In the digital age, information flows like an overflowing river. But not everything that shines is gold. Alongside useful data and truthful news, lies, half-truths, and manipulations navigate, shaping what we know as “information disorder” (ID).

The Disinformation Triangle
To understand who is behind ID, we can use the disinformation triangle, a model that compares this phenomenon to a disease. The virus is disinformation itself: false or manipulated messages. The propagating environment is the digital ecosystem, especially social media, where algorithms prioritize emotional content. The carriers are the users, who play an active role by sharing content without verifying it, becoming involuntary transmitters.

The Network of Actors
Actors operate at different levels of sophistication:

• Individual Actors: This group includes trolls (who seek to provoke and sow discord), supersharers (users who amplify false content among their contacts, adding credibility), haters (focused on reputational damage), and staunch influencers who create echo chambers where their followers are trapped in biased information flows.
• Automated Actors: Bots and fake accounts publish and share content massively to create the illusion of popular support, manipulate trends, or distract attention. AI has exponentially increased their sophistication, allowing them to generate contextually relevant content and adapt strategies in real time.
• Organized Actors: Here we find governments and state agencies that carry out carefully planned disinformation campaigns. Political and partisan elites use disinformation for electoral advantage. Also, private companies and interest groups have evolved into what we could call “alternative reality factories,” offering complete information manipulation services.

The Role of Bullshit
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s concept of “bullshit” is key: unlike the traditional lie, bullshit reflects a total disregard for the truth. What matters is the immediate emotional impact. This accelerates the disinformation cycle, creating an ecosystem where truth becomes irrelevant, and users, bombarded by emotional messages, become even more susceptible carriers.

Facing this challenge requires a paradigm shift: we must develop a culture of critical thinking and verification skills to navigate the digital environment and resist emotional manipulation.