There was once a world where talking about misinformation meant being about people who were poorly informed. And that wasn’t so long ago…
Today, that definition has become outdated, and is now the second meaning, according to the RAE , behind the one that has taken the main role: action and effect of giving intentionally manipulated information in the service of certain ends.
The film The Wizard of the Kremlin introduces Vadim Baranov, a television producer who becomes Vladimir Putin’s spin doctor —a strategic communications advisor. From within the inner workings of power, Baranov helps construct a political reality in Russia where the boundaries between truth and lies, information and propaganda, are deliberately blurred.
The film explores precisely this modern version of propaganda, in which it is not essential to convince everyone of the same truth. It can be more effective to fill the public sphere with contradictory narratives until distinguishing the truth becomes increasingly difficult.
There is one particularly fascinating scene that could serve as a beginner’s guide to understanding contemporary disinformation. Boris Berezovsky tells Baranov: “Stop inventing stories. Start inventing reality.”
The phrase sums up the leap that disinformation has taken. It’s no longer just about fabricating a lie and getting someone to believe it. It’s also about deciding which reality appears before our eyes, which ones disappear, and which ones are met with public applause.
Other ways to spread misinformation
We know how to recognize disinformation when someone fabricates a fake news story, manipulates a photograph, or produces a deepfake . This is the type of disinformation that has been most studied , and against which we take precautions. But there are more sophisticated ways to undermine citizens’ right to be informed.
Some new forms of disinformation don’t invent a reality; rather, they fabricate the sources that report it using pseudo-media outlets. Others do the exact opposite: they don’t add false information to the ecosystem, but instead make true information disappear. And there’s a third layer, belonging to what we call the “dead internet ,” in which a spontaneous public conversation is simulated when, in reality, we’re dealing with a coordinated operation where bots interact with each other.
The “dead internet” would already be more numerous than the live internet, according to the Imperva Bad Bot Report (2026), which found that automated bot traffic constitutes 53% of all web traffic in 2025.
Pseudo-media outlets, fraudulent copyright claims , and inauthentic digital networks are the three mechanisms of the new disinformation. They are distinct from one another, but they share a common effect: they disrupt the flow of information. Some poison it, others obstruct it, and still others generate an artificial public debate.
Pseudo-media: the case of Alejandro Betancourt in Venezuela
A pseudo-media outlet presents itself as journalism without actually doing journalism. It has headlines, sections, photographs, news stories, and a graphic design reminiscent of a professional publication. But it lacks a newsroom, fact-checking processes, editorial standards, or a clear separation between information and vested interests.
The reader enters a website that simulates a newsroom, even though behind that facade there is no journalistic structure capable of standing behind its publications. The Kremlin, incidentally, has been an expert in these matters since its inception.
A recent case in Venezuela illustrates the extent of this practice. An investigation by Fake News Hunters identified an inauthentic digital operation that favored businessman Alejandro Betancourt and attacked media outlets and journalists who had investigated his activities. The network included at least 75 inauthentic accounts on X, 13 websites impersonating regional media outlets, and six fake news accounts on Instagram. The domains had been registered in bulk, and the sites lacked basic elements that would allow for the identification of a genuine journalistic structure, such as an editorial team, contact information, or legal notice.
What’s interesting is the design of this architecture, like a staged performance: accounts that appear to belong to ordinary citizens participate in the posts of these fake media outlets, helping to generate a seemingly spontaneous conversation. The actors don’t just play journalists; now they also play the audience. The cinematic metaphor is almost literal.
There’s another way to manipulate: the fraudulent use of copyright claims. A copyright claim has an advantage for those seeking opacity: they don’t need to discuss the content of the information. They don’t need to prove it’s false, refute it, or convince the public. They can try to achieve something much simpler: getting the content removed or having the account that shared it taken offline.
There are also recent examples in Venezuela. On May 25, Instagram suspended the account of the Venezuelan news site El PitazoTV for alleged copyright infringements ; the following day, Meta reinstated the account and acknowledged that no rules had been violated. On July 26, the Instagram account of the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional , which had 4.4 million followers, was suspended after receiving complaints of alleged copyright infringement. The newspaper is still awaiting a response to its appeal.
The problem is that the copyright infringement reporting mechanism can be exploited to create opacity, and the platform can unintentionally become the instrument that makes an information source disappear.
Copyright is a legitimate and necessary institution. It protects intellectual property and allows journalists, photographers, writers, and other creators to defend their work. That is precisely why it is so perverse to turn it into a tool for silencing information that might be inconvenient for those in power .
In a country where access to independent media is severely restricted and numerous news sites remain blocked, social media platforms are not just spaces for conversation. They are part of the information infrastructure. Therefore, when an account with millions of followers disappears as a result of a complaint that later turns out to be false, we are facing a problem that violates the right to information.
False content and claims to clean up the image
There is an online “reputation cleaning” industry . The case of Eliminalia is well-known: a Washington Post investigation based on nearly 50,000 internal documents showed how this Spanish company used a combination of fake websites, favorable content, legal notices, and fraudulent copyright claims to remove or bury negative information about its clients. The investigation identified nearly 1,500 clients over six years.
Eliminalia created a fake page, copied the article they wanted to remove onto it, and assigned it an earlier date on the server. They then claimed that the real news outlet had copied the content. In this way, the original article could be portrayed as the infringer, and the forgery as the supposed original. The company sent thousands of such claims between 2015 and 2021.
The process of this new disinformation would be as follows: first, the actors are manufactured – pseudo-media outlets that look like journalism –; then, the public is manufactured – inauthentic accounts that make a narrative seem to have spontaneous support –; and, finally, the uncomfortable scenes are made to disappear.
The fight against disinformation, therefore, can no longer be limited to asking: “Is what I’m seeing true?” Disinformation consists not only of introducing falsehoods into the information ecosystem, but also of restricting access to true information, and causing the original meaning of the term to revert to what it was: little information, because it has been suppressed.
Platforms bear a huge responsibility here. Their remediation mechanisms should prioritize copyright claims that may affect journalistic sources, especially when there are indications of coordination or abuse.
Information has its own pace. A news story that stops circulating during a crisis, an investigation, or an election doesn’t fully regain its impact even if the account is reactivated afterward. Disinformation is most effective when it can control what appears, what disappears, and what seems to generate genuine conversation.
Author Bio: Carmen Beatriz Fernández is Professor of Political Communication at IESA and UNAV at the University of Navarra
