When it comes to disinfecting disinformation, time and again I find myself asking one simple question. What is the intent? More often than not, the answer lies with what I think of as the Four Horsemen of the Slopocalypse.
Power. Money. Ideology. Cruelty.
These four motivations sit behind much of the deliberate contamination of today’s information environment and cause much of the disorder we currently experience - to the point where we move rapidly from words to wounds, disinformation to despair. One of the most useful questions to ask as we navigate oceans of AI slopaganda and falsehood washing up on our feeds is not so much “Is it true?” but “Who benefits?”
Information rarely contaminates the environment by accident. There is usually a motivation and understanding that motivation helps us decide how to respond. While every situation is different and motivations often overlap, intent is everything. Which is where the Horsemen come in.
Power seeks to influence decisions, shape societal opinion or maintain control. Elections provide fertile ground for feeding this horse but power extends far beyond politics. Organisations, activists, governments and pressure groups all seek to influence the behaviour of others and ensure control. Disinformation becomes a strategic tool to create uncertainty, undermine confidence or weaken opponents. Increasingly, the objective is not to persuade people that something is true just to make them doubt whether anything is true at all.
Money has turned misinformation into an industry. False stories attract clicks, clicks generate advertising revenue, outrage drives engagement and AI supercharges content farms to produce convincing material at industrial scale. Fraud, scams, investment manipulation and affiliate marketing all benefit from polluted information environments where speed matters more than accuracy. We are also facing a new phenomenon - synthetic content created specifically to be consumed by AI systems, contaminating future search results and AI-generated answers. Truth has become the by-product of attention.
Ideology is perhaps the easiest to recognise. Here, the goal is to reinforce belief systems, deepen divisions, strengthen group identity or even manipulate a group into being. Facts become secondary to belonging. Rather than changing minds, ideological disinformation often seeks to harden existing positions, making compromise increasingly difficult. AI has amplified this dramatically, allowing tailored narratives to be generated for different communities at unprecedented speed and scale.
Then there is Cruelty.
Cruelty is different because persuasion is no longer the objective. Punishment is.
Information becomes a weapon used to humiliate, intimidate, ostracise, marginalise or silence individuals and organisations. Sometimes that information is false. Sometimes it is true but stripped of context, selectively presented or repeatedly amplified until it causes disproportionate harm. This is where malinformation becomes particularly dangerous because Cruelty is often the Horseman that leaves the deepest scars.
We’ve seen public pile-ons where an incident rapidly evolves beyond the original event. Fabricated statements appear online, AI-generated images begin circulating, memes multiply, unrelated people become targets and collective outrage turns into collective humiliation. The original facts become almost irrelevant as the spectacle takes on a life of its own. Likewise, sustained campaigns of selective reporting, malicious complaints or repeated public attacks have profound personal and professional consequences - often tragically so. In these cases, the objective is not to win an argument or present opposing opinions. It is to exhaust, oust, intimidate, demean or silence.
These particular Horsemen have been riding roughshod across the world for millennia. They’ve changed horses to suit the times but never before have their steeds been so fast or carried them so far. Understanding the Horsemen and their reason for being alters - and improves - the way that we can respond.
If the motivation is commercial, following the money often reveals the answer. If it is political, understanding the strategic objective helps explain the narrative. If it is ideological, recognising identity and belonging becomes critical. If cruelty is driving events, our focus shifts to protecting people, maintaining context and preventing further harm. And we can identify and call out the intent behind the action which, I believe, is actually more effective than shouting ‘fake news’ or even methodical debunking.
Power. Money. Ideology. Cruelty.
These four motivations sit behind much of the deliberate contamination of today’s information environment and cause much of the disorder we currently experience - to the point where we move rapidly from words to wounds, disinformation to despair. One of the most useful questions to ask as we navigate oceans of AI slopaganda and falsehood washing up on our feeds is not so much “Is it true?” but “Who benefits?”
Information rarely contaminates the environment by accident. There is usually a motivation and understanding that motivation helps us decide how to respond. While every situation is different and motivations often overlap, intent is everything. Which is where the Horsemen come in.
Power seeks to influence decisions, shape societal opinion or maintain control. Elections provide fertile ground for feeding this horse but power extends far beyond politics. Organisations, activists, governments and pressure groups all seek to influence the behaviour of others and ensure control. Disinformation becomes a strategic tool to create uncertainty, undermine confidence or weaken opponents. Increasingly, the objective is not to persuade people that something is true just to make them doubt whether anything is true at all.
Money has turned misinformation into an industry. False stories attract clicks, clicks generate advertising revenue, outrage drives engagement and AI supercharges content farms to produce convincing material at industrial scale. Fraud, scams, investment manipulation and affiliate marketing all benefit from polluted information environments where speed matters more than accuracy. We are also facing a new phenomenon - synthetic content created specifically to be consumed by AI systems, contaminating future search results and AI-generated answers. Truth has become the by-product of attention.
Ideology is perhaps the easiest to recognise. Here, the goal is to reinforce belief systems, deepen divisions, strengthen group identity or even manipulate a group into being. Facts become secondary to belonging. Rather than changing minds, ideological disinformation often seeks to harden existing positions, making compromise increasingly difficult. AI has amplified this dramatically, allowing tailored narratives to be generated for different communities at unprecedented speed and scale.
Then there is Cruelty.
Cruelty is different because persuasion is no longer the objective. Punishment is.
Information becomes a weapon used to humiliate, intimidate, ostracise, marginalise or silence individuals and organisations. Sometimes that information is false. Sometimes it is true but stripped of context, selectively presented or repeatedly amplified until it causes disproportionate harm. This is where malinformation becomes particularly dangerous because Cruelty is often the Horseman that leaves the deepest scars.
We’ve seen public pile-ons where an incident rapidly evolves beyond the original event. Fabricated statements appear online, AI-generated images begin circulating, memes multiply, unrelated people become targets and collective outrage turns into collective humiliation. The original facts become almost irrelevant as the spectacle takes on a life of its own. Likewise, sustained campaigns of selective reporting, malicious complaints or repeated public attacks have profound personal and professional consequences - often tragically so. In these cases, the objective is not to win an argument or present opposing opinions. It is to exhaust, oust, intimidate, demean or silence.
These particular Horsemen have been riding roughshod across the world for millennia. They’ve changed horses to suit the times but never before have their steeds been so fast or carried them so far. Understanding the Horsemen and their reason for being alters - and improves - the way that we can respond.
If the motivation is commercial, following the money often reveals the answer. If it is political, understanding the strategic objective helps explain the narrative. If it is ideological, recognising identity and belonging becomes critical. If cruelty is driving events, our focus shifts to protecting people, maintaining context and preventing further harm. And we can identify and call out the intent behind the action which, I believe, is actually more effective than shouting ‘fake news’ or even methodical debunking.
The Four Horsemen rarely ride alone. Money can reinforce ideology. Power may exploit cruelty. Ideology often seeks power. Knowing which Horseman is leading the charge gives us a much clearer picture of what we are dealing with and how best to move forward. And don’t forget their indispensable stable boy - AI - capable of raking out the muck or piling it on depending on the paymaster.
If we are going to stop the spread of slopaganda and go some way towards cleaning up the destructive detritus left in its wake, we have to develop an understanding as to why today’s information environment has become contaminated, learn how to stop the contamination spreading - and keep the horses in check.
Building capability in this aspect of our work is essential and tomorrow’s session, Disinfecting Disinformation, is designed to help you take the reins and avoid being jumped by untruths and malintent.
I hope you’ll join me.
Sign up here - https://learn.prknowledgehub.com/course/disinfecting-disinformation-how-to-sanitise-slopaganda-before-it-spreads
And if your time zone doesn’t fit the live session - Thursday 20 August 2pm NZST - you can watch the recording at a time that suits you and access the resources, including the PR Knowledge Hub Information Disorder & Counter-Tools Framework.