Why You'll Probably See More Disinformation on Social Media
While disinformation campaigns are getting more sophisticated, efforts to guard against them are dwindling.
The Guardian has released a groundbreaking report on the hacking and disinformation team that has meddled in elections worldwide. Team Jorge, an Israeli team run by Tal Hanan, who goes by the pseudonym Jorge, is being outed by a global group of journalists. The report is truly striking, given what Hanan and Team Jorge have been able to accomplish by hacking accounts and creating fake accounts online. (If you don’t already have two-factor authentication on your Gmail, you’ll certainly want to after reading this.)
At the same time, The New York Times reported that combatting disinformation is no longer critical at social media companies. As these companies cut jobs across the board, the jobs devoted to disinformation defenses appear to be some of the first to go. Alphabet, the company that owns Google and YouTube, now only has one person in charge of misinformation policy worldwide, according to NYT.
It is not wholly on Google, Twitter, or Meta's shoulders to fight misinformation. News organizations also play a role. Still, social media is where that information is shared, and those sites should play a part in stopping the spread of disinformation.
We also have responsibility to fight disinformation, or at least not be part of the problem. With social media companies weakening oversight, we need to be even more diligent about what we interact with online and what we share on social media.
Here are a few tips:
Don’t share information you haven’t verified. Even if you’re sharing it to ask, “is this true?” you could be helping spread disinformation.
Beware of reposting something that appears designed to elicit an emotional reaction. Especially if that emotion is anger.
Be alert to posts that confirm your biases. Disinformation spreads by telling people things they want to hear. For Democrats, this means disinformation that hurts Republicans. For Republicans, this means disinformation that hurts Democrats.
4 More Things
1) The Washington Post has reported on what Twitter has to gain from restoring far-right accounts. In short, the answer is money. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, ten far-right accounts have likely generated $19 million in advertising for Twitter.
2) The Bulwark has a piece from Dennis Aftergut on yet another sign that Special Counsel Jack Smith is serious about going after former president Donald Trump on his obstruction charges related to keeping classified documents. Smith recently issued a subpoena for Trump to turn over a folder used to store classified documents. The folder was empty, but this, Aftergut argues, shows Smith's seriousness. Trump has reportedly bragged that he thinks it is "cool" to keep a folder that says classified. But the folder does belong to the US Government and should have been turned over.
3) If you watched the Super Bowl, you likely saw the He Gets Us ads, and if you didn't, you've probably heard the never-ending commentary surrounding the ads. Ideas about the ads are mixed. Texas Monthly interviewed the creator of the ads. Sojourners has a piece on what the ads get wrong about Jesus. Esquire has written positively about the ad's message to love the other. And Julie Roys' Roys Report is worried it's all just one big data mining operation. All have good points, but I have yet to see a non-Christian's thoughts on the ads. Given that that is the target audience, I'll hold my tongue until we know what they do for people who need Jesus to get them.
4) The New York Times has a fascinating piece on how reducing affective partisanship, the poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion, and moralization, does not strengthen the bonds of democracy and root out anti-democratic feelings. The main takeaway is that anti-democratic feelings are a more significant problem of which affective partisanship is a contributing factor, not the cause. The whole piece is worth your time.