Why Fake News Wins the Attention Game

Fake news spreads faster and wider than most civic content. It does not win because people are ignorant. It wins because it is designed to feel good. That is the uncomfortable truth many institutions still miss.

When you scroll through your feed and see a shocking story, it often places you at the center. You become the hero who sees through corruption. Villains are everywhere: greedy corporations, dangerous outsiders, crooked politicians. The narrative gives you clarity, and the world makes sense. Sharing it proves your loyalty. It signals that you are smart and connected.

This is why disinformation is sticky. It delivers the dopamine hit that makes people click, share, and repeat.

Why Fact-Checking Doesn’t Work

The instinctive response from governments and donors has been to fund fact-checking. Websites debunk falsehoods with careful evidence. Yet engagement numbers are tiny. A fact-check article may get a handful of shares while the fake story that triggered it gets millions.

The problem is motivation. If you already value facts, you are reading credible news. If you do not, you will not visit a fact-checking site. Worse, corrections often feel patronizing. They rarely give readers the emotional experience that disinformation delivers.

Platforms like X and Meta have begun inserting fact labels directly into feeds. That helps a little, because it meets people in the flow of their behavior. But even there, the problem remains. Correcting facts is not the same as building traction.

Fake News as User Experience

Think of fake news as product design. It succeeds because it makes the user feel good. It offers identity, community, and entertainment. It rewards participation.

Fact-checking, in contrast, is designed as a public service. It is serious, dry, and often accusatory. It does not deliver joy. It does not reward sharing. That mismatch explains why disinformation wins on reach.

For civic actors, this is a tough pill to swallow. We want to believe that truth carries its own power. Online, it does not. Online, the best designed experience wins.

The Cost of Staying in the Old Logic

The failure to compete with disinformation has consequences far beyond single stories. Shared narratives are the glue of society. When fake news fragments them, societies lose trust and stability. The more traction lies gain, the weaker public resilience becomes.

Civil society cannot afford to keep investing in methods that feel righteous but do not work. Every euro spent on fact-checking without reach is a euro lost in the battle of ideas.

What Real Impact Looks Like

Real impact means more than correcting errors. It means building narratives that connect with the audiences who matter most: the persuadable mainstream. These are people who are not activists, not hardcore partisans, and not obsessed with fact versus fiction. They are busy with everyday life. But when exposed to engaging stories, they respond.

To reach them, civic actors need to compete in the same terms that make fake news effective: clarity, emotion, and resonance. That does not mean abandoning integrity. It means communicating truth in ways that feel relevant and rewarding to ordinary people.

The Logiq Insight: Designing Traction for Truth

This is the core of what we call Impact Engineering. It is not about campaigns or awareness. It is about systems that test, measure, and scale influence.

Impact Engineering starts by identifying persuadable audiences. It then runs live-environment tests with different framings. Which stories resonate. Which tones work. Which images make people stop scrolling. The system measures traction through metrics that matter: shifts in engagement from outside the base, resonance among apolitical groups, signs of narrative lift.

This is not manipulation. It is strategy. Hostile actors already use these methods to divide. Civil society must use them to reconnect.

A Better Way to Compete

Imagine an NGO tackling vaccine disinformation. Instead of publishing another correction, it designs a set of short videos that show families celebrating everyday life without illness. It tests different framings: protecting grandparents, keeping kids in school, saving money on health costs. Data shows which stories move the persuadable middle. That story then gets scaled.

The result is not just information delivered. It is traction created. More people share the story because it feels relevant to them. The truth becomes competitive again.

Why This Matters for Funders

For funders, the lesson is simple. Stop equating fact-checking with impact. Funders should ask for evidence of traction, not just evidence of accuracy. Did the message move beyond the converted. Did it connect with mainstream audiences. Did it prove lift in engagement.

Investing in strategies that only circulate inside the base is throwing money at polarization. Investing in strategies that build traction with the mainstream is building societal resilience.

The Takeaway

Fake news feels good. That is why it wins. If truth feels boring, it will lose. The solution is not louder corrections. The solution is building truth into stories people want to experience and share. That is what Impact Engineering delivers.

Civil society does not need more facts. It needs more traction.