INVESTIGATION · Nº 004 · POLITICS NICHE
The half-life of a lie — short-form political disinformation
There's a six-hour window between publication and fact-check in which disinformation operates unopposed. It isn't a failure — it's the niche by design.
The half-life of a lie
There is an interval, in the lifespan of political disinformation, when it is fully formed and no fact-check has yet been written to answer it. That interval lasts, on average, six hours. In six hours a 47-second video can hit 800,000 views, get reposted to three WhatsApp groups of fifty thousand members each, and produce a measurable effect in exit polls. In the next six hours, the fact-check ships. It doesn't matter.
This is the operational design of the niche. Not a defect. A design.
Why short-form won
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