The internet is a fine place to read things. However, you can’t believe everything you read, and the conclusions you might draw are likely to be the result of sophisticated, targeted manipulation. For that reason, the guardians of truth and democracy have come up with a highly effective countermeasure. Unfortunately, the main reason why it’s highly effective is because it works through sophisticated, targeted manipulation. The countermeasure is called pre-bunking, and before you complain that it is using methods that are just as underhand as those used by its targets, you have to remember one thing: The pre-bunker is honest and enlightened, and so is allowed to be manipulative – it’s just called education. In contrast, the target is a dishonest trickster who peddles falsehoods. And how do I know this? It’s because the pre-bunkers have told me so. But how does this idea bear up under close inspection?
Take, for example, the role played by emotion. The pre-bunker warns me that there are those who appeal to my reptile brain in order to bypass my critical thinking apparatus. So, if your response to reading something is one of fear or anger, the likelihood is that you are being manipulated. A good example of this, say the pre-bunkers, is when climate sceptics raise fear and doubt regarding the practicalities of net zero. They want you to be fearful and angry about net zero because experiencing such emotions disables the careful, critical thinking that would inevitably lead to the ‘correct’ conclusion, i.e. that net zero is a brilliant and essential idea.
That said, the pre-bunkers are remarkably silent when it comes to the exploitation of fear and anger as part of the central strategy of climate activism. Talk of crisis and emergency is designed to appeal to my reptile brain in order to bypass my critical thinking apparatus, but that’s supposed to be okay; I’m just having my risk perception re-calibrated to fall in line with the opinions of the pre-bunkers. Nothing to see here, move on.
And then there is the role played by errors in critical thinking. The pre-bunker warns me that there are those who commit such errors as part of a deliberate attempt to manipulate. So, for example, if you see people cherry-picking the weather to construct a particular climate narrative, the likelihood is that you are being manipulated. A good example of this, say the pre-bunkers, is when climate sceptics point towards a spell of cold weather and say, ‘so much for global warming’. Apparently, that’s just taking advantage of the availability heuristic in order to manipulate.
That said, the pre-bunkers are remarkably silent when it comes to the IPCC’s explicit call to take advantage of the availability heuristic by focusing upon extreme weather, such that every heatwave can be sold as incontrovertible proof of there being a climate crisis. But that’s just having my risk perception re-calibrated to fall in line with the opinions of the pre-bunkers. Nothing to see here, move on.
I could go on, but for once I won’t. There is a very simple idea to be taken away from all of this. Advocates of pre-bunking claim that it is designed to teach people how to think but, in practice, it is telling them what to think — essentially priming them to dismiss certain arguments before they’ve even had a chance to evaluate them. It’s not that such advocates don’t have a point regarding the use of emotion, or indeed the misuse of critical thinking; it is the blatantly partizan manner in which such insights are applied. Pre-bunking is supposed to give people the tools to spot the trick, regardless of who is using it, but that is nowhere near what happens in practice. If anything, pre-bunking is even more sophisticated and targeting in its manipulation than anything else you might find on the internet, because not only does it selectively condone the trickery, it does so whilst claiming to occupy an epistemological high ground. It is this claim that enables it to re-label some manipulations as education whilst condemning others as the machinations of underhand ‘bad actors’, even though both manipulations may be employing the same emotional and cognitive trickery.
Because prebunking campaigns are always one-sided, they act as an epistemic shield for the mainstream narrative. They train the public to have an incredibly high sensitivity to the flaws of contrarian arguments, while rendering them completely blind to the hyperbole, cherry-picked data, and emotional manipulation coming from the institutional side. As a rational man, I’m supposed to appreciate pre-bunking’s call for critical thinking and the avoidance of emotional capture, but when I see it in action, I find myself instinctively recoiling from its Orwellian themes. So, no thank you, I don’t see pre-bunking as the legitimate policy of preferring prevention over cure. I prefer to call pre-bunking what it is – a grubby tool employed in a grubby propaganda war.
Well, prebunking really is a thing. Here’s the definition offered up by the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency):
They even offer a link to “A Practical Guide to Prebunking MIsinformation”:
https://prebunking.withgoogle.com/docs/A_Practical_Guide_to_Prebunking_Misinformation.pdf
It was prepared by the University of Cambridge, Jigsaw (“a team at Google“) and BBC Media Action (“the BBC’s international development charity”). The latter believes the BBC is entirely trustworthy and that it is ideally placed to prevent us believing things we shouldn’t:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/
As for the “Practical Guide” itself:
The Guide tells us this:
Also:
I have no doubt that the people concerned in prearing the Guide are sincere and believe they are doing important work. The problem is, who says they are right? The BBC is certainly not an organisation that always gets its reporting right. And when caught out in lies, it is reluctant and slow to admit to them or to correct them. And the big problem is that the likes of the BBC and Google have enormous reach. As do others who might get involved in projects of this sort (e.g. Meta). What gives them (or, indeed, any government) the right to curate the narrative? I might add that the BBC certainly knows about “how people are commonly manipulated and misled online”.
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Sadly, the prebunking does work, but not in the way that anyone would hope if they believed in the importance of facts. I recently made the mistake of engaging in a discussion on my local newspaper’s Facebook page. A renewables enthusiast stated categorically that China is leading the way in renewables and that despite producing much of the world’s goods its per capita emissions were the same as those in the UK. While it’s welcome that this statement showed at least some vague awareness of the distinction between territorial and consumption emissions, it offered up profound disinformation regarding per capita emissions. I politely pointed out that China’s per capita emissions are twice those of the UK and posted a link to the EDGAR website. I explained that EDGAR is internationally respected and funded at least in part by the EU Commission (thereby implying that it was not readily labelled, by those who would struggle to accept its data, as a “denier” website peddling disinformation).
The response was simply to ask me the source of my propaganda (despite my having provided the source of the data). In the world of the successful prebunker, inconvenient facts in the form of hard data become propaganda, and links are not followed. How do we combat that? How do we compete with those powerful forces that curate the narrative so successfully? The irony is that those who claim they are prebunking misinformation are instead enabling its perpetuation.
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Prebunking does work, but only in the respect that most forms of prejudice are effective. It annoys me that children are being taught how to prejudge as their first line of critical thinking. As a scientific concept, prebunking has about as much credibility as homeopathy.
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I wonder if Burn’em’s new National Centre for Information Defence, which is already blaming Putin for the Leave Vote and for fuelling ‘climate denial’ and undermining public confidence in Net Zero, will use prebunking in its armoury?
It should be all powerful and overarching, as there are already nine state sponsored counter disinformation units:
https://x.com/toadmeister/status/2102738807632151022
Seven disinformation units for general government,
One for the FCDO One for the NCSC and GCHQ,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the Land of Downing Street where the Shadows lie.
One Counter Disinformation Unit to rule them all,
One CDU to find them,
One disinformation unit to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
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There is another aspect of pre-bunking that is worth pointing out: Pre-bunking pre-bunks any criticism of pre-bunking, i.e. it builds a protective barrier around itself by pre-defining all criticism as proof of an ill-informed, outside attack. It achieves this by making the claim that it is accepted as a legitimate and safe technique by all true experts, and warning that there are false experts who will try to tell you otherwise.
Then my article comes along. The inoculated will not read it because they recognise that, by being critical of the technique, it must be the work of a false expert. This is confirmed by my lack of behavioural science qualifications. The fact that it was posted on a climate sceptics’ website will also trigger the ‘bad actor’ warning. Such sophisticated and targeted manipulation ensures that the criticism of pre-bunking gains no traction. In that respect it is a bit like religion – it is a meme that contains within itself the wherewithal to ensure its survival and replication. It’s basically unfalsifiable in its own terms, and hence non-scientific in its basic structure.
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Jaime:
“How Many Ministries of Truth Does One Country Need?
How many Ministries of Truth does one country need? With Andy Burnham announcing yet another, Prof Michael Rainsborough points out that Britain’s “narratives of decline” arise because the country is, in fact, declining.”
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/09/24/how-many-ministries-of-truth-does-one-country-need/
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Naturally, the Guardian doesn’t recognise our concerns:
“How the ‘poisonous tide’ of disinformation spreads division and despair
Whether produced by Russia, China or far-right influencers, deepfakes and disinfo are pushing multiple false narratives”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/23/how-the-poisonous-tide-of-disinformation-stokes-division-and-sows-despair
I think that might just be an example of pre-bunking.
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The joke almost writes itself.
Also:
Presumably, to be quipped is to be equipped with a defensive quip.
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The problem with these systems and processes designed to stop Johnny Foreigner from using high tech fakery to destabilise society is that they also happen to be perfectly designed to suppress legitimate counter narratives, including those pointing towards a government presiding over a terminal decline. The complaint that malign forces will exaggerate such concerns fits nicely into that dual purpose.
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Seems “nanny state” has evolved into “surveillance state” in the UK.
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