of transparency about who controls bot networks makes identifying actors extremely challenging.
• B - Behavior: The techniques used to spread the disinformation. Examples include troll farms, astroturfing, using bots for amplification, hacking accounts, creating fake profiles, and manipulating search results. Bots are key players in enabling deceptive behaviors at scale.
• C - Content: The misleading or harmful material itself. This can range from fabricated news stories, manipulated media (like deepfakes), pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, hate speech, and online harassment.
• D - Distribution: The technical mechanisms and protocols of platforms that enable or constrain the spread of content. This includes algorithms, recommendation systems, and advertising technologies. The Dead Internet perspective highlights how platform architecture can be exploited by bots and automated systems to ensure disinformation reaches target audiences.
• Degree: The scale and reach of the disinformation, including the audience exposed. Bots can inflate these metrics, making a small campaign appear massive.
• Effect: The impact of the disinformation on attitudes, behaviors, or real-world outcomes. Measuring the actual human effect is difficult when bot activity inflates engagement metrics.

These frameworks emphasize that online disinformation is not just about a false message (Content) but involves sophisticated actors using specific behaviors facilitated by platform distribution mechanisms to achieve a certain degree of reach and effect. The potential prevalence of bots impacts every element of these frameworks, from obscuring the Actor, enabling large-scale Behavior, amplifying Distribution and Degree, and complicating the measurement of Effect on real humans.

5. Comparison with Propaganda

The relationship between disinformation and propaganda is debated. Some views:

• Propaganda as the broader term: Propaganda uses non-rational arguments to promote or undermine a political ideal. Disinformation is seen as a type of propaganda specifically focused on undermining, using falsehoods.
• Separate but overlapping concepts: Disinformation specifically aims to deceive with false content, while propaganda can use various means (including truths or emotional appeals) to influence attitudes towards an ideology or cause. Disinformation might be a tool used within a broader propaganda campaign.

A key distinction sometimes made is that disinformation also seeks to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia. These outcomes discourage citizen engagement, which is particularly effective in democratic societies. In a Dead Internet scenario, a barrage of conflicting, bot-amplified disinformation can contribute to this sense of overwhelming noise and distrust, leading users to disengage or become susceptible to simple, divisive narratives.

6. Strategies for Spreading Disinformation Online

Research highlights a two-stage process for online disinformation campaigns:

1. Seeding: Malicious actors strategically introduce the deceptive content into the online ecosystem. This can involve creating fake websites that mimic legitimate news, posting on social media via fake or compromised accounts, or distributing forged documents.
2. Echoing: The audience (both human and, critically, automated) disseminates the disinformation. This isn't just simple sharing. In the context of culture wars, people may incorporate the disinformation into their own arguments and interactions, using it as "rhetorical ammunition" in never-ending debates. Bots are essential for amplifying this echoing phase, boosting reach and creating the illusion of widespread agreement or controversy, which in turn can encourage further human sharing.

Specific internet manipulation methods used for seeding and echoing include:

• Selective Censorship: Manipulating platforms or online spaces to suppress accurate information while allowing or promoting false information.
• Manipulation of Search Rankings: Using various techniques (including potentially bot traffic or SEO manipulation) to ensure disinformation appears high in search results, making it seem authoritative or easily discoverable.
• Hacking and Releasing: Gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information and selectively leaking or fabricating documents to create scandal or spread false narratives.
• Directly Sharing Disinformation: Posting false content directly on social media platforms, forums, comment sections, etc., often using fake accounts, bots, or compromised profiles.

Furthermore, the infrastructure of the internet itself can be exploited:

• Exploiting Online Advertising Technologies: Automated systems like real-time bidding (RTB) used in online advertising can inadvertently or deliberately be used to fund or spread disinformation sites by placing ads on them. Dark money can be channeled through opaque online ad networks to promote political disinformation without revealing the source. Bot traffic can generate fraudulent ad revenue for disinformation websites, incentivizing their creation.

The potential prevalence of bots in online advertising ecosystems means that actors can leverage this automated infrastructure to fund, distribute, and amplify disinformation, essentially using the "dead" parts of the internet against its users.

7. Global Examples (Briefly)

While the provided text briefly mentions Soviet, Russian, Chinese, and American disinformation practices, it offers specific details primarily for American examples:

• Cold War Operations: The US Intelligence Community adopted disinformation tactics, inspired by Soviet dezinformatsiya. Examples include the CIA placing false stories in Iranian newspapers during the 1953 coup and planting fabricated articles in newspapers of Islamic countries after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, using reporters as unwitting agents.
• Reagan Administration (1986): A disinformation campaign was waged against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, involving providing false information to the press about planned US actions. This case notably led to the resignation of a State Department official in protest, highlighting concerns about the impact on the credibility of the US government's word.
• "ChinaAngVirus" Campaign (2020-2021): Reuters reported on a US military propaganda campaign using fake social media accounts to spread disinformation about China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, including false claims about pork ingredients to deter Muslim populations in the Philippines. This campaign was framed as countering China's influence and seeking retribution for China's blaming of the US for the pandemic. The involvement of a major IT contractor receiving significant funds underscores the scale and professionalization of such efforts.

These historical and recent examples demonstrate that disinformation is a long-standing tool of state power. However, the rise of social media and the potential for bot-driven amplification have drastically changed the scale, speed, and reach of such campaigns, making them more insidious and harder to trace in the modern digital landscape.

8. The Internet's Role and Research Challenges

The internet, particularly social media, has become a primary battleground for disinformation. The architecture of these platforms – designed for rapid sharing, virality, and often prioritizing engagement – provides an ideal environment for disinformation to spread rapidly.

The Bot Problem: The "Dead Internet Files" concept is highly relevant here. Bots, automated accounts, and sophisticated algorithms can:

• Manufacture engagement (likes, shares, comments), creating a false impression of popularity or consensus around disinformation.
• Rapidly amplify content across networks, reaching vast audiences in moments.
• Create numerous fake profiles and personas, making it appear as though many different individuals are discussing or supporting a narrative.
• Target specific demographics with tailored messages based on harvested data, making the disinformation more persuasive.
• Overwhelm online spaces with noise, drowning out credible information.

Research into the impact of online disinformation is complex and sometimes contradictory. While there is broad consensus that disinformation is rampant online, its actual effect on political attitudes and outcomes is debated.

• Early observations (e.g., around the 2016 US election) highlighted massive sharing of false stories. However, later research suggested that exposure might have been concentrated among a smaller, highly partisan group, was often eclipsed by exposure to traditional news, and didn't necessarily translate into changes in voting behavior or political knowledge for most people.
• One challenge is disentangling genuine human response from bot-driven amplification. If bots generate millions of shares or comments, does that mean the disinformation was effective, or just that automated systems are good at simulating activity? Measuring the true reach and impact on human minds is difficult.
• Detecting disinformation is hard because it is designed to deceive. Traditional detection methods struggle with the scale, speed, and evolving tactics used online. The data generated by online interactions is "big, incomplete, unstructured, and noisy"—qualities amplified by bot activity.
• Adding to the challenge, social media companies have sometimes been criticized for hindering external research into disinformation on their platforms, potentially obscuring the scale of the problem and the role of automated manipulation.

9. Critiques and Alternative Perspectives in Disinformation Research

The field of disinformation research itself faces criticism for potentially having a narrow focus. Critics argue that research often:

• Is too technology-centric: Focusing excessively on platforms and algorithms while neglecting the broader political, economic, and cultural contexts that enable disinformation.
• Underemphasizes Politics: Treating disinformation as solely a technical problem rather than a political phenomenon driven by specific agendas.
• Is Americentric/Anglocentric: Focusing primarily on the US and Western contexts, failing to capture the nuances of disinformation globally, especially in the Global South.
• Lacks Intersectional Analysis: Neglecting how factors like race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect with vulnerability to or propagation of disinformation.
• Has a Thin Understanding of Journalism: Not fully appreciating the complex processes and challenges faced by legitimate news media.
• Is Driven by Funding: Research priorities may be shaped more by available grants than by theoretical development or empirical needs.

Alternative approaches proposed for studying disinformation are highly relevant in the context of a Dead Internet:

• Beyond Fact-Checking and Media Literacy: Recognizing that disinformation is a pervasive phenomenon deeply tied to identity, culture wars, and online interactions, not just about consuming news. In a bot-filled internet, simply fact-checking isolated pieces of content is insufficient; the problem is the systemic manipulation of the information environment itself.
• Beyond Technical Solutions: Understanding that AI-enhanced fact-checking or content moderation tools alone cannot solve the problem. The issue is systemic, involving financial incentives, platform design, and the intentional actions of actors, including those deploying bot networks.
• Global Perspective: Studying disinformation beyond Western contexts, acknowledging that tactics, motivations, and impacts vary culturally and politically.
• Market-Oriented Research: Examining the financial incentives and business models (like online advertising and micro-targeting) that make spreading disinformation profitable or effective, even via automated systems.
• Multidisciplinary Approach: Incorporating insights from history, political economy, sociology, ethnic studies, feminist studies, and science and technology studies to understand the complex drivers and impacts of disinformation, including how it is facilitated by automated systems.
• Gendered-Based Disinformation (GBD): Recognizing the specific tactics used to target individuals based on gender, often involving harassment and reputation attacks, which can be significantly amplified by coordinated bot activity.

10. Responses and Ethical Considerations

Addressing disinformation is a multi-faceted challenge. Responses include efforts by governments, civil society, researchers, and platform companies, though these efforts face significant hurdles, especially when automated systems are involved.

• Government Responses: Range from public awareness campaigns to legislative efforts, though there is little consensus on effective policy, and actions can be complicated by concerns about free speech or the politicization of research. The politicization of disinformation research itself (as seen in the US example provided) is a challenge, hindering understanding and potentially allowing bot-driven campaigns to operate with less scrutiny.
• Platform Responses: Social media companies have implemented content moderation policies, fact-checking initiatives, and attempts to identify and remove fake accounts and bots. However, malicious actors, particularly those using sophisticated bot networks, constantly adapt their tactics, making detection and removal a continuous struggle. The sheer scale of online activity, much of which may be automated, makes comprehensive human moderation impossible.
• Civil Society and Research: Organizations and researchers work to expose disinformation campaigns, study their spread and impact, and develop tools and strategies for resilience. However, they face challenges in data access, funding, and keeping pace with the rapid evolution of online manipulation tactics.
• Ethical Considerations (e.g., in Warfare): While beyond the scope of the "Dead Internet" theory specifically, the ethical debate around using disinformation in contexts like warfare highlights the moral complexities. The distinction is often drawn between tactical deception that doesn't cause undue harm (like using inflatable tanks) versus deception that targets civilians or violates fundamental rules (like disguising military targets as hospitals). Applying this to the online sphere raises questions about the ethics of state or corporate actors using bots and disinformation to manipulate domestic or foreign populations, regardless of the context.

Pope Francis's condemnation of disinformation as a sin, comparing it to "coprophilia" (an unhealthy interest in excrement), underscores the moral gravity of deliberately spreading falsehoods, a practice amplified and made more pervasive by automated systems in the online world.

Conclusion: Navigating the Disinformation Landscape in a Potentially Dead Internet

Disinformation is a centuries-old tactic of strategic deception, but the internet, and particularly the potential for large-scale automation envisioned in "The Dead Internet Files," has provided unprecedented tools for its dissemination and amplification. Bots and automated systems can create the illusion of widespread support, manufacture controversy, bypass content moderation systems, and target individuals with personalized falsehoods at a scale previously unimaginable.

Understanding disinformation in this context requires looking beyond individual pieces of false content. It demands examining the sophisticated actors behind campaigns, the technical behaviors enabled by online platforms, the economic incentives that fuel the spread, and the difficulty in distinguishing genuine human interaction from automated activity. As the digital world potentially becomes increasingly populated by non-human entities, the challenge of identifying, countering, and mitigating the impact of deliberately misleading information becomes more complex and urgent than ever. Navigating this landscape requires critical thinking, media literacy, robust research, and a collective effort to prioritize authentic human communication and information integrity over automated manipulation.