Social media, Russian troll farms, & the future of Western democracy

[Onkel Neal]

Over the week I listened to several news stories and panel discussions over the ongoing problems and the impact of professional trolls using Twitter and Facebook to shape US opinion. If you haven't caught this, the big social media companies were on Capitol Hill explaining how Russian troll farms were able to saturate FB and Twitter with fake accounts, pushing fake news and manufactured outrage in order to inflame and direct US citizens. Basically, fake users were creating content that was mistaken by real people and causing real problems.

Senator Warner opened his committee remarks describing a bizarre moment when two Russian troll groups created competing events on May 21, 2016, at an Islamic center. The Heart of Texas page created a Facebook event “to stop the Islamization of Texas,” while the United Muslims of America created an event at the Islamic center. People who’d seen the event listing showed up on both sides, and it was not a friendly encounter.

This kind of "sowing discord" into the affairs of our citizens needs to be taken seriously. It's one thing for two neighbors to dislike and distrust each other, but if "friends" are whispering that the other guy is threatening to take action, conflict can occur where it otherwise would not.

'Kill them all' -- Russian-linked Facebook accounts called for violence

Facebook accounts run by Russian trolls repeatedly called for violence against different social and political groups in the U.S., including police officers, Black Lives Matter activists and undocumented immigrants.

Posts from three now-removed Facebook groups created by the Russian Internet Research Agency suggest Russia sought not only to meddle in U.S. politics but to encourage ideologically opposed groups to act out violently against one another. The posts are part of a database compiled by Jonathan Albright, the research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who tracks and analyzes Russian propaganda.

For example, "Being Patriotic," a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump's candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be "be immediately shot." The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down.

Another Russia-linked group, "Blacktivist," described police brutality in a November 2016 post weeks after the election, and stated, "Black people have to do something. An eye for an eye. The law enforcement officers keep harassing and killing us without consequences."

No doubt, a lot of people around the world see these social media "fake groups" and fake users and judge the rest of us Americans poorly.

And then a disgruntled Twitter employee turned off Trump's account, which even if you think that's great, is a worry. Twitter has a lot of power and they apparently have no safeguards that can prevent malfeasance. Imagine if the guy had mad a few posts like "We are going to launch an attack on North Korea now! (and it will be beautiful)" .... so, yeah, social media, meet upcoming government regulations.

Naturally there is a lot of discussion by lawmakers of making big changes to the way the internet works and building more transparency and accountability into the mechanics of the web. I'm all for this. Anonymity is one thing, but having no reliable structure to manage bad actors is a potential disaster. If jihadists are posting dangerous content, an internet "police"/watchdog force should be able to pin down the source of this content and block it from appearing. If there is a fake account on FB, it should be traceable to a real geographic location and a real hardware ID. Masking proxies and that kind of thing need to be written out through technology. Maybe this is already possible, I don't know. China seems to have a handle on it. I know for myself, it would be nice if Google and Yahoo found a way to stop handing out millions of email accounts for click farms to spam Subsim. And it would be nice if I as an admin had a way to shut the door on all traffic from certain regions, the ones where all the spam generates.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes. In ten years will we look back on this period as the "old wild west" days of the internet, before it was "fixed"?

[Catfish]

If the american president uses Twitter to spread his word and communicate, the problem is not with Twitter.
Same is true for people using social (lmao!) media and believing what they find there.

[Mr Quatro]

Average pay is about $750 a month ... food and apartments must be cheaper over there ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

The web brigades (Russian: Веб-бригады), also known in English media as Russia's troll army,[1] are state-sponsored anonymous Internet political commentators and trolls linked to the Russian government. Participants report that they are organized into teams and groups of commentators that participate in Russian and international political blogs and Internet forums using sockpuppets and large-scale orchestrated trolling and disinformation campaigns to promote pro-Putin and pro-Russian propaganda.[2][3][4][5] It has also been found that Wikipedia articles were targeted by Russian internet propaganda activities

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/m...he-agency.html

Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” ..... Salaries were surprisingly high for the work; Savchuk's was 41,000 rubles a month ($777)

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Catfish

If the american president uses Twitter to spread his word and communicate, the problem is not with Twitter.
Same is true for people using social (lmao!) media and believing what they find there.

Yes yes, Trump. Your personal and quite obvious dislike of Donald Trump aside, yes, it is a problem with Twitter, and FB and Google, to name the top tech companies. When you Google for a piece of specific information, Google decides what you get. It's their programming that emphasizes the results. Historically, they have done a better job of returning relevant results than their competition, and that's why they are the best. My point was, how do we continue to trust these companies to manage this responsibly? During the election there were cases cited where some search results were suppressed while others were promoted, according to the political content. That's a problem that could get much worse, and without our conscious knowledge.

Here’s what Dianne Feinstein just said to Facebook, Google, and Twitter at the #techhearings https://t.co/QXbbjrX46O


People believing social media is not always a conscious decision, just the same with advertising. Not everyone is a super-savvy individual who is always aware of any attempts to manipulate their beliefs. I'm guessing the regulation of these companies is right around the corner, for good or ill.

[Platapus]

I think the solution is to just remember that any corporation on the Internets Tubes is in business to make money and not help people.

Instead of taking action against the corporations who seem to be operating within the laws, the logical thing is to educate the people?

Has google ever claimed that they were an unbiased search engine?

Governments and societies can only do so much to protect its citizens. The people have to accept some responsibility for their own security.

We really can't protect people from their own gullibility.

[Mr Quatro]

Our country sells cigarettes, alcohol, hair spray, paint products with warning labels ... social media sites should also (in the future) label suspicious news trolled by trolls as dangerous to our mental health.

They (social media sites) make money and the trolls will hide in shame, but first we as a nation have to change the way we think.

I know I for one will be more careful of click bait.

[Von Due]

As for fake news, and it has been mentioned: The problem is not isolated to the fake news itself but that Gully McMug (that would basically be pretty close to all of us) have a strong dislike for the extra work that is fact checking. It just isn't convenient and beside, who wants to be living under a rock and be the last to spread the latest stories we read online? Then there is the phenomenon of us deliberately searching around for any straw to cling onto that confirms our preconceived ideas. The problem with fake news lies very much in ourselves.

[ikalugin]

In my opinion the problem is not informational activities of third parties (ie USG in Russia), especially if those activities are legal.

The problem is divided into two main categories - the real internal/structural problems and the virtualisation of our world.

As such countries (in this case US, but same applies to other countries) should concentrate on solving the real problems and de-virtualising the world rather than conducting politically and ideologically convenient witch hunts. Because while you are conducting the witch hunt you essentially ignore the ills of the society by attributing their symtoms to some external cause.