HO CHI MINH CITY -- When fake photos and COVID conspiracies spiral across Facebook or TikTok, critics invariably ask how to protect people from the dregs of the internet. But a new report on disinformation in Asia suggests that focusing on technology misses the point and that a crackdown on tech may treat the symptom, not the disease.
The report, How Information Disorder Affirms Authoritarianism and Destabilizes Democracy, was released last month by the U.S. Agency for International Development and written by a team of scholars giving advice for USAID projects in the Asia-Pacific region.