The video opens the way these things usually do. A blurred screenshot. A whispery narrator. The suggestion of a hidden truth just out of reach. Facts are optional. Ambiguity is the point. A vague accusation drops into the digital bloodstream and within hours it mutates into certainty. Thousands share it. Tens of thousands believe it. Millions see it before anyone bothers to check whether the claim is real. The creator cashes out the ad revenue and moves on to the next manufactured outrage.
We tell ourselves this is about ideology. We imagine a lone zealot who believes the conspiracy theory and wants to convert the world. That’s a comforting story. It suggests we’re dealing with misguided true believers who might be reasoned with. But the modern disinformation ecosystem looks nothing like a political movement. It looks like a business franchise. The lie is not designed to persuade. The lie is designed to profit.
Disinformation is not primarily a cultural failure. It is not an education gap. It is an economic system that turns falsehood into revenue using the mechanics of influencer marketing, affiliate sales, and engagement algorithms. The more disruptive the narrative, the more money it generates. We have built a commerce engine that runs on rage.
The platforms understand exactly what sells. Emotional activation sells. A claim does not need proof if it produces outrage. False political stories travel faster and farther than verified reporting. Researchers at MIT found that false news spreads significantly more rapidly than true information on social platforms and reaches more people. The reason is not that people prefer lies. The reason is that outrage travels at the speed of a click, and every platform has optimized for that velocity.
The modern disinformation producer operates like any other small business owner. Content follows a simple formula: provoke anger, imply urgency, hint that only insiders know the truth. That emotional intensity is then captured and converted into revenue streams. Ad networks reward content that triggers high engagement. Merchandise stores get linked in the comments. Affiliate codes appear after dramatic claims. Super chat donations flow during livestreams. Someone somewhere is getting paid for your anger.
A three-tier system has emerged, and it operates with ruthless efficiency.
Tier one: The content creators. They manufacture false or distorted narratives. Think of them as entrepreneurs of attention. They do not need to believe the story. They only need it to spread. Many are sophisticated operators who understand audience psychology better than most marketing executives. They know which buttons to push and exactly when to push them.
Tier two: The amplifiers. Click farms and bot networks sit beneath the surface like shadow wholesalers. They sell what looks like popularity. Genuine viewers cannot tell the difference between authentic virality and purchased virality. Neither can the algorithms. A video that looks popular becomes popular. The simulation precedes and creates the reality.
Tier three: The data brokers. Email capture pages disguised as “exclusive updates” collect personal information that gets resold to the highest bidder. The disinformation was bait. The data was the catch. You thought you were joining a movement. You were actually entering a database.
Fact-based journalism moves on an entirely different time axis. Reporting takes days or weeks. Verification takes patience. Ethical review takes courage. Disinformation has none of those constraints. Accuracy slows production. The financial incentive favors speed and volatility. The false claim wins because it can be produced at scale, distributed instantly, and monetized without accountability. Truth sits in the waiting room while the lie sprints across the finish line.
But there is another cost, one that compounds over time. People who consume these narratives are not just misinformed. They become emotionally invested in the content creator. Once someone has purchased a T-shirt, joined a membership club, or paid for access to “the real story,” their relationship to the false claim becomes personal. They have bought a worldview. Try telling someone they were conned after they’ve spent money defending the con. The psychology of buyer’s remorse combines with the psychology of tribal identity. What you get is a customer base that cannot afford to admit the product was fake.
Democracy relies on a shared foundation of fact. A disinformation economy profits from dissolving that foundation. Every platform that monetizes engagement is effectively subsidizing the dissolution. Every recommendation algorithm that prioritizes emotional intensity over accuracy is an investment in chaos. The market has spoken. It wants conflict.
The battle is not only against false narratives. The battle is against the business incentives that reward their creation. Until we confront the economic engine driving this machine, we are not fighting disinformation. We are just complaining about its symptoms while the cash registers keep ringing.