What Is Misinformation? A Practical Guide to Spotting and Stopping It

Somewhere right now, someone is hitting "share" on something that isn't true. They're not doing it to deceive anyone. They just believed it, felt something about it, and passed it along the way you'd pass along a good recipe or a funny video.

That's misinformation. And it's a lot more common, and a lot less sinister, than most people assume.

This guide breaks down what misinformation actually is, how it's different from disinformation (the two get confused constantly), why false information sticks in our brains even after it's been corrected, how it spreads so effectively on social media, and what you can do about it before you're the one hitting share.

What Is Misinformation?

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that's shared without the intent to deceive. The person sharing it usually believes it's true. Maybe they read a headline that sounded good, but got the facts wrong. Maybe they misremembered a statistic. Maybe a well-meaning friend forwarded something in a group chat that felt too important not to pass along but forgot to verify it first.

Misinformation isn't defined by malice. It's defined by inaccuracy. Someone can spread misinformation with the best of intentions and still do real damage, because the information itself is wrong, regardless of the person’s intention when sharing it.

Common sources of misinformation include:

• Outdated information that was once true but no longer is
• Satire or parody that gets taken out of context and shared as fact
• Honest reporting errors that spread before a correction catches up
• Misremembered or garbled statistics ("I read somewhere that...")
• Screenshots and quotes stripped of the context that would help explain them

The common thread is simple: the information is wrong, but the person sharing it isn't lying. They're just wrong, and they don't know it.

Misinformation vs. Disinformation: What’s the Difference?

Sometimes, we hear the terms misinformation and disinformation used interchangeably. However, there is a small nuance between the two that has a huge impact on what they actually mean.

Misinformation is false information shared without intent to deceive. The person sharing it believes it.

Disinformation is false information created or shared deliberately to deceive. The person sharing it (or the person who created it) knows it's false, or at least doesn't care whether it's true, and spreads it anyway to manipulate opinion, drive engagement, or push an agenda.

Here's a simple way to remember the difference: misinformation is an honest mistake. Disinformation is a strategy.

The tricky part is that disinformation often becomes misinformation once it starts spreading. Someone creates a fabricated story on purpose (disinformation). A stranger reads it, believes it, and shares it with their own network without knowing it was fabricated (now it's misinformation, at least from that person's side of things). The same piece of false content can have two very different intentions depending on who's sharing it.

This is exactly why the "just don't lie" advice doesn't solve the problem. Most people spreading false information aren't lying. They're relaying something they think is true. The fix isn't a lecture about honesty. It's a habit of checking your information before sharing it.

The Misinformation Effect: Why False Information Sticks Even After It's Corrected

The most frustrating part about misinformation is that correcting it doesn't reliably erase it from someone's memory. This is known as the misinformation effect, and it describes how exposure to false or misleading information after an event can distort a person's memory of the original event, sometimes even after they've seen the correction.

Psychologists have studied this for decades, and the pattern holds up: once a false detail gets planted in someone's understanding of a situation, simply telling them "actually, that's not true" doesn't fully remove it. The original claim often lingers, especially if it was emotionally charged or confirmed something the person already believed.

There are a few reasons this happens:

• First impressions are sticky. The first version of a story a person encounters tends to anchor their understanding of it, even if a more accurate version comes along later.
• Corrections often get less attention than the original claim. A viral post gets seen by thousands. The correction three days later gets seen by a fraction of that audience.
• Repetition builds familiarity, and familiarity feels like truth. The more times someone encounters a claim, even while debunking it, the more familiar it feels, and familiarity is often mistaken for accuracy.

This is one of the reasons that simply yelling "that's false" at someone online rarely works. It's not because people are stubborn (though sometimes they are), it's because contradicting a belief head-on doesn't automatically dislodge it. If you want a more effective approach to actually shifting someone's mind, our piece on how to challenge misinformation walks through what tends to work instead. Spoiler alert: leading with evidence tends to be more successful than confrontation.

How Misinformation Spreads on Social Media

Social media didn't invent misinformation, but it built the perfect delivery system for it. Let’s take a look at why this is the case:

Algorithms reward engagement, not accuracy. Platforms are built to show you more of what keeps you scrolling, commenting, and reacting. Content that provokes a strong emotional response such as surprise, anger, or fear, tends to get amplified regardless of whether it's true. Truth was never the metric being optimized for.

Speed outpaces verification. A claim can reach thousands of people in the time it takes a single fact-checker to confirm or debunk it. By the time accurate information catches up, the false version already has a head start, and head starts are hard to overcome.

Context gets stripped away. A headline gets separated from its article. A quote gets separated from the interview it came from. A statistic gets separated from its source. Once information is reduced to a fragment, it becomes much easier to misunderstand, and much easier to misuse.

Incidental exposure normalizes claims. Most people aren't actively hunting for news anymore. They're scrolling for something else entirely, and information finds them along the way, often without any indication of where it came from or whether it holds up. When you're not looking for information critically, you're less likely to evaluate it critically.

Echo chambers reinforce beliefs instead of testing them. When a feed repeatedly shows someone content that confirms what they already think, a false claim that fits their worldview can feel more credible simply because it's been encountered so many times, from what feel like so many different directions.

None of this means social media is designed to mislead. It means the incentives built into these platforms don't naturally favor accuracy, so accuracy has to be something individual users must actively look for rather than something they can passively rely on.

How to Spot Misinformation Before You Share

You don't need to become a professional fact-checker to meaningfully reduce the amount of false information you spread. There are a few habits that go a long way.

Pause before you react. If something makes you feel a strong jolt of anger, fear, or vindication, that's exactly the moment to slow down. Strong emotional reactions are the easiest way to bypass critical thinking, and misinformation is often engineered (intentionally or not) to trigger exactly that response.

Check the source. Is this coming from an outlet or account with a track record of credibility, or from an anonymous post with no clear origin? Reputable sources are generally willing to show their work. Vague or missing attribution is a red flag worth taking seriously.

Look for corroboration. If a claim is true and significant, it's rarely reported by only one source. A quick search to see whether other credible outlets are covering the same story can tell you a lot in under a minute.

Read past the headline. Headlines are written to grab attention, not to summarize nuance. The actual article often complicates, qualifies, or even contradicts what the headline implies.

Check the date. A surprising amount of misinformation is just old news being recirculated as if it's happening right now. A quick date check can resolve a claim before you even get to the content of it.

This is also (not coincidentally) the exact gap AmICredible was built to close. Instead of relying on gut instinct or conducting a search you might not have time for, you can input a statement into AmICredible and get a credibility score along with the sourced evidence behind it, allowing you to make that judgment call with actual evidence instead of a hunch. It's the difference between guessing whether something's true and actually checking.

FAQ: Quick Answers on Misinformation

Is spreading misinformation a crime? Generally, no. Sharing false information without the intent to deceive isn't illegal in most cases, since misinformation by definition lacks malicious intent. Disinformation, particularly when it involves fraud, defamation, or specific categories like election interference, can carry legal consequences depending on the jurisdiction and the specifics of the case. But most misinformation, an honest mistake shared in good faith, isn't a legal matter. It is, however, a credibility one.

Why is misinformation a problem if people don't mean to lie? Because impact doesn't depend on intent. False information can shape public opinion, influence decisions, damage reputations, and erode trust in institutions, regardless of whether the person spreading it meant any harm. A rumor doesn't do less damage just because it was well-intentioned.

Can misinformation be corrected once it spreads? Sometimes, but not reliably, and not completely. As covered above, corrections often reach fewer people than the original claim and don't fully erase the impression the false version left behind. This is why prevention (pausing, checking, and verifying before sharing) matters more than cleanup after the fact.

How is misinformation different from an opinion? An opinion is a subjective judgment or interpretation. Misinformation is a factual claim that's false. "I think that policy is a bad idea" is an opinion. "That policy cut funding by 50%" is a factual claim that can be checked, and if it's wrong, that's misinformation.

What's the single best habit for avoiding misinformation? Check before you share. Almost every piece of advice in this guide is really just a version of that one habit: giving yourself a moment between "I saw something" and "I told other people about it." to check the facts.

Sources:

The British Psychology Society, The history of an idea: The misinformation effect, 2025.