CHRIS ROPER: Spread the good word vs the bad

One of the social media sites I keep an eye on is Parler, a conservative platform based in Texas that was reportedly used to co-ordinate the 2021 attack on the Capitol. It’s normally good for a laugh, because, as is always the case with the grifters who claim to be fighting for freedoms taken away from them by woke states and mealy-mouthed liberals, it’s really just a moneymaking con. Last week, Parler sent me this e-mail.

“Dear Reader, You won’t see THIS in any history book … But after becoming the first man to set foot on the moon … Neil Armstrong reported a STRANGE ENCOUNTER he had in space during a post-mission debrief. And he wasn’t the only astronaut to experience it. NASA did their best to keep it secret … But now, unearthed NASA AUDIO is blowing the lid off of everything. This OFFICIAL APOLLO RECORDING is only seconds long, but it will chill you to the bone. P.S. Of all the moon landing conspiracies, THIS could be the most incredible. Get the full truth HERE now while it’s still publicly available.”

All the capitalised words are links to sites designed to take your money in some way. When I watched an interminably long video revealing “the full truth”, it turned out to be about how Nasa has discovered a way to make people cancer-proof. This discovery is linked in some way to astronauts seeing a mysterious flash on the surface of the moon. Also, of course, the US government is keeping it secret and — absolute proof that this revelation is true — it’s something that the mainstream media isn’t reporting.

Friend, the video tells us, whether you have cancer yourself, or know someone who does, “this hushed-up piece of American history could completely change your life”. In some way, Nasa found out that a natural substance that occurs in Mexico, called Apollo Gold, acts like “a cancer-blocking shield”.

I had to stop watching after 20 or so minutes, because the video never, ever gets to the point. But one constant on the page is the warning in small print: “This presentation is intended to provide cutting-edge health information. Nothing on this site should be interpreted as personal medical advice. Always consult with your doctor before changing anything related to your health care.”

The reason Apollo Gold isn’t prescribed by mainstream medicine, the video explains, is that it’s completely natural, and so can’t be patented. Which means that Big Pharma won’t be able to make money out of it. “In fact, this video might be the first and only time you hear about the revolutionary Apollo Gold secret.” Not because it’s entirely made up, no. Because the government is trying to keep it from you.

My patience at an end, I stopped watching before the inevitable request for money.

These requests are often touted as free offers. In another e-mail this week, Parler excitedly informed me I was one of only 200 Parler VIPs to be offered a free Trump T-shirt. “You won’t hear about this on the news, and that’s exactly why I’m telling you. A group of us just dropped a special run of pro-Trump tees — and we’re giving the first 200 away for free to VIPs like you in order to spread the word. Just cover shipping. It’s called the Comeback Commander tee, and it’s the kind of shirt that turns heads and sparks conversations. Not because it’s loud, but because it means something.” Shipping the “free” T-shirt costs American patriots $7.95.

All the tropes above are characteristic of attempts to make money from what used to be called disinformation, a term that now doesn’t really describe the proliferation of attempts to erode the integrity of our information ecosystems for profit.

One of the core functions of the organisation I work for, Code for Africa, is monitoring, analysing and reporting on attempts to disrupt the information ecosystems of African countries. Our teams do this in various ways, but underpinning it all is a digital forensics approach that combines open-source intelligence, social media intelligence and some clever data science methodologies and techniques.

We have some extremely clever investigators in 28 African countries who monitor content in real time using nifty AI and natural language processing tools to track actors, bad or otherwise, and do analyses to identify the networks that amplify misinformation and disinformation.

Terms such as misinformation, disinformation and fake news don’t really accurately convey the nuances of this territory. Researchers and investigators who work in the field talk about Fimi, or foreign information manipulation and interference. According to the European External Action Service (EEAS), which coined the term, Fimi “describes a mostly non-illegal pattern of behaviour that threatens or has the potential to negatively impact values, procedures and political processes. Such activity is manipulative in character and is conducted in an intentional and co-ordinated manner, by state or non-state actors, including their proxies inside and outside of their own territory.”

In March, the EEAS, which is the EU’s diplomatic service, released a threat report on Fimi. In her introduction, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, and vice-president of the European Commission, described the problem of state-sponsored information manipulation and interference.

“Our information space has become a geopolitical battleground. From the data gathered by the EEAS, last year over 80 countries and over 200 organisations were the targets of attacks from ‘Fimi’ ... No sector of society was spared. Foreign actors use Fimi to manipulate public opinion, fuel polarisation and interfere with democratic processes within the EU and worldwide. The aim is to destabilise our societies, damage our democracies, drive wedges between us and our partners and undermine the EU’s global standing. Fimi ... is an integral part of military operations used by foreign states to lay the way for kinetic action on the ground. Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine is the perfect example.”

This is written from the European point of view, but it has an Africa-specific relevance too. In many cases, powers such as Russia, the US, China and France engage in proxy wars in African information ecosystems.

The geopolitical landscape is increasingly hostile and the use of Fimi, and of information warfare, has become part of a suite of hybrid warfare activities. As the EEAS report says: “Fimi actors systematically exploit global crises and events to conduct their Fimi operations, being a relatively low-cost option for shaping and manipulating public opinion towards their geopolitical objectives.” And the report makes the point that “Fimi is a strategic instrument embedded in the foreign policy toolbox of threat actors”.

If this seems a long way from con artists and grifters trying to sell you fake cancer cures and T-shirts, the tactics, techniques and procedures used are similar. The EEAS defines these as “patterns of behaviour used by threat actors to manipulate the information environment with the intention to deceive”.

When you think about the multiple attempts a day by crooked individuals to use misinformation and disinformation to separate you from your (presumably) hard-earned money, and you read the EEAS’s report on how states (and this might include the one in which you live) use highly resourced mechanisms to influence the way you think about the world, you might be tempted to just give up.

Instead, go out there and spread the word. The more people are aware of the work of organisations who push back against attempts to damage the integrity of our information ecosystems, the better the chance we might survive those attempts. Just like cancer, there is no miracle cure for untruths, but there are ways to mitigate their impacts.