Other voices: Fighting online election disinformation is everyone's business
- by Longview News-Journal
- Sep 10, 2024
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The Boston Globe
So Donald Trump has had his fun with those AI-generated images of crowds of Taylor Swift fans in âSwifties for Trumpâ T-shirts, which reportedly sparked a backlash among actual Swifties.
And who didnât love the AI-generated scenes of Trump and Kamala Harris walking hand in hand along the shore in deep-fake love â a video clip now making its way around the globe courtesy of Elon Musk.
But the use of artificial intelligence, disinformation, and hacking â all the tools of our internet age â are only funny until theyâre not, until they are used maliciously by foreign actors to disrupt our democratic processes and to set us against each other for reasons based not in fact but in propaganda.
Users themselves are the first line of defense: We all need to develop stronger skepticism about everything social media companies feed us. But the government and tech companies have to step up, too.
âIran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in other countries around the world,â the FBI said in a statement in conjunction with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The statement confirmed in this case that Iran was responsible for recent attempted hacks into the Trump and Joe Biden presidential campaigns.
Meanwhile, Russia, which has a long history of disinformation campaigns perfected in 2016, has certainly not been idle.
The Justice Department reported in July that it had disrupted two Russian propaganda campaigns, both largely aimed at justifying Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine and disparaging Ukraine, Poland, and the European Union.
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Earlier this month Meta disclosed that working on a tip from the FBI it too had removed âinauthenticâ pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram also aimed at disparaging Ukraine and its conduct of the war instigated by Russia.
Meta continues to insist â as recently as its latest quarterly âAdversarial Threat Reportâ issued this month â that it regulates not content but âcoordinated inauthentic behaviorâ online.
Russia remains a top violator of the policy and during the past quarter had 139 Facebook accounts and 20 Instagram accounts removed â many of them targeting Ukraine, its neighbors, or other countries in Europe.
Another 96 Facebook accounts originating in the United States and operating domestically were also dismantled by its parent, Meta. Most of the accounts were centered around âa fictitious political advocacy group â the Patriots Run Projectâ attempting to attract âreal conservativesâ in such key battleground states as Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
The government and social media companies â some brought reluctantly to the party â are slowly working to rebuild a relationship that is critical to the battle against disinformation.
Meanwhile, the most appealing target of all for belligerent foreign actors â the US presidential election â grows closer.
And Meta, however self-serving, offered up a valuable â if obvious â piece of advice in its latest cybersecurity report:
âWe encourage influential figures and the public at large to remain vigilant to avoid playing into the hands of deceptive operations attempting to manipulate public debate.â
In other words, donât believe everything you read online. Disinformation is one of the prices we pay for living in a free and open society â but we donât have to fall for it.
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