Social Goddam Media - Somebody Really Should DO Something...

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Watch your ass, Jesus,
she's got a BIG right hand

Russian intelligence agencies have not been sleeping for the last ten years. They have been watching the political and ideological polarization in western democracies, and they have noted the opening that provided a skilled and prolific propagandist in in the age of the internet. They understood Wikileaks, they understood Infowars, they understood the power that gave them to guide the narrative. But then, with the unfettered power to publish professional (or not-so-professional - it turns out it doesn't really matter) looking narratives directly to targeted audiences provided by Facebook and Twitter (among so many others), they discovered how easy it was to actually shape the domestic narrative. They found that by pushing made-up stories through Social Media, they could actually drive the entire American news cycle. That's right, they paved a direct highway from troll/bot farm to Fox News and MSNBC.

There's a number of reasons they chose to support Trump, but it's not unreasonable to consider that 2016 was a proof of concept exercise, an opportunity for 'live fire' testing of a new and powerful weapon of destabilization. Putin has long been furious with Bill Clinton's manipulation of the drunken and mentally debilitated Boris Yeltsin in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. He also angrily - but carefully - observed the US sponsored 'Color Revolutions' in Georgia and Ukraine, and planned to defeat the Americans at their own information game. When Trump came along, with his nativist, nationalist and isolationist rhetoric, he was the obvious vessel to support with a full-spectrum cyber-campaign that might help him destabilize the EU and weaken NATO.

So the hackers used advanced phishing techniques to steal information, while the paid trolls and bots spread story after story smearing Clinton and encouraging anger and humiliation among Berniecrats.  Altogether, it was a quite effective campaign, using stolen data to amplify false narratives in a way that could be targeted against any set of demographic characteristics.

And now everybody's pissed.

So, with the next election a year away, what is to be done? Well, for all the spittle-flecked hatred being flung at the leadership of Facebook and Twitter, you'd think it would just be a matter of some bipartisan legislation banning them from...what, exactly? Political speech? Dishonest posts? Foreigners? Hmmm, maybe this isn't quite as easy as we thought.

Suppose we were aware of - and worried about - the power of social media to amplify specific messages and agendas long before the events of 2016 transpired? Well, that's problematic, because that phrase - "amplify specific messages" - is precisely the goal of online advertising. The platform was built to provide carefully segmented, highly targeted access to paying customers. The owners of the platform rely on those revenues, and would not set out to intentionally cripple them, regardless of the larger risk they represent. And a platform that goes around deleting posts and banning users isn't going to be successful for very long - the market would soon produce a platform who's sole raison d'être would be "we let you post and read what YOU want". Can you imagine ANY effective action that could have been taken to prevent an adversary nation from using social media tools like Facebook to undermine our democratic processes?

What role do we want government to take in limiting our exposure to propaganda? One thing I DO know - if you silence someone I hate, I'm happy, but if you silence ME (or someone I agree with) I'm furious. But that dynamic sort of prevents any action at all, doesn't it? Of course, Facebook isn't the government, so you have no absolute right of free speech on a digital communication platform, but what is the attraction of a platform like that when it seems to silence anyone at any time for anything? Wouldn't we immediately seek a platform that let us share our thoughts and beliefs without keeping such a heavy thumb on the topic scale?

Nobody's going to like it, but I know what the answer is. Foreign governments are going to have to become a little more careful in how they deliver targeted propaganda on social media platforms - hiding sources of funding, using better writers and grammar, perhaps being a little more selective in choosing false narratives - but beyond that, this is now a core feature of western democratic politics. From Brexit to Berlin, Washington to Paris, some of the most effective activists will be rabble-rousing on Facebook, and there's nothing that can be done that doesn't make the situation worse.
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