1. #disinformation is like a computer virus for humans. A #computervirus is a set of instructions that are run on a machine to perform procedures that advance the goals of someone other than the machine’s user.
2. Disinformation is a set of propositions that are introduced into the belief structure of a person in order to bring that person to advance the goals of someone other than that person.
3. If #disinformation is the #virus then #socialmedia is the delivery device. So when people connect to social media, what is the firewall or anti-virus system that protects their belief set? You might say “critical thinking.”....
4. ...but critical thinking isn’t an effective gatekeer when disinformation is introduced through means that do not involve rational argument. And social media seems designed to bombard users with stimuli that induce them to accept propositions implicitly, without scrutiny.
5. Disinformation is more like a computer virus than a biological virus because the latter do not normally op-opt the agency of the host. They use the host to replicate, and the host can suffer as a result, but nothing about the host’s belief set changes.
6. And once the virus is in, the system executes the malicious code I.e., once you believe misinformation you act on it. Willingly. There is no sense of being colonized by anything foreign (as with a biological virus).
