Imagine a social media algorithm that prioritizes trust over outrage

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Following Ukraine's recent drone strikes on Russian data centers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested there was "less hate, less division and fewer provocations" online because of fewer Kremlin-linked bot networks spreading misinformation and disinformation. While it's an interesting idea, researchers investigating the claims found no convincing evidence of a substantial decline in Russian propaganda accounts.

Much of the reported fall in "bot traffic" involved web crawlers, which are automated programs that index websites, rather than social media troll accounts spreading disinformation. Even if we could eliminate every Russian disinformation operation tomorrow, misinformation would still be a serious problem. And that's because we have focused too much on who produces false information and too little on the systems that help it spread.

First, we need to understand the distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is false information shared without an intention to deceive. Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to mislead.

Since 2024, the World Economic Forum has ranked misinformation and disinformation among the top two short-term threats to global stability every year. False claims that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen helped fuel the attack on the U.S. And misinformation about health can be deadly.

One peer-reviewed study estimated that around 232,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States between May 2021 and September 2022 could have been prevented through vaccination. While not all these deaths can be attributed to misinformation, misinformation is a significant contributor to vaccine hesitancy. But why are misinformation and disinformation so hard to contain?

Part of the answer lies in how we get our news. More than a quarter of Australians get most of their news from social media, which is problematic because social media lacks the editorial safeguards of traditional media. But there is a second, more fundamental problem.