These predictions are based on information on the Kinzen website at www.kinzen.com plus other information sources.
Disinformation is spread by governments, organisations and individuals for a wide variety of reasons.
They may want to damage a country, business or people or to take advantage in some other way or to spread their propaganda or hide their activities and it is becoming a more sophisticated battle every year for people to discern truth from disinformation.
QAnon
QAnon is a strange phenomena where a mysterious figure spread disinformation and made predictions which mostly have not come true and yet has a large very committed following. It is described as an American far-right political conspiracy theory and movement centred on false claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals, known by the name “Q”, that a cabal of Satanic people operate at high levels in the US government and other countries.
This does sound ridiculous but it has a significant following. Q knew how to press the buttons for some conspiracy theorists and others and it refuses to go away, at least for now.
It is likely that more such conspiracy groups will form over the coming years and use many of the same tactics and ideas as QAnon.
Politics
October 2022 is the time for the general election in Brazil and many expect to see fighting over the legitimacy of the electoral process
The French presidential contest is in April 2022 and there may be more sophisticated forms of misinformation used to push the results one way or another.
Hungary’s populist pioneer Viktor Orban is facing a tough challenge from a united opposition in April. Orban has used creeping state control of media to seed storylines that appeal to established prejudice and end with some “sort of discriminatory legislation against independent voices.” The Orban government is already warning that the US will attempt to influence the vote, creating the very prospect of a disinformation campaign about disinformation.
The Disinformation War
The Oxford Internet Institute believes that 81 countries have taken part in online propaganda and covert influence campaigns perhaps as part of their foreign policy.
“Disinformation for hire’ will continue to be a growth industry. The Oxford Internet Institute identified 48 countries in which the state had partnered with private ‘strategic communications’ firms to spread “computational propaganda” and use bots to create the impression of trending political messaging.
Russia and China are very likely to step-up up their disinformation activities on a larger scale then ever, using state actors and private companies.
Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen gave the world a better view of the inside of Facebook and whether they ‘care’ about stopping misinformation from spreading on their platform.
However various governments are putting more pressure on Facebook to take their responsibilities more seriously and invest more money in blocking all kinds of misleading or illegal content.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.
