(At least) nine ways to lie

As part of writing our recent book, World Without Truth, Richard, Andrew and I delved not only into digital disinformation, but also the mechanics of lying, deceiving and confusing people. Simply telling an untruth (Deceive in the graphic below), is only one way of using bad information to damage a person, company, institution, government, or country. Here are some others: Distort. Introduce unwanted discrimination or bias into data, including AI training data. Divide. Create multiple plausible narratives to deliberately cause division in a group. Deluge. Provide an overload of data beyond your target’s ability to process. Distract. Create an informational ‘honeypot’ that is much more interesting than something you want to cover up. Deaden. The practice of censorship. Discredit motive. Damage the ability to believe and absorb good information by casting doubt on the source’s motivation. Discredit method. Damage the ability to believe and absorb good information by casting doubt on the approach/ methodology the source took. Demotivate: Change actual/perceived incentives and disincentives for producers and/ or consumers of information. We explore these tactics, along with ways to address them, in our book. Please use the QR code if interested in learning more. I will also be talking about this topic in Yokohama, Taipei, Barcelona and Kochi next four weeks. Please join the sessions if you have time. #unthink #unask #unlearn #disinformation #gartner