Disinfonomics

Internal code: 2.4b Target groups: intermediates, recipients

General description
 * Disinformation can be used as a business model by third parties.
 * - (Avaaz (2020b)) Anti-BLM pages on Facebook: "This network consistently included links marketing a dietary supplement in its posts, in a possible attempt to monetise the spread of anti-protest and other disinformation narratives."
 * - (Huffpost (2022)) "Despite his pleas for money, Infowars’ store ― where Jones sells an amalgamation of dietary supplements and survival gear ― made $165 million in sales from September 2015 to the end of 2018, according to court filings related to a lawsuit Jones recently lost over his lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre. The records, first obtained by HuffPost, give the clearest picture to date of the financial situation of the Infowars website and Jones himself."
 * - (Jay Van Bavel on Twitter) On Robert Malone: "I think the economics are important here as Malone and most of the other most widely shared substack accounts are from COVID misinformation spreaders."
 * - (Briant, E. (2021) Beneficent: Oxford Internet Institute report Industrialized Disinformation: 2020 Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation


 * (Ulrike Schiesser - Bundesstelle fuer Sektenfragen, Austria - during RAN meeting #510 Conspiracy narratives and antigovernment sentiments in relation to (V)RWE and other forms of extremism, 16.3.2022) The misinformation ecosystem itself offers opportunities for enhancing prestige, influence, and income.
 * - (Nick Cohen on Western RT associates in The Guardian) "... RT exploited vanities most of us feel unless we have achieved a rare serenity. The vanity of the passed over. The vanity of men and women who believed society would reward them if they worked hard and obeyed its rules, only to find it ignored them after they had done both. Russia gave them new rules to obey and rewarded them with money and, as joyous to the ego, recognition. All it asked in return is that they never asked hard questions about their paymasters. ... Although some thrilled to Putin’s violence, most of RT’s employees served the world’s mightiest crime gang while remaining average people with everyday concerns."

Interventions (HLEG, 2018) :
 * "Online platforms have started to tackle disinformation by disrupting the business model for its production and amplification. Advertising networks (operated by the platforms themselves or by third parties) play an important role within this strategy (“follow the-money”), which in essence pursues three aims:  Advertising networks not placing ads on websites identified as purveyors of disinformation. This directly reduces the income to disinformation providers. Advertising providers not accepting ads from disinformation sources and clearly marking political ads as sponsored content to create transparency. Advertising networks not disburse revenues to sites and partners until they have been able to confirm that they operate within relevant terms and conditions. Such steps make it harder for disinformation providers to profit from the distribution. The production of false and harmful information for profit should be demonetized on the basis of clear, transparent, politically unbiased, and equally applied criteria."

Disinfonomics Impact measurement

Assumptions
 * (Binckhorst Institute - Wiktor) "the first step is to understand the real “cui bono” drivers for disinformation ebs and floods"
 * Jankowicz, 2020 “Although Western countries ... share many fewer cultural ties with Russia than Georgia does, ... less obvious vectors of influence still yield power in our political system.” Lobbying groups. Money.

Disinfonomics Projects

Recommendations
 * (Belgian Senate (2021)) "De Senaat beveelt aan om, in samenwerking met de Europese Commissie, het verdienmodel van desinformatie te onderzoeken, met het oog op een strengere controle van advertenties."
 * European Parliament, 2021 :
 * - Calls on platforms to correct the balance between the business-driven need to encourage people to stay on platforms longer by feeding them engaging content and the responsibility to promote quality content; urges platforms to ensure that their algorithms do not promote illegal, extremist or radicalising content, but rather offer users a plurality of perspectives;
 * - Is alarmed by the massive number of online advertisements by reputable brands that end up on, and therefore finance, malicious websites promoting hate speech and disinformation, without the consent or even knowledge of the brands concerned; considers that programmatic advertising services, such as Google Ads and other ad exchanges, should be responsible for selecting publishers’ websites listed in their inventory in order to prevent disinformation websites from being funded by their ad services; congratulates organisations dedicated to raising awareness about this concerning issue; underlines that advertisers should have the right to know and decide where their advertisements are placed and which broker has processed their data;


 * European Commission Guidance on Strengthening the Code of Practice on Disinformation:
 * - The Code should strengthen commitments aimed at defunding the dissemination of disinformation on signatories’ own services or on third-party websites. To improve transparency and accountability around ad placements, signatories participating in ad placements, including ad-tech companies28, should identify the criteria they use to place ads, and adopt measures that enable verification of the landing/destination place of ads, with the aim of avoiding the placement of advertising next to disinformation content or in places that are known for repeated publication of disinformation.
 * - Platforms should commit, in particular, to tighten eligibility requirements and content review processes for content monetisation and ad revenue share programmes on their services to bar participation by actors that systematically post content debunked as disinformation. Furthermore, platforms should also commit to strengthen relevant policies and exercise due diligence with a view to excluding participation in the ad networks or ad exchanges of websites that persistently purvey disinformation content.