OPINION:
Facebook, Google and Twitter are talking to the Congress about how they helped Russia spread fake news and create divisions within our country during the 2016 Presidential election. They were at least complicit, and arguably enabled, what may be the biggest, and most effective anti-U.S. propaganda and destabilization operation in history.
The tally thus far: Facebook hosted 80,000 Russian generated posts on 120 web pages and more than 3,000 ads, mostly focused on divisive social issues, that may have reached as many as 126 million Americans.
Twitter supported 1.4 million Russian tweets on 2,752 user accounts. It also sold political ads to nine Russian entities that it knows of, a marginal improvement over Facebook that has no idea who its real advertisers are.
Google also sold ads to the Russians and made available 18 YouTube channels that generated 43 hours of propaganda on 1,108 videos.
The senators fuming about how this could have happened can be forgiven their high dudgeon. They are after all politicians, and in fairness to the IT companies, They have known Russia has been conducting “active measures” since at least 1960 to create conflicts within American society and destabilize its institutions, and have done nothing about it.
Russia’s use of misinformation to attack the U.S. is not new, but it is becoming more dangerous for two reasons. First, our infatuation with information technology while ignoring its dangers has created a world in which truth is determined by message volume and velocity, not facts.
Say almost anything enough times, and get it repeated in rapid succession by other media outlets, and people will perceive it as the truth, regardless of what actually took place. It’s called spin, or nuancing, or shaping the message, but regardless of the name, its intended purpose is to mislead, creating an echo chamber in which a reverberating but untrue storyline changes people’s perceptions of reality.
The misleading information the Obama administration fed to credulous journalists to create positive perceptions of the Iran deal is an example of how it works. That is what Facebook, Google and Twitter helped the Russians do during the 2016 election.
Unfortunately, trying to build echo chambers by misleading the public has become routine for U.S. political elites and the people who report on them. Indeed, much of today’s media content, whether produced by policymakers or reporters, is more about shaping the message, than providing credible information.
Politicians have always been loose with facts, but now the forums we rely upon to provide the truthful information necessary for democracy to function are no longer trustworthy because they’ve aligned themselves with ideological factions. A recently released report by the Pew Research Center found that 64 percent of U.S. adults believe that fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the underlying facts of current issues and events.
Our democracy is in turmoil because no one is willing to stop the spin and the public is drowning in a sea of biased political reporting that manipulates the facts to shape perceptions of the truth, and to influence rather than to inform. It is fertile ground for the nation’s enemies, and the Russians in particular are adept at using misinformation to disrupt institutions and create discord within societies.
That raises the second reason why the misinformation threat to democracy is increasing. We are conflating expertise in the realm of information technology with expertise in keeping the nation safe.
The executives of IT behemoths may be second to none when it comes to building and connecting technology and creating information flows, but like McNamara’s “whiz kids” of the 1960s, they have no experience in dealing with national security threats and they are naive when it comes to stopping fake echo chambers that enable hostile actors to advance their interests at the expense of the American people.
Naivete and profit is a dangerous combination. Foreign spending on U.S. political campaigns is illegal, but executives of the IT giants apparently thought nothing amiss when the Russians paid them with rubles to host a plethora of election related ads, and content designed to inflame divisive social issues.
When asked if Facebook knew the true identity of its advertisers, its representative replied, “Of course, the answer is no.” Google’s rep added: “In hindsight, we should have had a broader lens.” Yuh think?
The IT giants like to portray themselves as facilitators of public debate, as the keepers of platforms for freedom of expression. They’re not responsible for the content, they say. They would have you believe that providing the means by which someone else can spread false information to weaken U.S. institutions, create social discord and change people’s perceptions of reality is okay.
After all, our enemies have opinions too. They also conveniently omit, and Congress has failed to ask about, the role they play in enabling terrorists to gather intelligence and communicate with other terrorists. Once again, the goal is to shape the message. The only word fit to describe it is the “b” word, balderdash.
• Bruce M. Lawlor, a retired U.S. Army major general, is a former member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security.
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