How Misinformation is Laundered into Legitimacy

How misinformation is laundered into legitimacy and ways to deal with it

We all can be wrong, be it about something as simple as what day of the week trash day is, to much more serious matters. However, this isn’t about mixups, misremembering, or other accidentals, but rather about intentional misinformation. This comes as a result of bad faith actors, whether they are wanting a specific desired narrative, or by explicitly benefitting from it.

The purpose of this article is to examine and dissect the tools used to launder misinformation in order to better understand their history and learn to better deal with them. An important part of the conversation is to name specific tactics, how they work, and methods to counteract them.

To start off, a key part is sowing distrust in the esteemed and knowledgeable. This is done by posing free floating questions that have either no immediate answer which often have threads of truth, have nuance that requires conversation or appeal to nebulous actions like “do your own research” that delay the conversation and allow for certain results to be cherry picked. The Minnesota Reformer’s title put it best, “No, you’re not ‘just asking questions.’ You’re spreading disinformation.”

This is done over time to build up a veneer of criticism and concern rather than the naked attempts at subtly stretching and pulling at an established truth.This in turn, leaves “holes” in understanding that can be further pulled and torn to snowball in on itself. However, questions in and of themselves are not the objective. That certainly sets up the stage for the next part, but there’s more to it than that.

A component that’s used is to take advantage of emotions. Humans are emotional beings due to how we are biologically wired to quickly make decisions and those are faster than having an entire dialogue. As Nadia Basher, assistant professor of psychology in the School of Social Sciences said to UC San Diego Today, “We rely on cognitive ‘shortcuts’ that save time and effort. For example, repeated content feels easier to process than new content, and people misinterpret this subjective ease as evidence of truth.”

These take advantage of cognitive shortcuts such as, loaded statements, us vs them mentalities, and hiding behind the anonymity of “their own research” which, as Thinking Is Power has noted, is misinformation and bias reinforcements to shift the burden.Doing this gives the statement a veneer of credibility due to the authoritative manner it presents itself as. While there is no one explicit blueprint as every situation is different, something to remember is the phrase “Don’t get caught up in the emotions, think it through.”

It takes effort to stop and focus, to ask who benefits, who loses out, and why the person or people might be wanting to have their audience feel the way that they do. Ultimately, working on controlling the initial rush of emotions to think about the various aspects of a particular message is one of the best tools in our toolkit.

As the National Library of Medicine had stated, “Companies can overemphasize scientific uncertainty through public relations campaigns, features in media outlets, political lobbying, or comments in regulatory dockets or congressional testimony. Often, companies target a single offending study for undermining their objectives. Alternatively, they may criticize an entire field, like epidemiology, for not making confidential data accessible to the public.”

Unfortunately, this is also weaponized as part of the inundation process relies on having to work to disentangle the truth. This differential diffusion phenomenon, or put simply, the speed of lies is faster than truth. According to sciencemag.org, ”False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people.”

Another part is to camouflage themselves with legitimacy so as to go from a person having “questions” to an esteemed authority. This is done with the use of propaganda and perception-focused methods to muddy the waters. Per the Milgram experiment and more recent findings a suit or prestigious seeming title can buy a lot of credibility thanks to authority bias. We have seen this problem with famous persons, such as Elizabeth Holmes, Tucker Carlson’s lawsuit, and Frank Abangale Jr. There are also institutes that have taken advantage of the same effect, including the likes of based on NPR’s reporting, PragerU. In addition, according to Greenpeace, there’s The Heartland Institute’s actions.

The purpose is to then inject their “knowledge” or product as a method to fill in the “holes” that were torn open. This makes the misinformation look legitimate, something filling gaps in knowledge with other opinions rather than an invasive parasite expressly tearing into their host and inserting itself into their environment to fulfill their desired objectives. Due to the subtle nature, it has changed the ambient perceptions rather than going from 0 to 60 and being immediately noticed, not unlike the infamous frog boiling myth.

A strong way to distinguish a person’s genuine concern or lack of knowledge and a grifter would simply be looking into conflicts of interest. If a person has concerns about a product, that’s one thing. However, someone loudly proclaiming the evils of a product that just so happens to be their rival is a key give-away. This helps to expose that the loud proclamations of their competition’s goods not as a matter of legitimate questions but bad faith criticisms using muddy waters tactics to sow distrust. This works for the person and entities they may be connected to as well, as the same metric can be applied there. Coinstar commissioning a study on the value of coins has clear conflicts of interest and a reason for a specific result, for instance.

While networks have ads that are labeled and are supposed to mention guests and their biases, it is also not perfect, allowing people to slip by. In addition, another method is to bypass traditional filters. A misinformation geurilla warfare by using different ways to get their messages across. Platforms with fewer restrictions are more easily able to be utilized. A studio costs $250,000-$2,000,000, and other licenses, a podcast does not. YouTube videos do not, nor do general posts on social media like Truth Social. So it takes investigative work to see if the person raving about testosterone is also selling non FDA-verified testosterone supplements, for instance.

An important tool in our repertoire is replication. We can have leery eyes at compromised individuals or organizations, but others reaching the same conclusion gives credence to their claims. The hard part is being willing to do some research about who commissioned what and where their money comes from. In fact, replication can help to discern if a compromised individual or organization managed to “find” a particularly advantageous result.

It’s why conflicts of interest and profiteering need to be very harshly exposed and shown with their actions whenever it happens. This acts as a mirror to explain how the conflicting opinions, feelings, and questions have at best, the appearance of being compromised to flat out be profiteering as well as to dissuade others from partaking as well.

Once inserted, the bad faith actor or actors hook their claws in, making sure that they aren’t immediately removed and exposed, not unlike how many parasites will burrow deeper into their host to avoid detection and get even further into them. This is altering the environment they are in to both gain advantages in their duties while making themselves harder to extricate as well as trying to remain undetected.

While not everyone that can be misinformed or spread misinformation is on the take so to speak, grifters often share traits such as these. They will act in their best interests and so can be predicted and have been manipulated. This is also another massive reason to call this out when it happens because it can direct actions. While there are some laws in place for various institutions, this is a generalized rule that can apply to everyone from podcasts to stock trading politicians and beyond.