disinformation is the biggest threat to the world in 2024, experts say

The biggest concern of global economic experts for 2024, a year filled with electoral votes around the world, is not the climate, nor the conflicts or polarization of our societies, but fake news.

The problem of disinformation will particularly affect this year 2024. Indeed, for half of the world’s population, 2024 will be an election year. We have just voted in Taiwan, but we will also vote in Pakistan, Senegal, Mexico, and there will be decisive votes in the global geopolitical balance, in India, in Great Britain, in Russia, in the United States. .. Including the European elections in June, a total of 77 countries are affected, and more than 3 billion people will be called to the polls this year.

A boulevard for disinformation professionals

Election campaigns are unique windows for the disinformation industry. Citizens are interested, asking questions, opening their ears wide to hear the candidates on issues that are dear to them. For Davos experts, health, education and purchasing power are among the most divisive subjects. And this year, everything is in place for false information to spread exponentially.

Saadia Zahidi, director of the Davos report, gives us the ingredients of the formidable cocktail that 2024 is preparing for us this year: “You have these two criteria : economic difficulties for the majority and the increase in the production of synthetic content. You add to that an electoral deadline, where people will decide who will lead them. When you mix everything together, it gives you a very dangerous mixture. The question then becomes : who will be the one who holds the truth ?”

Identify manipulated content

The year 2024 will therefore be auspicious for those who aim to manufacture, to impose their truth. Last year, in Brazil, verification agencies observed that, during the campaign, the former president’s teams had spent several million euros on the production of false information, “increasingly sophisticated and on an industrial scale”. But the threat also comes from outside. Many digital security companies today point to China, Russia and Iran as nations harboring “aggressive state agents”.

Their goal is to destabilize, divide, influence opinion, always with the same playing field: social networks. Recently boosted by the surge of Artificial Intelligence, social networks are becoming formidable. For example, we observe this wave of influence, which the company META has nicknamed “Doppelgänger” (“double” in French). This is a “wave” specialized in the creation of false accounts of institutions, international or European, intended to subtly disseminate Russian propaganda. The company Open AI (creator of Chat GPT) claims to set up tracking tools, secret digital markers, to identify manipulated content. Its founders declared on Monday that they will not authorize the use of programs like ChatGPT in political campaigns, even if the technology in question is already accessible to the majority and very easy to use.