New threats to business from technology realm

IN MID-APRIL, at a typical South African braai (barbeque), I found myself in a heated conversation with someone highly educated, yet passionately defending a piece of Russian propaganda that had already been widely debunked. It was unsettling.

- ANNA COLLARD

The conversation quickly became irrational, emotional, and very uncomfortable. That moment crystallised something for me: we’re no longer just approaching an era where truth is under threat — we're already living in it. A reality where falsity feels familiar, and information is weaponised to polarise societies and manipulate our belief systems.

And now, with the democratisation of AI tools like deepfakes, anyone with enough intent can impersonate authority, generate convincing narratives, and erode trust — at scale.

Evolution of disinformation

The 2024 KnowBe4 Political Disinformation in Africa Survey revealed a striking contradiction: 84% of respondents use social media as their main news source, and 80% admit that most fake news originates there.

Despite this, 58% have never received any training on identifying misinformation.

This confidence gap echoes findings in the Africa Cybersecurity & Awareness 2025 Report, where 83% of respondents said they'd recognise a security threat if they saw one, yet 37% had fallen for fake news or disinformation, and 35% had lost money due to a scam.

What's going wrong? It’s not a lack of intelligence — it’s psychology.

Psychology of believing the untrue

Humans are not rational information processors; we're emotional, biased, and wired to believe things that feel easy and familiar. Disinformation campaigns — whether political or criminal — exploit this.