Were the Russian cyberattacks on US election systems in 2016 a well-resourced diversion operation meant to overshadow the more significant operations in the information domain? It’s worth discussing.
Agree — the platforms know. They have years of research. It is starting to leak out — like the recent WSJ article on Facebook’s internal analysis that their algorithms were driving people toward more extreme content, something like 40% of new follows on a German neo-Nazi group found it through the FB algorithm, etc. It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that the leadership doesn’t seem to think this is a problem.
On foreign interference — yes, it can be easy to embed and direct and amplify conversations. The stuff that happens not at scale, but within groups, can have a lot of impact.
Agree — the platforms know. They have years of research. It is starting to leak out — like the recent WSJ article on Facebook’s internal analysis that their algorithms were driving people toward more extreme content, something like 40% of new follows on a German neo-Nazi group found it through the FB algorithm, etc. It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that the leadership doesn’t seem to think this is a problem.
On foreign interference — yes, it can be easy to embed and direct and amplify conversations. The stuff that happens not at scale, but within groups, can have a lot of impact.