What is the responsibility of private companies to monitor for disinformation?

By now, we’ve all experienced disinformation in political and social spheres firsthand. We’ve witnessed consequences of “distorting democratic discourse; manipulating elections; eroding trust in institutions; weakening journalism; exacerbating social divisions; undermining public safety; and inflicting hard-to-repair damage on the reputation of prominent individuals, including elected officials and candidates for office,” according to a warning raised in a 2018 in-depth report.

Misinformation is false information spread with no ill intent. Disinformation is generally understood as content that is fabricated, manipulated and distributed by imposters or content that is presented in a false context with intent to harm.

Now, disinformation is moving into the corporate sector. Organized crime and sophisticated actors borrow disinformation techniques and methods and use the same creation and distribution mechanisms used in politically motivated disinformation campaigns.

In one notable instance of disinformation, a forged US Department of Defense memo stated that a semiconductor giant’s planned acquisition of another tech company had prompted national security concerns, causing the stocks of both companies to fall. In other incidents, widely publicized unfounded attacks on a businessman caused him to lose a bidding war, a false news story reported that a bottled water company’s products had been contaminated, and a foreign state’s TV network falsely linked 5G to adverse health effects in America, giving the adversary’s companies more time to develop their own 5G network to compete with US businesses.  

Perhaps most frightening: As defenses against disinformation improve, disinformants simply innovate, steadily coming up with new strategies for evading detection.

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