“even then i could not foresee how bad things would get,” he said. “even in january. we were kind of freaking out looking at this wave coming and we thought it was big, but it was actually a tsunami on top of a tsunami.”
of course, there had been warning signs: clues over the years that had pointed to the increasing vulnerability of our information systems to mistruths and lies.
“researchers had been saying it’s inevitable,” yates said. “that some event will happen that will create an information apocalypse, like a black hole of information where the system breaks down, no one knows who to believe, what to believe — and a major international crisis could create the perfect ground zero for something like this. and that’s exactly what happened with the pandemic.”
by now, more than a year into that devastating pandemic, it’s become evident that the spread of disinformation, fake news, outright lies and misleading speculation surrounding covid-19 has created deep fissures in quebec, canada, and all over the world. at the montreal gazette, we have decided to take a step back and examine this issue: how did disinformation become so prevalent and what is it doing to us?
in 2014, when he worked for métro, a free daily newspaper in montreal, yates became curious about online disinformation and began blogging about it, hoping to publish an article a week debunking or fact-checking a story spreading on the internet. as he recalls those early days, he laughs.