Modeling Disinformation and the Effort to Counter It: A Cautionary Tale of When the Treatment Can Be Worse Than the Disease

The problem of disinformation in online social networks has recently received a considerable amount of attention from the research community. It has been shown that online social networks are extensively getting exploited to alter public opinion and individuals' stance on a wide-range of topics. This study proposes an agent-based model that simulates a disinformation campaign by a group of organized users called conspirators, targeting a susceptible population, which are then opposed by a parallel organized group of users referred to as inouclators that try to act as a barrier to the spread of disinformation. The results of this study indicate that the process of inoculating a susceptible population against disinformation is mostly at the price of further polarizing the population.