In a world buzzing with social media and constant news, the fight against misinformation has become a real head-scratcher. Just a few years ago, it seemed like everyone – from governments to everyday citizens – agreed that fake news was a problem. They worried it was a threat to our democracies, our health, and even our safety. Think back to 2022, when the Biden administration tried to set up a group called the Disinformation Governance Board. It sounds a bit like something out of a sci-fi movie now, with AI-generated nonsense and all sorts of extreme views spreading like wildfire on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). The idea behind the DGB was simple: to help the government identify foreign disinformation and offer advice on how to deal with it, especially within the Department of Homeland Security. This wasn’t some isolated idea; it was part of a much bigger understanding that misinformation was a serious concern. This concern wasn’t just limited to one group; it was a broad consensus that included governments, intelligence agencies, military organizations, non-profits, journalists, academics, and even private foundations. Everyone seemed to be on the same page, ready to tackle this challenge head-on. It felt like a powerful, unstoppable force, with a shared vision of protecting society from the dangers of false information. They believed that by working together, they could create a more informed and resilient public. However, what once seemed like an unshakeable alliance, determined to confront a genuine societal threat, has now come to a grinding halt. Their efforts in the United States have been largely reversed, as a counter-movement has gained political traction and completely reshaped the public conversation. This dramatic shift highlights how quickly public sentiment and political power can change, even on issues that once seemed to have broad agreement.
The landscape of who gets to call the shots on misinformation has dramatically shifted, and understanding this change requires looking at three distinct groups, almost like characters in a play. First, there are what I call the “incumbents.” These are the folks who were really leading the charge against misinformation in the late 2010s and early 2020s. They generally came from established, more traditional institutions – think governments, international civil society organizations, and places where a classic liberal and technocratic view of the world prevails. This group was quite diverse, including everyone from the powerful figures at Davos to intelligence officials, and even, at one point, the heads of major tech companies like Meta and Apple. They saw misinformation as a clear danger, a direct threat to the very foundations of democracy, effective governance, and public health. Their argument was straightforward: to combat these harms, everyone needed to work together – different sectors, different organizations, all collaborating to mitigate the damage. They believed in a structured, expert-driven approach to identifying and addressing false information, often leaning on scientific consensus and established journalistic ethics.
But while the incumbents were busy trying to fix things, they were also under attack from another perspective. This brings us to the “challengers.” These are often illiberal populists, typically from the political right, and some of them have even aimed to undermine democracy itself. You can see their approach in figures like Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), or conservative media commentators like Tucker Carlson. The challengers fundamentally disagreed with the incumbents. They denied that misinformation was a problem at all, or at least they didn’t see it as the grave threat the incumbents portrayed. Instead, they often criticized mainstream media, labeling what it reported as “fake news.” They championed alternative ways of thinking, suggesting that ordinary people, without expert credentials, had just as much right to judge truth claims as anyone else. This wasn’t just about disagreeing; it was about challenging the very idea of established authority and expertise. Then there’s a third group, the “skeptics.” These were liberal critics who offered a different, more good-faith critique of the incumbents. Skeptics saw overreach on the part of the incumbents. They worried about zealously policing speech and removing content, arguing for humility when assessing truth claims. While sharing the liberal values of the incumbents, they also echoed some of the challengers’ concerns about censorship and too much power being concentrated in the hands of a few. They were the nuanced voices, trying to find a middle ground, valuing both truth and freedom of expression, and seeking a balance between combating harm and protecting open dialogue. This interplay between these three groups – incumbents, challengers, and skeptics – has profoundly shaped the conversation around misinformation, creating a complex and often contentious debate about who gets to define truth and how it should be managed.
These three groups, or “discourse coalitions” as we might call them, each had a pretty consistent way of looking at misinformation. They often found themselves at odds over core questions: Was misinformation truly a threat, and if so, how big of one? How widespread was it? Who was ultimately responsible for creating and spreading it? And what, if anything, should be done about it? Their differences truly came into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. The incumbents were absolutely convinced that online misinformation was a serious problem, directly impacting public health and the uptake of vaccines. They urged social media companies to take swift and aggressive action, removing false or misleading content from their platforms. To them, this was a matter of life and death, an urgent need to protect the public from dangerous falsehoods. They believed in clear, scientific guidelines and a unified front against what they perceived as harmful narratives.
However, the skeptics approached the pandemic with a different perspective. They cautioned that scientific understanding during the pandemic was often evolving and unsettled. They worried that the incumbents, in their zeal to combat misinformation, might accidentally stifle legitimate debate about unresolved issues. They advocated for more open discussion, even on topics where the science was still developing, fearing that an overly aggressive approach to content moderation could lead to censoring valuable, albeit sometimes unconventional, perspectives. Their concern was about balancing the need for accurate information with the importance of open scientific inquiry and critical thinking. Meanwhile, the challengers took an even more confrontational stance. They flat-out rejected any attempts to police what they considered “anti-scientific” assertions (though incumbents often viewed these as potentially harmful). They accused the incumbents of trying to silence them, framing content moderation efforts as an attack on free speech and an attempt to control the narrative. They celebrated alternative viewpoints, even those that were unproven, and often doubled down on their claims regardless of mainstream scientific consensus.
This clash of views was perfectly encapsulated by the “lab leak theory” – the idea that the COVID-19 virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than naturally. Initially, incumbents dismissed this theory outright, often branding it as a conspiracy theory. They clung to the prevailing scientific consensus at the time, which favored a zoonotic origin (meaning the virus jumped from animals to humans). For them, the lab leak theory was a dangerous distraction, potentially fueling xenophobia and undermining public trust in established institutions. The skeptics, however, took a more open-minded approach. They argued that the mainstream theory of a wet-market origin was still largely unsubstantiated, and that other explanations, including the lab leak theory, deserved to be seriously considered and investigated. They believed that in the pursuit of truth, all plausible options should remain on the table until definitively disproven, even if they were politically inconvenient or went against initial expert consensus. They prioritized the scientific process of inquiry over premature conclusions. The challengers, on the other hand, seized on the incumbents’ initial dismissal of the lab leak theory as proof of a cover-up. They pointed to what they saw as the incumbents’ “blithe confidence” in the wet market theory, arguing that it suggested an attempt to hide evidence, possibly implicating the Chinese government. For them, the lab leak wasn’t just a plausible theory; it was the most likely scenario, and the incumbents’ resistance to it was evidence of their untrustworthiness and their desire to control the flow of information. Later, the challengers found some vindication when American and German intelligence agencies, along with many credentialed scientists, concluded that a lab leak was indeed a plausible origin for COVID-19. This shift in expert opinion provided significant fuel for the challengers’ narrative, reinforcing their claims that the incumbents had been dismissive and perhaps even misleading, and further eroding public trust in established authorities.
It was during the tumultuous years of the pandemic that the incumbents, once so authoritative, started to lose their grip. The balance of power in public discourse began to tilt dramatically, with the challengers gaining significant ground. Many people, feeling frustrated and disillusioned, became receptive to the challengers’ message: that the incumbents were actively suppressing free speech and censoring those who disagreed with them. The ever-changing public health recommendations, the confusing and often isolating COVID-19 policies – these factors left a lot of people feeling adrift and angry. This created fertile ground for the challengers, even when they promoted unproven cures or spread elaborate conspiracy theories about the RNA vaccine. Their arguments, tapping into a deep-seated distrust of authority and a desire for individual liberty, resonated with a growing segment of the population.
A pivotal moment arrived in 2022 when Elon Musk acquired Twitter. He wasn’t just buying a social media company; he was buying a platform and imprinting it with a challenger’s worldview. He swiftly overhauled the management, and notably, reinstated accounts that had been banned for hate speech or incitement to violence, including that of the former president. Musk went even further, publishing internal communications from Twitter employees, dubbed the “Twitter files.” He framed this act as a transparency initiative, claiming it would reveal a “liberal conspiracy” to silence conservative voices. While the files didn’t definitively prove such a conspiracy, the narrative served its purpose, further cementing the challengers’ view that established institutions were biased and actively working against certain viewpoints.
Since the 2024 election in the US, it’s clear that the challengers have taken the reins. The post-World War II era, characterized by a general deference to experts, seems to be over. Alternative ways of thinking have gained widespread acceptance, blurring the lines between established facts and personal beliefs. While the Biden administration had aimed to align US disinformation policy more closely with the European Union’s more regulated approach, a gaping chasm has instead emerged. The incumbents are retreating, and there’s no major political force currently advocating for regulating the flow of online information. This retreat is happening at a particularly dangerous time, as artificial intelligence threatens to flood the internet with an unprecedented volume of misinformation, making it harder than ever to discern truth from falsehood.
Looking back, the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board now appears to be a symbolic marker of “peak incumbency.” Though its stated purpose was to monitor foreign disinformation, the challengers immediately branded it as “Orwellian” and a secret plot to censor conservatives. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time, facing a firestorm of criticism, quickly scrapped the idea and shut down the DGB just a few months after it launched. In hindsight, this abrupt reversal was a clear sign that the political tides had turned, and the challengers were in ascendance, seizing control of the narrative and profoundly reshaping the public’s perception of truth and authority. The brief life and quick demise of the DGB perfectly encapsulated the dramatic shift in power dynamics surrounding the misinformation debate.