Africa-Press – Botswana. In this polluted informational landscape, truths are drowned by half-truths, opinions are paraded as facts, and uncertainty is weaponised. Our capacity to engage meaningfully with the world is under siege, leaving us unable to address the real crisis that demand our attention.
Over the last few weeks, social media platforms like Facebook and X have taken a deliberate step back from efforts to curb misinformation, choosing instead to promote controversy and lean into the chaos.
Why? Because, quite simply, there’s more money to be made from chaos than from order. The algorithms that once were tweaked to limit harmful content are now designed to amplify the most sensational, divisive and polarising material – because it generates clicks, engagement, and ultimately, profit.
This cynical embrace of disorder not only compromises the integrity of information but also exposes the dangers that we all face: a society more fragmented, more distrustful, and less capable of coming together in the face of the real challenges that we must confront. Moreover, the media are increasingly owned and driven by billionaire oligarchs whose interest is to create a post-truth era that benefits their interests.
In an age of unprecedented connectivity, the digital world has become our lifeblood. Information floods our screens, saturating every waking moment, promising enlightenment, connection and progress. Yet, in this endless torrent, we face a far more insidious danger than climate change, disease and even warfare. The Internet, heralded as the purveyor of enlightenment, has become the catalyst of benightedness. This item exposes the dangers that we all face.
Democracy teeters
Unlike physical pollution, which we can see, measure, and sometimes reverse, infopollution quietly erodes the very foundation of human understanding – the sapiens of our species’ name. It is the spread of misinformation, the manipulation of truth, the distortion of facts in a world where even reality itself seems up for grabs.
The overwhelming volume of noise – be it from fake news, disinformation campaigns, or clickbait – clutters our cognitive faculties and blinds us to the clarity needed for genuine progress. From signing into multimedia accounts with false names and profiles, to deliberately publishing fake news and misinformation, in this polluted informational landscape, truths are drowned by half-truths, opinions are paraded as facts, and uncertainty is weaponised.
The result? An inability to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated.
Our capacity to engage meaningfully with the world is under siege, leaving us unable to address the real crisis that demand our attention. We cannot solve climate change if we cannot agree on the facts of science. We cannot build sustainable societies when fear, hatred and division are fuelled by falsehoods. Democracy itself teeters on the brink when truth becomes a casualty of manipulation and sensationalism.
It rewires our brains
Infopollution, in its most corrosive form, strips away trust, and without trust, society unravels. What makes infopollution so dangerous is its subtlety. Unlike the visible clouds of smog or the toxic rivers we can measure and identify, the damage it does is invisible, gradual and often imperceptible. It rewires our brains to crave novelty over depth, outrage over reflection. We become addicted to distraction and shallow validation, leaving no room for introspection or critical thought.
In this age, we are not just fighting against environmental degradation or geopolitical conflict – we are battling an invisible force that threatens our collective ability to reason, to empathise, and to unite. Infopollution is not just a threat to knowledge; it is a threat to the very essence of what makes us human: our ability to understand, to communicate, and to act in concert towards the common good.
It is well-documented that social media platforms thrive on sensational, divisive and emotional content, which generates more engagement. A variety of studies have shown that negative or emotionally charged content tends to spread more rapidly and receive more clicks, shares and comments than neutral or positive content.
Outrageous content
This is often attributed to the “negativity bias” in human psychology, where people are more likely to engage with content that evokes strong emotional reactions. For instance, a 2018 study by MIT researchers found that false news stories spread significantly faster and reach more people than true news primarily because they elicit strong emotional reactions like surprise or fear. The researchers concluded that “emotional reactions” were key drivers of viral spread, and this was exacerbated by the way social media platforms prioritise such content.
Furthermore, The Journal of Experimental Psychology published research showing that outrageous content is more likely to be shared while studies from Harvard University have shown that content that stirs anger or fear gets more traction than information that is factual but less emotionally provocative.
Platforms like Facebook and X (formally Twitter), have been criticised for designing algorithms that prioritise engagement over the quality or truthfulness of the content – because engagement means more advertising revenue. These findings support the notion that social media platforms are amplifying chaos, not to fight misinformation but because it keeps users hooked, thus maximising profit.
Fantasies, mythologies and delusions
In this way, the very nature of the business model relies on feeding the cycle of confusion, outrage and misinformation. As Yuval Noah Harari says, “the easiest way to connect lots of people is not with the truth. The easiest way to connect lots of people is with fantasies, mythologies and delusions”. Truth is complicated, sometimes unpalatable, whereas fake news is cheap to promulgate and easier to digest.
There is a global concept in welfare economics that the polluter must pay. Would it be unreasonable to propose that the big infopolluters should pay just as industry pays for its pollution of land water and air? The greatest challenge of our time is not merely to fight pollution in its traditional forms, but to clear the fog of information that clouds our minds.
Until we address this unseen crisis, no other problem can be solved. Without truth, we cannot rebuild our world. The exponential rise in disinformation, combined with shrinking resources for fact-checking on social media, underscores the need for a more robust regulatory framework that might include:
Creation of a Global Disinformation Index (GDI-U) A UN-backed real-time monitoring system to track disinformation trends across platforms and countries.
AI-driven content analysis to detect patterns in state-sponsored,
Collaboration with fact-checking organisations and universities.
Commitment to Counter Disinformation While Protecting Free Speech Ensuring governments do not weaponise anti-disinformation laws to suppress dissent.
Strengthening digital literacy and resilience among populations.
Holding Social Media Companies Accountable Transparency obligations for platforms to report on disinformation mitigation.
Approval of algorithms used by media to ensure that they do not undermine society and even national security.
Incentives or penalties for reducing fact-checking resources while profiting from misinformation.
Protection Against AI-Generated Disinformation Guidelines for AI content detection and labelling.
International cooperation on deepfake regulation.
Global Coordination and Sanctions for Malicious Actors Defining state-sponsored disinformation as a threat to global security.
Potential sanctions on entities spreading disinformation to destabilise democracies.
Although regulations like this could face pushback from entities that benefit from disinformation, there is growing global momentum towards addressing disinformation as a security threat, with countries recognising its role in exacerbating conflict, undermining democratic processes, and fuelling social divisions. However, perspectives on what constitutes “disinformation” and how to regulate it remain contentious, particularly when it intersects with issues of free speech and political influence.
Combatting infopollution must come from the top. Your Gazette suggests that an UNGA Resolution on Combatting Disinformation would i) Recognise disinformation as a fundamental threat to global stability, undermining democratic institutions, inciting violence, and endangering public health and security; ii) Call for an amendment to the UN Charter to formally acknowledge disinformation as a global security threat and empower the UN to take coordinated action against it; iii) Establish a Global Disinformation Index (GDI-U) to monitor disinformation trends worldwide, requiring member states to report on the prevalence of state-sponsored and AI-generated disinformation; engagement metrics of false narratives on social media; iv) Hold platforms and content creators liable for deliberate or reckless dissemination of disinformation that incites violence, destabilises governments, or undermines public trust; v) Empower member states to enforce compliance, including making legal frameworks for penalising persistent disinformation actors; vi) enable sanctions against state-sponsored disinformation campaigns; vii) Obligations for social media platforms to cooperate with national and international regulators; viii) Ensure transparency from platforms, requiring disclosure of algorithms, fact-checking resources, and counter-disinformation efforts; ix) Promote resilience through education, integrating media literacy into national curricula.
Botswana needs to recognise the silent crisis and must play its part in fighting infopollution though encouraging the negotiation of international treaties on disinformation governance, aligning regulatory approaches across nations. The new government should also tighten its our own laws to attack the problem locally too.
Source: Botswana Gazette
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