CBC - Prebunking the Public
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2026 1:23 pm
Title: Prebunking the Public
Subtitle: How Preventive Narratives Have Become a Modern Tool of Censorship
Introduction
Censorship in the modern era no longer announces itself with blunt force. It arrives quietly, cloaked in the language of protection, safety, and public education. One of the most consequential developments in this transformation is the rise of what authorities now call prebunking. Presented as a benevolent effort to guard the public against misinformation, prebunking in practice functions as a pre-emptive form of censorship - one designed not to challenge falsehoods, but to discredit inconvenient truths before they are ever encountered.
I approach this subject as an educator who has spent years studying the mechanics of power, persuasion, and institutional deception. Prebunking is not neutral, nor is it merely misguided. It is a deliberate psychological strategy that reshapes how people interpret information, encouraging reflexive dismissal rather than careful examination. Its purpose is not to empower citizens, but to protect authority from scrutiny.
This essay examines prebunking as a control mechanism: how it differs from traditional debunking, why it appeals to fragile institutions, how it is deployed through state-aligned media, and why its ultimate effect is not resilience, but dependency.
From Debunking to Prebunking: Reframing Thought Itself
Debunking, properly understood, is reactive. A claim is made, evidence is examined, arguments are weighed, and conclusions follow. It presumes an open arena where ideas may rise or fall on their merits. Prebunking abandons this premise entirely. Rather than responding to claims, it conditions audiences in advance to reject them.
The official framing describes prebunking as “psychological inoculation.” The metaphor is revealing. The public is exposed to weakened, distorted versions of arguments that challenge power. These straw-man versions are then “refuted,” not to illuminate truth, but to associate dissent with deception. The audience is told they are now mentally immune—when in reality they have been trained.
This model rests on several false assumptions. It assumes that institutions administering prebunks are trustworthy. It presumes the public’s greatest threat is misinformation from below rather than deception from above. And it quietly redefines skepticism itself as a hazard to be managed.
Instead of teaching people to assess evidence, prebunking trains them to scan for surface-level rhetorical cues—emotion, urgency, narrative framing—and treat those cues as proof of falsehood. But emotion is not deception, nor is narrative inherently dishonest. By collapsing disagreement into manipulation, prebunking eliminates the need to engage with substance at all.
Truth is not disproven under this system. It is pre-emptively framed as suspect.
Why Fragile Power Needs Prebunking
Institutions confident in their legitimacy do not fear scrutiny. They tolerate dissent because dissent sharpens credibility. Prebunking is the opposite posture. It is the reflex of institutions that no longer trust their narratives to withstand examination.
Modern bureaucracies are particularly drawn to prebunking because it allows them to suppress dissent without appearing authoritarian. Speech is not formally banned; it is socially neutralized. Critics are not jailed; they are pathologized. The public is told it is being protected, even as its intellectual independence is quietly eroded.
Prebunking is especially useful in areas where institutional failure is most visible: elections, public health, law, and governance. Rather than answer substantive critiques, power reframes skepticism itself as the threat. The questioner becomes the problem.
This strategy operates at the level of identity. Citizens are encouraged to see themselves as “informed” precisely because they reflexively reject certain claims. Doubting the prebunk becomes evidence of ignorance. The system seals itself.
In this environment, censorship no longer requires force. People internalize the boundaries of acceptable thought and police themselves. That is the true efficiency of prebunking.
Prebunking in Practice: AI, Law, and the Fear of Empowerment
A clear example of prebunking at work can be seen in recent state-aligned media narratives surrounding artificial intelligence in the legal system. Headlines warn that ordinary citizens - particularly those representing themselves - are misusing AI, flooding courts with errors, and undermining justice. The tone is urgent, cautionary, and unmistakably paternal.
Increasing AI use in Canadian courtrooms carries risk of errors, penalties: lawyers
Some people are also now using AI to represent themselves in court without a lawyer
Paola Loriggio · The Canadian Press · Posted: Dec 31, 2025 9:12 AM PST | Last Updated: December 31, 2025
Link:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ ... -9.7031131
The timing is instructive. These warnings appeared immediately before independent journalism exposed government censorship efforts and directed readers toward self-help legal resources for self-represented litigants. The implicit message was unmistakable: do not trust tools that might reduce your dependence on professionals. Complexity belongs to experts.
Link:
https://druthers.ca/the-machinery-of-modern-censorship/
Autonomy is risky.
What is absent from these narratives is more revealing than what is included. There is little discussion of AI’s potential to expand access to justice for those priced out of legal representation. There is no comparable alarm about AI systems already embedded in healthcare, surveillance, or bureaucratic decision-making—systems capable of life-altering consequences.
The concern, then, is not artificial intelligence. It is who controls it.
When AI serves institutions, it is innovation. When it serves individuals, it is danger. When it protects professional monopolies, it is tolerated. When it threatens them, it is framed as reckless. This is prebunking in action: a narrative deployed in advance to discredit empowerment.
Citizens are trained to associate independent AI use with incompetence and punishment, while institutional use remains unquestioned. The strongest arguments for individual empowerment are never addressed. A weakened caricature is attacked, and the public is told the issue is settled.
Dependency by Design
At its core, prebunking is not about misinformation. It is about cultivating dependency.
A population capable of independent reasoning is difficult to manage. A population trained to outsource judgment—to experts, algorithms, and approved narratives—is far easier to control. Prebunking accelerates this process by undermining confidence in personal discernment. Citizens are told that without institutional guidance they are vulnerable, confused, and dangerous.
The irony is that prebunking relies on the very techniques it claims to oppose. It uses fear, false dichotomies, and emotional manipulation: trust us or be misled; comply or cause harm; accept the framework or be excluded. It teaches people to fear being wrong more than being controlled.
If you rely on artificial intelligence - or any authority - to do your thinking for you, you will eventually be betrayed. Not because tools are evil, but because control over tools always resides elsewhere. That betrayal is not an accident. It is the feature.
A mind trained to distrust itself is a compliant mind. A citizen trained to pre-reject uncomfortable truths is an obedient one. Prebunking ensures that when genuine revelations emerge—about corruption, censorship, or abuse of power - the public is already conditioned to dismiss them.
This is why prebunking appeals so strongly to modern authority. It allows institutions to lose arguments without ever having them.
Conclusion
Prebunking represents a profound inversion of education. Instead of teaching people how to think, it teaches them what not to consider. Instead of cultivating discernment, it cultivates suspicion—directed not at power, but at those who challenge it.
Truth is dangerous not because it manipulates, but because it exposes. It threatens authority built on illusion, privilege built on narrative, and control maintained through obscurity. Prebunking exists to ensure that exposure never occurs.
Yet the very rise of prebunking betrays institutional fear. Systems confident in their legitimacy do not need preventive narratives.
They rely on reason. They rely on transparency.
Clarity remains the enemy of control. Courage remains its antidote. And no amount of psychological conditioning can permanently suppress a population that chooses to think, question, and see for itself.
Prebunking may delay truth. It cannot erase it.