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Social mediasymmetry: Brandolini's law in the MDM Wild West

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admin Sunday April 12, 2026
information media psychology

It is no surprise that 2013 was the year Brandolini's law was coined:

Alberto Brandolini wrote:
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.


At the time, social media were fueling an informational crisis. But the phenomenon was far from new:

Jonathan Swift wrote:
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late, the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man who has thought of a good repartee, when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or, like a physician, who has found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.


Swift observed it in 1710, a century before Frédéric Bastiat articulated some of its causes, in his 1845 Sophismes économiques:

Oui, nous en convenons, nos adversaires dans la discussion ont sur nous un avantage signalé. Ils peuvent en quelques mots exposer une vérité incomplète ; et, pour montrer qu’elle est incomplète, il nous faut de longues et arides dissertations.


Since 2013, there has been significant research, which managed to prove that some are more susceptible to bullshit than others, and ask for more. It takes a small minority of bullshit-seekers and bullshitters (who may form a single group) to bullshitify the landscape. We love pseudo-profound BS, but hate spreads just as easily as hype; emotions trump reason.

Unfortunately, what science is telling us is that debunking badly lags behind MDM. Even if debunking exists, reaches you and convinces you, the continued influence effect (CIE) may leave you influenced by what you initially believed. Untargeted debunking can make things worse. So who wants to spend energy with research debunking a seducing claim, then break the party while taking the risk of further spreading that claim?

We've massively developed our ability to spread information, and doing so, massively developed our vulnerability to MDM. We have removed the barriers to spread information and MDM, but as long as social media remain in the hands of corporations, their interest will be to turn our emotional susceptibility into profits. Even if Meta had the technical means to know precisely who it exposed to a false information, and even if its producers and/or spreaders would be willing to alert its victims, would Meta be willing to tell John Doe every week about the MDM they relayed to him?

Psychology, orgueil, bullshitters and Brandolini's law have long created (dis)informational asymmetry, but corporate ownership of media is further shifting the balance towards MDM. And our slowness to restore that balance seems indicative of another dangerous lag:

The amount of energy needed to build an accountable communication infrastructure is orders of magnitude bigger than that needed to profit from its absence.