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    Voter manipulation on social media now a global problem, report finds – TechSwitch

    New analysis by the Oxford Internet Institute has discovered that social media manipulation is getting worse, with rising numbers of governments and political events making cynical use of social media algorithms, automation and large information to govern public opinion at scale — with vastly worrying implications for democracy.
    The report discovered that computational propaganda and social media manipulation have proliferated massively in just lately years — now prevalent in additional than double the variety of international locations (70) vs two years in the past (28). An enhance of 150%.
    The analysis means that the spreading of pretend information and poisonous narratives has develop into the dysfunctional new ‘normal’ for political actors throughout the globe, because of social media’s international attain.
    “Although propaganda has always been a part of political discourse, the deep and wide-ranging scope of these campaigns raise critical public interest concerns,” the report warns.
    The researchers go on to dub the worldwide uptake of computational propaganda instruments and methods a “critical threat” to democracies.
    “The use of computational propaganda to shape public attitudes via social media has become mainstream, extending far beyond the actions of a few bad actors,” they add. “In an information environment characterized by high volumes of information and limited levels of user attention and trust, the tools and techniques of computational propaganda are becoming a common – and arguably essential – part of digital campaigning and public diplomacy.”

    Techniques the researchers discovered being deployed by governments and political events to unfold political propaganda embody the usage of bots to amplify hate speech or different types of manipulated content material; the unlawful harvesting of information or micro-targeting; and the usage of armies of ‘trolls’ to bully or harass political dissidents or journalists on-line.
    The researchers checked out computational propaganda exercise in 70 international locations world wide — together with the US, the UK, Germany, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Australia (see the tip of this text for the complete checklist) — discovering organized social media manipulation in all of them.
    So subsequent time Facebook places out one other press launch detailing a little bit of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” it claims to have discovered and faraway from its platform, it’s essential to place it in context of the larger image. And the image painted by this report means that such small-scale, selective discloses of propaganda-quashing successes sum to deceptive Facebook PR vs the sheer scale of the issue.
    The downside is very large, international and largely happening by Facebook’s funnel, per the report.
    Facebook stays the platform of selection for social media manipulation — with researchers discovering proof of formally organised political disops campaigns on its platform happening in 56 international locations.
    We reached out to Facebook for a response to the report and the corporate despatched us a laundry checklist of steps it says it’s been taking to fight election interference and coordinated inauthentic exercise — together with in areas corresponding to voter suppression, political advert transparency and industry-civil society partnerships.
    But it didn’t supply any reason why all this obvious effort (simply its abstract of what it’s been doing exceeds 1,600 phrases) has so spectacularly did not stem the rising tide of political fakes being amplified by way of Facebook.
    Instead it despatched us this assertion: “Helping show people accurate information and protecting against harm is a major priority for us. We’ve developed smarter tools, greater transparency, and stronger partnerships to better identify emerging threats, stop bad actors, and reduce the spread of misinformation on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. We also know that this work is never finished and we can’t do this alone. That’s why we are working with policymakers, academics, and outside experts to make sure we continue to improve.”
    We adopted as much as ask why all its efforts have thus far failed to scale back faux exercise on its platform and can replace this report with any response.
    Returning to the report, the researchers say China has entered the worldwide disinformation fray in a giant method — utilizing social media platforms to focus on worldwide audiences with disinformation, one thing the nation has lengthy directed at its home inhabitants in fact.
    The report describes China as “a major player in the global disinformation order”.
    It additionally warns that the usage of computational propaganda methods mixed with tech-enabled surveillance is offering authoritarian regimes world wide with the means to increase their management of residents’ lives.
    “The co-option of social media technologies provides authoritarian regimes with a powerful tool to shape public discussions and spread propaganda online, while simultaneously surveilling, censoring, and restricting digital public spaces,” the researchers write.
    Other key findings from the report embody that each democracies and authoritarian states are making (il)liberal use of computational propaganda instruments and methods.
    Per the report:
    In 45 democracies, politicians and political events “have used computational propaganda tools by amassing fake followers or spreading manipulated media to garner voter support”
    In 26 authoritarian states, authorities entities “have used computational propaganda as a tool of information control to suppress public opinion and press freedom, discredit criticism and oppositional voices, and drown out political dissent”
    The report additionally identifies seven “sophisticated state actors” — China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela — utilizing what it calls “cyber troops” (aka devoted on-line employees whose job is to make use of computational propaganda instruments to govern public opinion) to run overseas affect campaigns.
    Foreign affect operations — which incorporates election interference — had been discovered by the researchers to primarily be happening on Facebook and Twitter.
    We’ve reached out to Twitter for remark and can replace this text with any response. Update: A spokesperson advised us: “Platform manipulation, including spam and other attempts to undermine the integrity of our service, is a violation of the Twitter Rules. We’ve significantly stepped up our efforts — investing in people, policies, and tech — to catch this behavior at scale. Additionally, we’re the only company to disclose every account and piece of content that we can reliably link to state-backed activity on the service. Research like this is the reason we’ve made this choice. We believe that full transparency empowers public understanding of these critical issues.”
    A yr in the past, when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, he mentioned it was contemplating labelling bot accounts on its platform — agreeing that “more context” round tweets and accounts can be an excellent factor, whereas additionally arguing that figuring out automation that’s scripted to appear to be a human is troublesome.
    Instead of including a ‘bot or not’ label, Twitter has simply launched a ‘hide replies’ characteristic — which lets customers display particular person replies to their tweets (requiring an affirmative motion from viewers to unhide and have the ability to view any hidden replies). Twitter says that is supposed at rising civility on the platform. But there have been issues the characteristic might be abused to assist propaganda spreaders — i.e. by permitting them to suppress replies that debunk their junk.
    The Oxford Internet Institute researchers discovered bot accounts are very extensively used to unfold political propaganda (80% of nations studied used them). However the usage of human brokers was much more prevalent (87% of nations).
    Bot-human blended accounts, which mix automation with human curation in an try to fly underneath the BS detector radar, had been a lot rarer: Identified in 11% of nations.
    While hacked or stolen accounts had been discovered being utilized in simply 7% of nations.
    In one other key discovering from the report, the researchers recognized 25 international locations working with personal corporations or strategic communications corporations providing a computational propaganda as a service, noting that: “In some cases, like in Azerbaijan, Israel, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, student or youth groups are hired by government agencies to use computational propaganda.”
    Commenting on the report in an announcement, professor Philip Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, mentioned: “The manipulation of public opinion over social media remains a critical threat to democracy, as computational propaganda becomes a pervasive part of everyday life. Government agencies and political parties around the world are using social media to spread disinformation and other forms of manipulated media. Although propaganda has always been a part of politics, the wide-ranging scope of these campaigns raises critical concerns for modern democracy.”
    Samantha Bradshaw, researcher and lead writer of the report, added: “The affordances of social networking technologies — algorithms, automation and big data — vastly changes the scale, scope, and precision of how information is transmitted in the digital age. Although social media was once heralded as a force for freedom and democracy, it has increasingly come under scrutiny for its role in amplifying disinformation, inciting violence, and lowering trust in the media and democratic institutions.”
    Other findings from the report embody that:
    52 international locations used “disinformation and media manipulation” to mislead customers
    47 international locations used state sponsored trolls to assault political opponents or activists, up from 27 final yr
    Which backs up the widespread sense in some Western democracies that political discourse has been getting much less truthful and extra poisonous for plenty of years — given techniques that amplify disinformation and goal harassment at political opponents are certainly thriving on social media, per the report.

    Despite discovering an alarming rise within the variety of authorities actors throughout the globe who’re misappropriating highly effective social media platforms and different tech instruments to affect public attitudes and attempt to disrupt elections, Howard mentioned the researchers stay optimistic that social media may be “a force for good” — by “creating a space for public deliberation and democracy to flourish”.
    “A strong democracy requires access to high quality information and an ability for citizens to come together to debate, discuss, deliberate, empathise and make concessions,” he mentioned.
    Clearly, although, there’s a stark threat of top quality info being drowned out by the tsunami of BS that’s being paid for by self-interested political actors. It’s additionally in fact less expensive to provide BS political propaganda than perform investigative journalism.
    Democracy wants a free press to operate however the press itself can also be underneath assault from on-line advert giants which have disrupted its enterprise mannequin by having the ability to unfold and monetize any outdated junk content material. If you need an ideal storm hammering democracy this most definitely is it.
    It’s subsequently crucial for democratic states to arm their residents with training and consciousness to allow them to assume critically in regards to the junk being pushed at them on-line. But as we’ve mentioned earlier than, there aren’t any shortcuts to common training.
    Meanwhile regulation of social media platforms and/or the usage of highly effective computational instruments and methods for political functions merely isn’t there. So there’s no exhausting examine on voter manipulation.
    Lawmakers have did not sustain with the tech-fuelled instances. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what number of political events have their very own arms within the information and ad-targeting cookie jar, in addition to pushing fakes. (Concerned residents are suggested to practise good digital privateness hygiene to battle again towards undemocratic makes an attempt to hack public opinion. More privateness ideas right here.)
    The researchers say their 2019 report, which relies on analysis work carried out between 2018 and 2019, attracts upon a four-step methodology to establish proof of worldwide organised manipulation campaigns — together with a scientific content material evaluation of stories articles on cyber troop exercise and a secondary literature evaluation of public archives and scientific experiences, producing nation particular case research and skilled consultations.
    Here’s the complete checklist of nations studied:
    Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Myanmar, Netherlands, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

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