Scientific American – Our willingness to share content without thinking is exploited to spread disinformation – By Claire Wardle = “As someone who studies the impact of misinformation on society, I often wish the young entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley who enabled communication at speed had been forced to run a 9/11 scenario with their technologies before they deployed them commercially….”

“Bad actors who want to deepen existing tensions [design] content that they hope will so anger or excite targeted users that the audience will become the messenger. The goal is that users will use their own social capital to reinforce and give credibility to that original message. Most of this content is designed not to persuade people in any particular direction but to cause confusion, to overwhelm, and to undermine trust in democratic institutions from the electoral system to journalism.”