Why do lots of people hate the disinformation industrial complex?

Lots of people are angry about Big Disinfo, a class of experts, policymakers, and institutions focused on combating dis/misinformation that rose to prominence in Western, democratic societies around 2016. There are multiple reasons for this anger, but I think one important source of frustration concerns the difference between (i) participating in the public sphere and (ii) claiming an objective position outside of it.

Researchers often worry about how to define dis/misinformation. There is no consensus or consistency, but ‘misinformation’ is often defined as *false or misleading information*, and ‘disinformation’ is then defined as *false or misleading information that is spread with the intention to deceive*.

There are many problems with these definitions, but here is something important about them: although ordinary people do not use these technical *terms*, participation in the public sphere by its very nature involves the implicit application of these *concepts*. The public sphere involves argument – often unreasonable, biased, attention-seeking, partisan, irrational, etc., argument, but argument nonetheless – over what is true. As Friedman points out, charges of misinformation and disinformation are therefore “inherent to all first-order political disagreement”. Again, almost nobody uses the terms. People criticise views they think are wrong, deceptive, hypocritical, biased, crazy, lies, bullshit, and so on – but such discourse inevitably involves classifying content as false, misleading, or deceptive.

In one sense, Big Disinfo is involved in the same project, but in a deeper sense it is not. Its proponents do not take themselves to be participants in the public sphere. Rather, through the use of esoteric terms, the publication of scientific papers and technical reports, and their position within elite liberal institutions of science, public health, and news media, Big Disinfo claims a neutral position outside of the public sphere. Whereas ordinary citizens debate what is true and false, Big Disinfo claims privileged access to reality and hence the ability to function as objective arbiters of truth who “fact-check” claims rather than debate them.

This idea is not absurd. Expertise is real. Elite epistemic institutions are often fairly reliable, and there is undoubtedly lots of false, misleading, and deceptive communication in the public sphere that has harmful consequences. At the same time, the attitude – often implicit, sometimes explicit – of epistemic superiority over ordinary citizens is clearly explosive. It demands a level of deference, and an acknowledgement of epistemic inferiority, that goes far beyond what democratic citizens are expected to show each other.

This is why a definition of misinformation as something like “false or misleading information” is highly misleading. When experts and policy makers use the term “misinformation,” they do not merely judge that something is false or misleading. They make this judgement from a claimed vantage point not enjoyed by ordinary citizens.  

In some contexts that might be legitimate, but it illustrates why experts and policymakers must be extremely careful and restrictive in which content they classify as dis/misinformation. It is not enough that they judge content to be misleading. For this judgement to be granted institutional legitimacy and win public trust and support, it must conform to epistemic standards *much* higher than those we apply to ordinary political speech. I think it is the failure to recognise this that explains much of the public anger about Big Disinfo. It is not just – as experts and policymakers in this space believe – that people spreading mis/disinformation are angry about being called out, although no doubt that’s a part of it. It is also that people get angry at Big Disinfo because they hold it to extremely high standards of neutrality and objectivity, and they judge that Big Disinfo routinely fails to meet those standards.

In some ways I think this challenge for Big Disinfo is likely to get worse. The reason is that Big Disinfo was founded on a myth and accompanying moral panic: that clear and obvious examples of dis/misinformation – outright fabrications, fake news, absurd conspiracy theories, Russian disinformation campaigns, and so on – lie at the root of many troubling social ills and developments in Western democracies. In fact, such clear examples of dis/misinformation are relatively rare and largely symptomatic of the problems that they were alleged to explain, such as institutional distrust, widespread antipathy towards elites and the establishment, and high levels of political and cultural polarisation in certain countries. They were not and are not wholly epiphenomenal, but the level of attention and panic they have received is grossly disproportionate to their real-world impact.

In response to this, Big Disinfo has obvious incentives to broaden the scope of its investigations – to focus not just on clear examples of dis/misinformation, but on subtle ways in which communication can be misleading even when it is not demonstrably false. Misleading information in this sense is of course widespread, and no doubt highly consequential in shapping attitudes and behaviours. However, most people think – rightly, in my view – that judging what constitutes misleading communication in this extremely broad sense is a highly subjective affair, easily swayed by biases, interests, pre-existing prejudices, and values of myriad forms. It is simply not the job of Big Disinfo to involve itself in such discussions. The discussions should take place within the public sphere. To the extent that Big Disinfo claims an exalted position outside of it, the result will be growing public anger.