Disinformation

Is the humankind who executed the philosophers who are thinking and talking thousands of years ago, still the same today? In this post, i will try to explain why i have started out with this kind of question. The world we live in is changed and reshaped a lot as our habits and new possibilities. But it seems like our new way of lives didn't actually change who we are on the inside. The main subject of the post is disinformation, in other words, distortion or deflection of information. I will begin with trying to explain what is disinformation and end with the reasons why it exists today.

Information is processed data

Back in the days i have heard this definition: "information is processed data". Technically this is a very meaningful and spot on definition. But let's try to think about it with an everyday example. For example, imagine that you have a blue ball in your hand. Given that, which of the following statements are correct?

I have a ball in my hand which is not read.
I am holding a ball.
I am not holding a pencil.
		

The answer is all of the above :) Because all of these statements are actually right. You can put the word "yes" in front of all them and read them. Now the question is: Which information is true? If you ask me, i'd say none of them. Because when you read the first sentence, you were able to materialize your thought as you are holding only one blue ball in your hand. The other statements lead you to a new materialization and new train of thought. In the end you ended up with a different result than your first thought. We can call this data being processed and turning into information.

Raw data is the only reality and reality is the concept that exists independent and regardless of your point of view, perception or the data you have.. (Like the concept of god in monotheist religions) No other sentence other than i have a blue ball in my hand, can actually reflect the true reality. That is why not all the information you derive from the data is correct or real. In the end, you may have information that is deformed and it can be called disinformation or simply false information. This basic concept can help us understand the rest of our lives and it can present a foundation.

On the other hand, we see technological and sociological developments when we look at the history. For example, trading becomes easier and more advanced, people are massively migrating, communication becomes stronger ...etc. We are on the same path today too, thanks to the internet. As a result of these, humankind is constantly producing more and more raw data. I am specifically saying data, not information. Also, remember that there is a profession called data scientist today, specifically for this purpose. Consequently, this much data is causing problems in the means of transferring it or producing information from it. This is an abstract statement so let's give a simple example. The image below summarizes it simply.

There is this problem called 2 generals problem. 2 generals of an army deploys on each side of a city that they want to capture. They need to coordinate and attack at the same time in order to capture the city. But they need to send the attack information to each other with a messenger through the city. Therefore they can't be sure if their message is reached to the other general or they got the right message. The main problem is a bit different than this, but i have simplified it here.

In this situation, people say it is probably impossible for those 2 generals to agree on the same time to attack, which i agree. You can't ever trust the information went through the city in the middle. What i am trying to point out is this: Even though it is the simplest data in the world, if it is going through the point C while traveling from point A to point B, it becomes almost impossible to ensure that data turns into the correct information. Let this be another important deduction here.

I guess the generals problem seems prehistorical to you right now. Because these days we have internet and everybody knows everything right? Now at this point, we are having an epiphany and we realize that there are lots of data roaming around but we don't exactly know how it is processed, who did it or where did it come from. This brings us to the latest deduction. We probably don't know almost nothing for real. Because disinformation is a very thin and sharp line. Even having data may not be enough to get real information. We even must assume that we don't have all the data present at hand.

So for short, disinformation is probably everywhere these days. Actually, it is not people's fault upon this point. Because naturally, the more data and mediums you have, the harder it gets to derive the true information. But after this point of this post, i will try to understand the question i have asked in the beginning and try to see what we are doing wrong.

What is disinformation, who does it and how?

Despite all the technology we have today, people are trying to manipulate information for their own benefits and trying to suppress the ones that oppose. Those people are concerned because of inability to control the process of data being converted into information. Almost all the world is interconnected these days but as a side effect, it became easy to disseminate false information as well as correct ones. Politicians and rich ones have already gone to lengths in order to have power over media, which can massively propagate information. I think this basically means that most of the people watching tv today is probably receving some sort of a lie or distorted facts.

So is the internet environment any different? Even though everything is propagated very fast in the social media and over the internet, there is no guarantee that you are reaching to correct information. Probably most of them are trying to draw a reality from their own perspective or hide it altogether. And the term disinformation turns into "other than what i say". So i think we can assume the people who use this word a lot, may not have pure intentions. Since the claim, "only what i say is true and the rest of it is wrong", is a bit overconfident isn't it.

I guess this may be the reason why people are usually divided into 2 groups. My words and knowledge vs the others' words and knowledge. We are witnessing an understanding based on "i and them". As i mentioned in the beginning of the post, i can derive 3 different information out of 1 data, there can't be only 2 types of information in the world. People regard their knowledge as data, not information, and therefore they don't even think their knowledge is debatable. This leads them to believe that reality is unique and all of the others are lies, like 0's and 1's in a computer. No, the computers are generating infinite amount of variety based on those 0's and 1's :)

I's day that disinformation is sometimes transferring data through bad ways, sometimes doing it one sided, sometimes detaching it from affiliated data or the context, sometimes giving it to the wrong people or not giving it at all, sometimes giving it at the wrong time, sometimes presenting it with unrelated data, sometimes emphasis and toning... Like i said, it is a very sensitive subject and claiming that you provide unbiased information is very very hard. Even the data you have might be a part of a bigger picture, just like in puzzles. The concept of information is very deep and god knows how much terabytes of data is being produced every second in this digital information age. No matter how much we try to take measures against disinformation, the real disinformation, it will be a part of our lives.

What can we do against disinformation?

The best precaution against disinformation that you can take is to have a questioning and unprejudiced perspective. If you always consider that what you are presented probably has other aspects and don't jump into conclusions, at least you wouldn't be easily tricked. You need to put a lot of effort these days to not to be tricked.

Let me mention the state of the art of the forgery here. You can have an instagram or a twitter account these days, fully consists of pictures and posts created by artificial intelligence. While the unspoken words of a non existing person roaming around, you can create deepfake videos to be more persuasive. Also, you can automate this whole fake account creation and population process and start it with a click of a mouse. Unfortunately, all of these are possible today.

I have mentioned that artificial intelligence products can present their data without questioning it in my post about chatgpt. This shows us that disinformation can be created even by a machine. If the raw data is modified somehow at some point, it is probably subjected to disinformation. Even you can cause disinformation unintentionally. Maybe because of not having the whole data or propagating it at the wrong time or not delivering it at all...

We are living in an era that lies are told with plans and organizedly, this is being financed and it is almost impossible to distinguish right from wrong. If i speak for myself, as a person who has witnessed this era, i have tried to balance the destructive power of the internet with the constructive power of humans. To achieve that, i have created a mobile app called WhoShares and you can check out my blog post where i explain what it is, if you want to.

Fuzzy times

Long story short, the race between the governments to use the term disinformation as it suits them, is going feverishly. The biggest effort in this matter is carried out by media of course. The best take away from all this is that you should know that in this age of deception, you should have your reserves against what you see and hear before believing them. Yes, disinformation is probably everywhere but what are we doing to protect ourselves and to stop it. We, on the contrary, are believing what we hear even without seeing it and chose to defend it with utmost power.

The philosophers of the old days are excluded because "you are not thinking like us". Today, we are at the point where we think everybody knows everything, there is the accusation of "you don't believe the way i do". The people were reactive or objective or dismissive against the things outside of their perceptual world back then, so as today. What changed? Maybe you may change a little after reading this post, see you at the next post :)