Why I left the "counter-disinformation" industry

Regardless of their stated intentions, people working in the "counter-disinformation" industry fundamentally cannot do what they claim they're trying to do.

A few years ago, as funders started throwing money at anyone willing to address the purported role of disinformation in Donald Trump’s election, many advocacy organizations, academics, political operatives, and media professionals dove into the counter-disinformation business. As a (now former) employee of one such organization and later as an independent consultant and trainer, I saw that business up close. And while I'll always support individuals and responsible organizations working to overcome divisiveness and deception in civic life, I need to join the growing chorus of voices warning people about the industry that has sprung up around "fighting disinformation." Here's why.

A little about me, since I’m relatively new here: Hi! I’m Sabrina. I’m a storyteller, strategist, and trainer dedicated to civil and human rights. I come to my work as both a trained educator rooted in social and cognitive psychology, and as an experienced organizer and communicator who’s been working on digital platforms since their invention. I’ve spent years contending with how age-old political manipulation tactics manifest in new media environments. Those experiences led to some unique opportunities to work alongside researchers and practitioners formalizing the study of mis-, dis- and malinformation, which eventually led to opportunities to work within a few “counter-disinformation” networks (what independent reporters have dubbed the "censorship-industrial complex," but which I think of as the enforcement wing of Groupthink, Inc.).

My understanding of how bad actors sow division and deception, plus the skepticism I developed after spending too much of my life in ideologically-skewed spaces like these, is also what helped me recognize those tendencies within the networks of people claiming to fight them.

In hindsight, I should have known from the jump that this field would be a mess. How, exactly, could an industry populated primarily by people who believe "all truth is relative" effectively oppose the rise of "alternative facts?" They are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

But at that point in my life, I was still too caught up in that same worldview to recognize the inherent problem. Plus, my entry into this industry (circa 2019) started out plausibly enough, initially around clearly-defined civic processes. Did I want to do something about bad actors telling confused voters the wrong election dates or scaring them out of being counted in the Census? Of course. And especially post-2020, as I became increasingly disillusioned by partisan/ideologically-driven advocacy but unsure of what to do with myself, I was excited to use my skills as a narrative strategist to boost what should have been nonpartisan efforts.

But as those efforts sprawled to ever hazier, more partisan and ideologically-driven topics, the more frustrated and troubled I became. As I continued to question myself, my industry colleagues, and the shaky academic foundation our work was built upon, it eventually became undeniably clear that regardless of their stated intentions, people working in this industry are fundamentally unable to do what they claim they're trying to do.

For starters, people who adhere to an ideological framework -- leftism, progressivism, whatever you want to call it -- that's grounded in an assumption that there is no such thing as objective truth have literally no basis to label anything as misinformation. (A clear example of this conflict can be seen in their embrace of the hollow, ever-shifting concept of "gender" over the stable, powerful reality of biological sex.) In order to even begin to approach this work with any kind of consistency, the overwhelming majority of people working in this field would have to abandon their ideological priors. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Moreover, their unwillingness to consider that they or the "experts" they agree with might be wrong, to humbly listen to those they disagree with, to be appropriately skeptical of politically-aligned public officials, or to remain curious about what objective evidence actually shows us about various issues, makes it all but impossible to consistently distinguish truth from falsehood even when they earnestly want to. Indeed, while I still think most people working in this field genuinely want to be helpful, their hubris undercuts even their best intentions.

Intentionally or not, by deciding in advance that they know what kinds of people are or aren’t credible, rather than seeking and following actual evidence wherever it leads, they’ve shielded themselves from feedback from reality while replicating the same problem that already exists at multiple levels of our sense-making institutions: they’ve mistaken a manufactured consensus for truth. Worse, their attempts to police so-called "disinformation" (which, in practice, means anything that deviates from that distorted consensus) essentially extend that shield to the rest of society. As we've seen again and again over the past few years, that’s had serious consequences for our health, safety, and freedom of expression.

I know much of this comes as no surprise to independent or conservative observers of the disinformation industry over the past few years, and I hope you'll take some comfort in a bit of confirmation and validation from a former participant. But I'm speaking up now primarily for the sake of folks who may have missed -- or more likely, dismissed -- existing reporting or investigations because they came from people whose perspectives you've been conditioned to ignore or mistrust. If you can't hear it from them, perhaps you can hear it from me: someone who truly wanted to believe the best about these efforts, but was eventually so frustrated by what I saw that I forfeited income rather than continue to participate in it.

Ultimately, I believe this "counter-disinformation" industry is a symptom of deeper problems in our academic and advocacy culture, which is what the rest of this Substack will be devoted to exploring. I'll be back in the coming days with a proper introductory post, but in the meantime, here are (some of) my thoughts on why this industry is so problematic and what we can do to have more honest and productive public conversations. Please pardon my chatty hands and other quirks; even after months of processing and reflecting on all of this, I still get really keyed up and angry when I look back on my experiences in this industry. I had to try and have some fun here to stop myself from just screaming into my camera.