Truth no longer defends itself. Falsehoods travel faster than truth and in 2025. They’re shaping politics, security, and international diplomacy. Welcome to This Week In Disinformation. open.substack.com/pub/thedisinfo…

Cracker Barrel did a thing with their logo. Then they turned it back. Why? And what does this teach us about information? The Cracker Barrel incident fits a broader pattern identified by cybersecurity researchers. Cyabra found similar artificial amplification in Jaguar's

Whenever there is an information gap, conspiracy theories will exploit it. Be it intentionally, or unintentionally.

What can we learn from Cracker Barrel’s logo blunder? While the emotions were expressed and real, there was a degree of bots amplifying the sentiment. What does this mean for future brands? Quite a bit. thedisinformationobserver.substack.com/p/when-21-of-y…

This video does not show immigrants marching in Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺 In fact, it is an annual religious procession u.afp.com/NotImmigrantPr…

From AFP Fact Check 🔎 To our Australian viewers, looks like there repurposed content driving fake news in Melbourne. The video shows Melbourne’s annual Ashura procession. Shia Muslims peacefully marching and chanting as part of a religious ritual, not shouting threats or staging

Welcome to this week in disinformation. thedisinformationobserver.substack.com/p/this-week-in…

Fiction allows me to speak to a certain side of disinformation that is not really discussed. There is an uncomfortable calm in how it sits afterwards. There is a wrongness in the slow realisation. That is when a son and a father realises they are not two very different people.

There is a subtle growing problem in how people are fact checking the Charlie Kirk shooting. And that is down to the use of AI. People looking for answers have been turning to AI chatbots, but instead of clearing things up, these bots have been giving mixed or totally wrong

Welcome to information warfare. And we are way behind the 8 ball on this. And often, simple advice defeats complex problems. This is one of them.

From Nepal’s Gen Z protests against social media bans to the chaotic misinformation after Charlie Kirk’s assassination in the U.S., and Russia’s sophisticated influence campaign targeting Moldova’s upcoming elections. These cases reveal how false narratives weaponize identity

The Gen Z protests in Nepal have rapidly surged, driven substantially by social media and hashtag activism. Key hashtags like #NepoKid, #NepoBabies, and #PoliticiansNepoBabyNepal trended intensely on platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and X, exposing political nepotism

Now scale this up at a state level and impose intent on it. There you have it, an introduction to the delusion of information and engagement we see.

When the assassination happened, names were thrown around of who the shooter was. I am unsure what the intent was behind this was. Though it is clear that agenda is ride the emotive wave, and cause harm. This is becoming a playbook when an incident happens.

Information overload isn’t an accident. It’s a tactic. It doesn’t come as one story; that would be too obvious. Instead, it comes as a flood of competing narratives. Our brains aren’t built to sift through endless noise. Overload makes us vulnerable. And in that confusion,

Disinformation is engineered to trigger outrage, fear, or tribal pride. All emotions that make people share before they think. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an academic. Those worlds often miss how the fight really works. We need to learn the patterns, tactics, and

This week we see Pro-Kremlin forces have circulated fabricated leaks to undermine Western unity over Ukraine. Across the Atlantic, the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk sparked a wave of foreign-driven conspiracy theories aimed at widening fractures within the

There is a lot of activity that is disinformation in the Philippines. This implies that there is foreign intent to shape perception to eventually exploit. Read up to stay informed. thedisinformationobserver.substack.com/p/this-week-in…

The information battlefield is like water flowing downhill. It always finds the easiest way through. Speed, adaptability, and control of the story matter as much as firepower. Adversaries target the easiest weak spots in a society’s information defences to break down trust,

From Russia shifting blame for drone strikes in Poland, to coordinated campaigns distorting Azerbaijan’s role in global conflicts, to YouTube reopening the floodgates for banned misinformation peddlers. Read This Week In Disinformation. open.substack.com/pub/thedisinfo…