Imagine you’re scrolling through social media in the final days before New Zealand’s election, and you see something that makes you pause. Maybe it’s a post claiming Labour leader Chris Hipkins has promised to make Jacinda Ardern the next governor-general. Maybe it’s a story saying Christopher Luxon and the National Party plan to abolish Labour Day. Or perhaps it’s an alarming post that appears to report Hipkins has died. None of these things are true, yet they’re all floating around online, mixed in with genuine news, memes, and campaign posts. If that makes you feel uneasy, you’re not alone. And according to Sean Lyons, chief online safety officer at Netsafe, that unease is actually a healthy sign. “That’s a good sign if we’re spotting those things and we are concerned about them,” he said. In other words, the fact that you’re questioning what you see is the first line of defense. But with so much content flooding our feeds—and with AI-generated “slop” making it easier than ever to produce convincing fake images, headlines, and even entire articles—how is anyone supposed to know what’s real and what’s just another piece of digital noise? The answer isn’t simple, but it starts with understanding what you’re dealing with, slowing down before you share, looking more carefully at sources, and deliberately broadening where you get your information.
Let’s start with the basics. Not all false information is created equal, and the words we use matter. Misinformation is false information that spreads unintentionally. Maybe a well-meaning relative passes along a rumour they heard from a friend, or someone shares a Facebook post without realizing it’s a hoax. There’s no malicious intent; it’s just noise traveling through the network. Disinformation, on the other hand, is a different beast. It’s false information deliberately created and circulated with the intention to deceive or cause harm. That could be a fabricated story accusing a candidate of a crime, or a fake quote designed to make them look corrupt. Then there’s malinformation, which is trickier still: it’s true information used with bad intent, often taken out of context or stripped of important details. For example, a post about a medication might highlight rare side effects while leaving out the fact that they’re rare, creating a misleading impression without telling an outright lie. According to the original explainer, it’s important to distinguish between legitimate political campaigning and content that exists purely to deceive, even though the line can get blurry. Candidates have always stretched the truth and attacked their opponents, but that’s not the same as a shadowy Facebook page pumping out wild, baseless claims. Earlier this year, for instance, a page run from Vietnam and Canada spread a series of bizarre claims about Hipkins—that he was suing TVNZ, that there was something scandalous about his partner, and even that he was dead. None of it was true, and much of it used AI-generated images. Some pages even present themselves as satire, like the one claiming National would abolish Labour Day and replace it with a “National Day.” Satire is fine in theory, but on social media it often escapes its context and gets shared by people who take it entirely seriously.
So what can you actually do about it? The first tip is deceptively simple: think before you share. Sharing is the lifeblood of social media, and it’s one of the main reasons false information spreads so quickly. But research from Netsafe has found that many people who share misinformation never even read the full article. “At the point of sharing, all they had done is read the headline,” Lyons said. “They hadn’t read the source of what it was.” That’s a sobering thought. How many times have you seen a headline that made you angry, or a post that confirmed something you already believed, and shared it without clicking through? It’s an easy habit to fall into, especially when the content aligns with your own politics or makes you feel part of a group. But Lyons suggests we owe it to ourselves and to the people around us to read a little more beyond the headline—to look at the body of what we’re sharing, check where it came from, and ask whether it makes sense. Bronwyn Isaacs, a University of Waikato anthropology lecturer who specialises in the cultural politics of AI, makes a similar point. She says being skeptical and hesitant to trust what we see online is not necessarily a bad thing, because we are encountering a lot of content that could be disinformation or misinformation. And remember, social media often gives false information a kind of intimacy. When a friend shares something, it feels more trustworthy because you know them. But as Lyons points out, that “extra load” of trust can be exactly what misinformation needs to slip through. Just because someone you know shared it doesn’t mean it’s true.
The second tip is to consider the source carefully. A lot of harmful content hides behind names that sound legitimate. There are pages with authoritative-sounding names like “NZ News Hub,” which was found to be spewing misleading AI-generated content and fake news earlier this year. They look like news outlets, but they aren’t. Lyons warns that people can get caught up in the proliferation of misinformation without any idea that they’re part of it, because they genuinely believe they saw it on a reputable network. “They may have thought they were looking at CNN but they were looking at ‘CNNNNN,’” he said. Some sites deliberately obfuscate their identity, burying their real source in a chain of links and redirects. “It’s commonly done and it’s a technique designed to make it hard for us to find out what the original source is,” Lyons added. So how do you protect yourself? Start by checking the page’s transparency information. Many social media platforms, especially Facebook, require pages to disclose where they’re managed from. You might be surprised to find that a page constantly posting New Zealand content is actually run from overseas—often part of an “engagement bait” operation designed to boost page views and ad revenue. Another clue is the promoter statement. According to the Electoral Commission, all election advertising by candidates, parties, and third-party promoters must include a statement saying who authorised it. If you see a viral post that looks like election advertising but has no such statement, that’s a red flag—not only might it be dodgy, it’s also breaking election rules. And even when content does come from a candidate or party, it’s worth checking that it’s from their real account or website, not a parody or fake. As Isaacs puts it, “Let’s go check another news source. Not just, you know, this one Instagram reel which I received.” AI is already making this harder. In recent elections in the United States, Israel, and Germany, AI-generated images and videos have become inescapable. Netanyahu has shared AI-generated fake videos of Iran’s supreme leader as part of his campaign, and in New Zealand, an ad by the Taxpayers Union used an AI-generated Chris Hipkins breaking into taxpayers’ houses and stealing their money. It may still be relatively tame here, but it’s a clear sign of where things are heading.
The third tip is to take a hard look at your media diet. It’s easy to fall into a routine where you get all your news from the same few sources—maybe a particular Twitter feed, a certain Facebook group, or a YouTube channel you trust. But the algorithms that run social media are designed to keep you engaged, and they do that by showing you more of what you already look at. Isaacs calls this creating “algorithmic enclaves.” Instead of bringing people together to talk about issues as a community, these platforms often feed each person a slightly different version of reality. “Some people are being fed more and more of this type of information and we’re not actually coming together in order to talk about them,” she said. Lyons is even blunter, describing the way algorithms work on many platforms as “a sort of deliberately dark art.” They cater to your existing political biases, making it feel like everyone agrees with you when in reality you’re just inside a bubble. If you notice that your feed is constantly filled with content with one particular political slant, it’s worth asking why. Is this what everyone is seeing, or just what the algorithm thinks you want? Broadening your media diet can help. Lyons suggests treating news like your five-a-day—the more variety, the better. “Yeah, five a day, to borrow from the vegetables, perhaps,” he said. “Maybe that’s what we should be looking at.” That doesn’t mean you have to read 20 different outlets every day, but it does mean deliberately seeking out sources that don’t just confirm what you already believe. It also means paying attention to the bigger picture. Big tech companies have cut back on factchecking even as concerns about misinformation grow, and Isaacs argues that “we need the tech companies to do their jobs as well.” But while waiting for them to act, we have to be smarter on our own.
Finally, if you do spot something suspicious, there are places to report it. The Electoral Commission handles breaches of election advertising rules and Election Day rules under the Electoral Act, and it also deals with election programmes under the Broadcasting Act. Depending on the offence, it can be reported to the police. For content questions, the Broadcasting Standards Authority covers TV and radio, the Advertising Standards Authority deals with ads in other media, and the Media Council handles editorial content concerns. But when it comes to social media, tracking down who is actually responsible for a viral post can feel like trying to nail jelly to the wall. That’s why the ultimate responsibility, frustrating as it may be, falls on all of us. “It’s just making sure that we are conscious of what it is that we’re doing and seeing, and if we feel that things are being off balance, try and do what we can to redress some of that,” Lyons said. “It has to be part of our responsibilities being online citizens to make sure we are sure of what it is that we are passing on—before we pass it on.” In other words, the best protection against misinformation isn’t just tighter regulations or better AI detection systems, although those would help. It’s a public that is willing to pause, to question, to read past the headline, and to care enough about the truth to refuse to spread things they haven’t checked. The run-up to an election is a time of high emotions and high stakes, and that makes us all more vulnerable to messages that play on our fears or confirm our hopes. But it also makes vigilance more important than ever. The next time you see a post that seems too wild to be true, or too perfectly designed to make you angry, take a breath. Check the source. Read the article. Think about whether you would want to be responsible for sharing a lie. And if you’re still not sure, don’t share it at all. That little moment of doubt is exactly what the internet needs more of.