On: AI is making disinformation harder to spot - but we’ve found a new way to catch...

August 7, 2026

“AI is making disinformation harder to spot - but we’ve found a new way to catch it.” The headline, a declaration of victory before the battle is even joined. “We’ve found a new way.” Who is “we”? The anonymous collective, the scientific consensus, the digital saviors. The passive construction, “disinformation harder to spot,” implies an agency to the disinformation itself, as if it were a natural phenomenon, a fog that rolls in, rather than a deliberate act of obfuscation. The grammar absolves the perpetrator, shifting the burden of detection onto the victim.

Then, the second pronouncement: “the real clues lie in how online conversations are being manipulated.” Here, the nominalization “manipulation” takes the stage. Not “how someone manipulates online conversations,” but “how online conversations are being manipulated.” Again, the agent vanishes. The act of manipulation becomes an abstract process, a force of nature, rather than the calculated effort of a specific entity. The “conversations” are the object, the “manipulation” the action, but the hand that turns the screw remains unseen, unmentioned, and therefore, unpunished. They speak of “catching” it, as if disinformation were a wild animal, not a carefully crafted lie. The language itself is the first manipulation.