Fear, uncertainty and doubt

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, talk radio, politics, religion, and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

While the phrase dates to at least the early 20th century, the present common usage of disinformation related to software, hardware and technology industries generally appeared in the 1970s to describe disinformation in the computer hardware industry, and has since been used more broadly.

The term appeared as far back as the 1920s. A similar formulation "doubts fears and uncertainties" reaches back to 1965. By 1975, the term was appearing abbreviated as FUD in marketing and sales contexts: and in public relations. The term FUD is also alternatively rendered as "Fear Uncertainty and Disinformation".

One of the messages dealt with is FUD—the fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of customer and sales person alike that stifles the approach and greeting.

FUD was first used with its common current technology-related meaning by Gene Amdahl in 1975, after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products." The term has also been attributed to veteran Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil. This usage of FUD to describe disinformation in the computer hardware industry is said to have led to subsequent popularization of the term.

As Eric S. Raymond wrote:

The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. After 1991 the term has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

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