In recent years, LGBTI+ communities in many parts of the world have increasingly become key targets of disinformation campaigns, especially on social media. Initially, scholars understood the spread of false, misleading, or biased narratives about LGBTI+ people, movements, and policies as a strategy used by religious, conservative, and far-right actors to exploit political polarisation and deepen social divisions. However, this landscape has experienced swift changes. What once seemed a collection of scattered yet coordinated campaigns has laid the foundation for a profound transformation of the public sphere—first by normalising distorted debates on LGBTI+ rights, and then by enabling anti-gender politics to be translated into state policy. This paper argues that disinformation should be understood not only as overtly hateful or false claims, but also as discursive manipulation, often carried out by state actors, with the ultimate aim of symbolically annihilating political opponents and their counter-narratives. Drawing on the cases of the 2023 Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act and Brazilian “gay kit”, we examine how traditional disinformation campaigns have reshaped public discourse on LGBTI+ rights in these two countries, being later supplemented by repressive legislation targeting non-violent speech, defunding, and deinstitutionalisation of LGBTI+ policy gains. Drawing inspiration from epistemic injustice and chilling effect research, the paper argues that contemporary disinformation research should expand its scope to include an analysis of the mechanisms that remove both counter-narratives and narrators, thereby allowing disinformation to advance and proliferate more rapidly. By proposing a new approach to the topic, the paper aims to contribute to a wider interdisciplinary debate about the future of queer political struggles within an informational environment dominated by digital media and the political and economic interests of so-called big tech companies.
