How to Spot – and Defeat – Disruption on the Internet

The 15 Rules of Web Disruption  Found it on Washington's Blog.  Retain a copy for yourself, especially if you frequent and post on just about any forums..  The explanations are longer, but I'll give you at least the first sentence of each.  How many light bulbs went off?  Excerpts:

David Martin’s Thirteen Rules for Truth Suppression, H. Michael Sweeney’s 25 Rules of Disinformation (and now Brandon Smith’s Disinformation: How It Works) are classic lessons on how to spot disruption and disinformation tactics.


We’ve seen a number of tactics come and go over the years. Here are the ones we see a lot of currently.

1.  Start a partisan divide-and-conquer fight or otherwise push emotional buttons to sew discord and ensure that cooperation is thwarted. 

2.  Pretend it’s hopeless because we’ll be squashed if we try.

3.  Demand complete, fool-proof and guaranteed solutions to the problems being discussed. 

4. Suggest extreme, over-the-top, counter-productive solutions which will hurt more than help, or which are wholly disproportionate to what is being discussed. 

5.  Pretend that alternative media – such as blogs written by the top experts in their fields, without any middleman – are untrustworthy or are motivated solely by money.

6.  Coordinate with a couple of others to “shout down” reasonable comments. 

7.  Use an army of sock puppets. 

8. Censor social media, so that the hardest-hitting information is buried.


9. When the powers-that-be cut corners and take criminally reckless gambles with our lives and our livelihoods, protect them by pretending that the inevitable result - nuclear accidents, financial crises, terrorist attacks or other disasters – were “unforeseeable” and that “no could have known”.
10.  Protect the rich and powerful by labeling any allegations of criminal activity as being a “conspiracy theory”. 

11. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit.


12. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

13. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer.   14. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could so taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias.   15. Associate opponent charges with old news.

 

Postscript: Over a number of years, we’ve found that the most effective way to fight disruption and disinformation is to link to a post such as this one which rounds up disruption techniques, and then to cite the disinfo technique you think is being used.

Specifically, we’ve found the following format to be highly effective in educating people in a non-confrontational manner about what the disrupting person is doing:

Good Number 1!
Or:
Thanks for that textbook example of Number 7!

(include the link so people can see what you’re referring to.)

The reason this is effective is that other readers will learn about the specific disruption tactic being used … in context, like seeing wildlife while holding a wildlife guide, so that one learns what it looks like “in the field”. At the same time, you come across as humorous and light-hearted instead of heavy-handed or overly-intense.