Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works and a lot
Speaker 1: of all things tech again kind of, this is another
Speaker 1: one of those episodes we have to put in a
Speaker 1: lot of qualifiers. So in late September twenty nineteen, University
Speaker 1: of Oxford's Computational Propaganda Research Project released the two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation, And apart
Speaker 1: from misspelling the word organized, those wacky ox ford Ians
Speaker 1: turned the Z into an S, so it's an easy mistake.
Speaker 1: But otherwise it's a great report. And yeah, I'm making
Speaker 1: a joke about the differences in spelling conventions between America
Speaker 1: and the UK, because in all honesty, this report is
Speaker 1: pretty scary and I need to get in my oofswell
Speaker 1: I can now. I say the report is scary, but
Speaker 1: it's also not exactly surprising. We've heard plenty of reports
Speaker 1: all around the world over the last few years about
Speaker 1: governments and political parties using social media as a way
Speaker 1: to spread misinformation in an effort to manipulate people to
Speaker 1: do whatever it is the party in question wants them
Speaker 1: to do, or in some cases, to not do something,
Speaker 1: depending on the circumstances. But the scale of the issue
Speaker 1: is a truly global one and it's only becoming a
Speaker 1: bigger problem as time goes on. Now, it's also important
Speaker 1: to note how the researchers generated this report. This was
Speaker 1: not some sort of deep undercover mission in which dozens
Speaker 1: of security experts infiltrated various countries to monitor social media activity. Instead,
Speaker 1: the researchers relied heavily on published accounts of governments and
Speaker 1: political parties manipulating social media for the purposes of propit Ganda,
Speaker 1: typically from a lot of news outlets, and they created
Speaker 1: a process in which they would score news sources on
Speaker 1: a scale of one to three. One being a pretty
Speaker 1: reliable and reputable source of information, something that is has
Speaker 1: got a nice long standing reputation for for being a
Speaker 1: foundational source for news, and then three is on the
Speaker 1: opposite end of that right, Three would be a partisan,
Speaker 1: biased or unreliable source. Articles that ranked a three were
Speaker 1: removed from the the whole set of articles before the
Speaker 1: next step in the process began, and that next step
Speaker 1: was to review all of those articles and then go
Speaker 1: into a mode called secondary literature review, in which researchers
Speaker 1: would focus on specific countries and do a deeper dive
Speaker 1: into the news stories about manipulation and social media sites.
Speaker 1: This included further research that collected stuff like research papers,
Speaker 1: govern ment reports, and other publicly available information. Then the
Speaker 1: researchers prepared country case studies for most of the countries
Speaker 1: they covered in their initial search. Their case studies laid
Speaker 1: out specific instances and strategies that were found in the
Speaker 1: respective countries. The researchers then called upon experts to review
Speaker 1: the case studies, and the experts were there to evaluate
Speaker 1: the reliability of the data and also whether or not
Speaker 1: the case studies accurately reflected the information that was available.
Speaker 1: So not just are these facts accurate, but is the
Speaker 1: way that that the report presents the facts is that
Speaker 1: in itself accurate? Because you could have some accurate stats
Speaker 1: and then still report on it in a way that
Speaker 1: is not, you know, entirely representational of the truth. So
Speaker 1: the experts were sort of the peer review process for
Speaker 1: this report, and you could argue that the report is
Speaker 1: itself sort of a meta study that would be a
Speaker 1: study that pulls information from many other established sources as
Speaker 1: opposed to an original study that does new and original research.
Speaker 1: This one was dependent upon stuff that had already been
Speaker 1: read written about these various countries. One thing I think
Speaker 1: the report does particularly well is that the researchers acknowledged
Speaker 1: what makes this manipulation possible in the first place. The
Speaker 1: amount of information we have access to at any given
Speaker 1: time is truly monumental. Let's think back a few decades
Speaker 1: imagine what it would be like before the eras of
Speaker 1: radio and television. Back when you would get your news
Speaker 1: from print. You would get newspapers or journals or magazines
Speaker 1: or other periodicals. That was pretty much the only way
Speaker 1: you were going to get any news beyond what's just
Speaker 1: going on in your immediate neighborhood. Radio and TV brought
Speaker 1: with them the ability to spread news faster and in
Speaker 1: a wider distribution. Then came cable and the invention of
Speaker 1: twenty four hour cable news, and now we had a
Speaker 1: whole new p problem. Suddenly we had to find a
Speaker 1: way to fill up twenty four hours of news time
Speaker 1: every single day. When before newspapers, radio programs, television programs,
Speaker 1: they would curate the most important news stories because you know,
Speaker 1: you had a limited amount of space and or time.
Speaker 1: But with twenty four hours, suddenly time was not as
Speaker 1: big of a problem. In fact, it was the opposite problem.
Speaker 1: How do you fill it all up? Then we get
Speaker 1: to the Internet, which, like the twenty four hour cable
Speaker 1: news channels, is also always on. And much of the
Speaker 1: business that is on the Internet relies on doing a
Speaker 1: few things, and they're all related. And this is not
Speaker 1: going to come as news to any of you, but
Speaker 1: I want to lay it out. So business on the internet,
Speaker 1: if that's in fact where you are, are really dependent
Speaker 1: upon generating revenue. As the Internet itself, you want to
Speaker 1: attract as many sets of eyeballs as possible, so get
Speaker 1: as many people to visit your website as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: You want to keep those eyeballs on the company's web
Speaker 1: pages as much as possible, so you don't want people
Speaker 1: bouncing off and leaving. And as a consequence, you also
Speaker 1: want to serve up as many ads to those eyeballs
Speaker 1: as possible, because that's generally how most web based businesses
Speaker 1: are generating their revenue. Uh. You know, obviously you've got
Speaker 1: other businesses like retail that use the web as a
Speaker 1: portal to shop the inventory of the retail store. But
Speaker 1: for anything that's specifically dependent upon the web itself for revenue,
Speaker 1: that's generally how this works unless you're doing a subscription model,
Speaker 1: and all of these things I just mentioned contributes to
Speaker 1: add revenue. So yeah, I know, again I'm starting with
Speaker 1: the obvious and that if you didn't know this already,
Speaker 1: you probably had noticed it at the very least. But
Speaker 1: this is why you find so many web pages that
Speaker 1: take kind of irritating approaches, like they'll create a gallery
Speaker 1: or slide show approach which forces you to click on
Speaker 1: the next button to generate another page view. So rather
Speaker 1: than just lay it all out in one page where
Speaker 1: you can just scroll through and read everything, you're clicking
Speaker 1: over and over again. Well, those clicks count as page views,
Speaker 1: which help the the company that makes the web page
Speaker 1: market it to advertisers, or the websites that are designed
Speaker 1: for mobile that just have super long articles that scroll
Speaker 1: and scroll and scroll. You might get a picture a
Speaker 1: line of text, and then an AD, and then you'll
Speaker 1: get another picture in a line of text and another AD,
Speaker 1: and then you finally get around to finding the point
Speaker 1: where the article actually tells you whatever the headline was
Speaker 1: claiming at the top. And that's not even really touching
Speaker 1: on the whole concept of click bait, in which a
Speaker 1: title and thumbnail image are carefully curated to get as
Speaker 1: many clicks as possible, sometimes with no regard as to
Speaker 1: whether or not the final web page actually reflects whatever
Speaker 1: the original promise was of the title and the thumbnail.
Speaker 1: And one of the consequences of all this data around us,
Speaker 1: coupled with the various methods companies are using to get
Speaker 1: our attention, means we don't tend to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time actually, you know, attending to anything. We can't. Instead,
Speaker 1: our attention drifts over data point after data point. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we've got a limitation on how much we trust information sources,
Speaker 1: so skillful manipulators take all of this into account when
Speaker 1: designing an approach to manipulate the public. The executive summary
Speaker 1: of the report lays out the scale of the problem
Speaker 1: right away, and according to the researchers, their work uncovered
Speaker 1: instances of governments or political parties using social media manipulation
Speaker 1: in twenty eight countries. In a year later, the number
Speaker 1: of countries had grown to forty eight, and this year
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the number of countries in which at least
Speaker 1: one political party, if not the government itself, is using
Speaker 1: social media for manipulation purposes is at seventy countries. The
Speaker 1: researchers also point out this doesn't necessarily mean the number
Speaker 1: of countries with governmental agencies using misinformation online is doubling
Speaker 1: year over year. Part of the increase maybe do not
Speaker 1: to more countries doing this, but rather are growing awareness
Speaker 1: and ability to detect social manipulation. So it's not just
Speaker 1: that more people are using these techniques though that seems
Speaker 1: like it's a pretty safe bet, but also that we're
Speaker 1: getting better at detecting them, so in places where it
Speaker 1: may once have been overlooked, we now know about it.
Speaker 1: So and again, it's just that our our tool set
Speaker 1: has gotten better, so that's also contributing to this growing number.
Speaker 1: And listing all the countries of those seventy would be
Speaker 1: pretty tedious, but pretty much everyone you would expect to
Speaker 1: be there is there. That includes the United States and
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. It also includes Russia and China. Other
Speaker 1: countries on the list include India, Greece, the Check Republic, Nigeria,
Speaker 1: North Korea, Pakistan, Brazil, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain,
Speaker 1: and many many more. So the researchers were casting a
Speaker 1: broad net around the globe. In this study, much of
Speaker 1: that focus has been on how governments use social platforms
Speaker 1: to manipulate things within their own borders, so, in other words,
Speaker 1: domestic concerns. But the researchers also found some reports about
Speaker 1: foreign influence operations or attempts to manipulate people who are
Speaker 1: living in other countries entirely. Now, this focus was more
Speaker 1: narrow than the overall domestic focus because it's a challenge
Speaker 1: to get a handle on how frequently this foreign influence
Speaker 1: operation stuff is happening because platforms like Twitter and Facebook
Speaker 1: have either limited the investigations into such things or the
Speaker 1: reporting of any findings they've had has been pretty limited.
Speaker 1: For example, those platforms have at least in their reporting,
Speaker 1: limited all their actions against campaigns that originated in just
Speaker 1: seven countries, those seven being China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. And to be clear, we're talking
Speaker 1: about just the stuff the researchers were able to find.
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say there are probably instances
Speaker 1: of this that have yet to be uncovered, and some
Speaker 1: countries they didn't have time to look into thoroughly. There
Speaker 1: are on countries in the world, or three if you
Speaker 1: only go with countries recognized by the United Nations. So
Speaker 1: this is a really big deal. Seventy out of a hundred,
Speaker 1: that's a significant Now, in this episode, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go through the report with you guys to talk about
Speaker 1: what they found and what it all means, and maybe
Speaker 1: think about what we might do to protect ourselves and
Speaker 1: those around us from being manipulated bad news. There's not
Speaker 1: a whole lot we can do on an individual basis,
Speaker 1: but we'll get there now. Part of what makes this
Speaker 1: all challenging is that the Internet isn't exactly the same
Speaker 1: all across the world, as you guys know. I live
Speaker 1: in the United States, and despite a few attempts to
Speaker 1: shut down access to servers that were hosting pirated media,
Speaker 1: because corporations have enormous sway in the United States, internet
Speaker 1: access in the States is largely unfettered, so essentially, if
Speaker 1: it's out there, you can access it in the United States.
Speaker 1: This is an over generalization but you get the idea.
Speaker 1: There are other countries that restrict, to one degree or
Speaker 1: another that sort of access. In China, for example, there
Speaker 1: is the famous Great Firewall of China. The term describes
Speaker 1: not just the technology used, but the political policies. In China,
Speaker 1: the restrict citizens access to the Internet. State approved sites
Speaker 1: and services are fine, they can access those. The Chinese
Speaker 1: government subjects other stuff to heavy censorship or just blocks
Speaker 1: it outright. Controlling information is one way to maintain control
Speaker 1: over a population, and China is one of the most
Speaker 1: obvious examples of that happening today. Another one would be
Speaker 1: North Korea. One of the big developments in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: saw China get more involved in foreign influence operations. Previously,
Speaker 1: nearly all of China's propaganda efforts were confined to China
Speaker 1: itself and its strict control over Internet access to its citizens.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand nineteen, with the rise of public
Speaker 1: demonstrations and protests in Hong Kong, the country began to
Speaker 1: initiate misinformation campaigns on social media to attempt to undermine
Speaker 1: public support for Hong Kong, casting the protesters as lawless
Speaker 1: and violent. The researchers state that there's no reason to
Speaker 1: assume China will stop using social media in an effort
Speaker 1: to shape the public understanding of things that are of
Speaker 1: importance to the country, So we'll probably see that country
Speaker 1: continue it's foreign influence operations. Now, a lot of countries
Speaker 1: fall between these extremes I've just laid out, and you
Speaker 1: could also argue that neither the US nor China are
Speaker 1: truly on the very opposite ends of the spectrum, but
Speaker 1: that's the way they're often portrayed. Now, for the purposes
Speaker 1: of the report, the researchers decided to focus only on
Speaker 1: cases in which there was a clear mandate from a
Speaker 1: government or political party to initiate the manipulation. This is
Speaker 1: important to distinguish because there may be many cases in
Speaker 1: which hackers, activists, companies, subcultures, or other groups of people
Speaker 1: could act on their own without the explicit permission or
Speaker 1: mandate of a government or political party. In cases like those,
Speaker 1: the ideologies and the goals of the group and the
Speaker 1: government just happened to align, but there's no explicit direction
Speaker 1: from the state to commit any acts. You may remember
Speaker 1: that in the wake of the massive two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: cyber attack on Sony which involved the theft of a
Speaker 1: ton of confidential information within the company. A hacker group
Speaker 1: called the Guardians of Peace claimed responsibility, and while the
Speaker 1: hacker group's goals were in line with those of North
Speaker 1: Korea as a whole, the country of North Korea maintained
Speaker 1: it had not directed any hackers to go after Sony.
Speaker 1: If that were the case, which is still a matter
Speaker 1: of dispute, then it would be an example of what
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier. So the report would focus only
Speaker 1: on stories that link back to official government or political agencies,
Speaker 1: and not campaigns from apparent independent groups that just happened
Speaker 1: to align with those governments. Okay, so those are the
Speaker 1: basics when we come back. I'll talk more about specifics
Speaker 1: in the report, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: According to the report, authoritarian governments and political parties use
Speaker 1: social manipulation to achieve one or more of three general outcomes,
Speaker 1: and the first is to suppress fundamental human rights, which
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree is pretty horrifying. The
Speaker 1: second is to discredit political opponents, and the third is
Speaker 1: to drown out any dissenting opinions. Now, those last two
Speaker 1: points show that these manipulators are relying on a tool
Speaker 1: set used by Internet trolls. In general, trolls will use
Speaker 1: all sorts of manipulative tactics to dismiss anyone they target,
Speaker 1: and to rely on strategies to start flame wars or
Speaker 1: other distractions to keep the targeted party from being able
Speaker 1: to make any sort of impact. So, in some ways,
Speaker 1: the techniques being used in social manipulation are already incredibly
Speaker 1: familiar to us. It's just that instead of popping up
Speaker 1: on a message board centered around no Dancing with the stars,
Speaker 1: it's a government or political party trying to establish control
Speaker 1: over a population. However, it does get more complicated than
Speaker 1: just rilling up folks on the internet. The report's introduction
Speaker 1: starts off with the sentence and I quote around the world,
Speaker 1: government actors are using social media to manufacture consensus, automate suppression,
Speaker 1: and undermine trust in the liberal international order end quote.
Speaker 1: Now some of that still falls in the troll wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: Manufacturing consensus, for example, this is when a party attempts
Speaker 1: to make it seem as though the majority of people
Speaker 1: around you all believe a certain philosophy or a course
Speaker 1: of action is the right one. It's the whole concept
Speaker 1: of go with the crowd, right, or if you're being
Speaker 1: particularly cynical, it's likening people to sheep or cattle. People
Speaker 1: tend to go along with what others are doing because
Speaker 1: to do otherwise, to go outside of that, is to
Speaker 1: invite scrutiny or criticism, and a lot of us just
Speaker 1: prefer to avoid that, so, rather than make waves, will
Speaker 1: go with the flow. Trolls do this online through stuff
Speaker 1: like sock puppet accounts. That's when a troll makes two
Speaker 1: or more accounts for an online discussion, and the troll
Speaker 1: will use their primary account to make whatever statement they want,
Speaker 1: and then the sock puppets are used to help the
Speaker 1: troll achieve that goal, typically by adding support in some way,
Speaker 1: so the trolls controlling all three or four, however many
Speaker 1: of these accounts there are, and using the sock puppet
Speaker 1: accounts to add support and credence to whatever the troll
Speaker 1: is saying. So to an outside viewer, it's as if
Speaker 1: the troll has said something and that other people are
Speaker 1: now chiming in to support that's something, But in reality,
Speaker 1: it's just the troll, or sometimes a group of trolls,
Speaker 1: manufacturing that consensus, when in fact no such consensus exists
Speaker 1: within the group of at large well countries and political
Speaker 1: parties are doing the same thing, but on a much
Speaker 1: larger scale. Governments do this by employing either directly or
Speaker 1: otherwise agents to do the dirty work, and the report
Speaker 1: refers to these agents as cyber troops. And some of
Speaker 1: those cyber troops are a little extra cyber. That is,
Speaker 1: some of the agents working on behalf of achieving the
Speaker 1: goals of these various governments and political parties are bots.
Speaker 1: They are programs that generate automated responses with the goal
Speaker 1: of either suppressing messages in opposition to the party's goals
Speaker 1: or elevating an escalating language that supports those goals. The
Speaker 1: researchers identify three types of fake accounts in the report,
Speaker 1: human bot, and then cyborg. Now, out of the seventy
Speaker 1: countries that the researchers looked at, fifty were found using
Speaker 1: fake accounts run by bots in some way, mostly to
Speaker 1: spread certain messages while drowning out dissent. Interestingly, human run
Speaker 1: accounts were even more widespread, with sixty out of the
Speaker 1: seventy countries employing them in some way to run fake accounts,
Speaker 1: and typically the people who are running these fake accounts
Speaker 1: would engage with others people who have real accounts, like
Speaker 1: the real users of these sites, by leaving comments on
Speaker 1: posts or sending private messages, and otherwise attempting to start
Speaker 1: up conversations aligned with the overall goals of the communication strategy.
Speaker 1: The report also looked into instances of hacked accounts, in
Speaker 1: which a person's online account would become compromised and then
Speaker 1: pulled out of their control. Then a bot or a
Speaker 1: human agent or the hybrid cyborg could post as that person.
Speaker 1: This strategy accomplishes two things at once. It can silence
Speaker 1: someone who otherwise might speak the scent against a government
Speaker 1: or political party, and it can appear to lend credibility
Speaker 1: to that government or political party by having a quote
Speaker 1: unquote real person add to the conversation in a way
Speaker 1: that further is the political goals. Complicating matters is that
Speaker 1: in some countries governments encourage citizens to engage in spreading
Speaker 1: propaganda and silencing dissenting voices on behalf of the government.
Speaker 1: This would be a strategy where you say it's all
Speaker 1: part of being a good patriotic citizen of that country.
Speaker 1: In those cases, you're not talking about compromised or fake accounts. Instead,
Speaker 1: you're talking about indoctrinated people using their accounts to support
Speaker 1: their respective governments. And because we're starting to see some
Speaker 1: platforms actually make moves against bots and other fake accounts,
Speaker 1: this could become a more common practice in the future.
Speaker 1: It's a lot harder for social platforms to remove quote
Speaker 1: unquote real accounts that happen to spread propaganda without running
Speaker 1: the risk of being labeled as partisan or advocating for censorship.
Speaker 1: As for the messaging, the research team identified five general
Speaker 1: types of messages and their intended effects. So number one
Speaker 1: is the straightforward pro government propaganda. So these are messages
Speaker 1: that praise whatever power is behind the manipulation, just you know,
Speaker 1: yea America, or yea our glorious leader, or go socks.
Speaker 1: Next our messages designed to discredit or defame political dissidents
Speaker 1: and opponents, which might include a mixture of truth and
Speaker 1: misinformation about the target. So this is where you have
Speaker 1: identified some potential opponent to the powers that be, and
Speaker 1: you use every tool in your tool chest to make
Speaker 1: that person seem like the worst human being in the
Speaker 1: world and no one should ever support him or her.
Speaker 1: The third path is to use misinformation to distract from
Speaker 1: important issues. In the United States, you'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: of people complain about this sort of activity, in particular
Speaker 1: in which let's say a government official or an agency
Speaker 1: issues an outrageous or a controversial mess edge, and people
Speaker 1: will say it's an effort to pull the focus off
Speaker 1: of matters of more critical importance. I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: actually happens all the time in the United States, instead
Speaker 1: of saying people talk about it happening all the time
Speaker 1: in the United States that when someone does make such
Speaker 1: a statement, one of the frequent responses is, this is
Speaker 1: just a pull focus away from X, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's not really a genuine attempt to start a real
Speaker 1: conversation about this other thing. And the fourth type of
Speaker 1: message is one meant specifically to polarize and divide a population,
Speaker 1: because if you divide the people, if you push them
Speaker 1: further to extremes, it means that the people will not
Speaker 1: unify on anything. They're they're less powerful divided than they
Speaker 1: would be unified. So while that can lead to other
Speaker 1: major social problems, as you push people to political extremes,
Speaker 1: you've also really decreased the ability of them to organ
Speaker 1: eyes on any meaningful level, and they can't really counteract
Speaker 1: what the government is doing. The fifth type of message,
Speaker 1: the final one, is a direct attack on dissidents themselves,
Speaker 1: made in an effort to drown out their voices through
Speaker 1: any means necessary. And the researchers also pointed out that
Speaker 1: authoritarian regimes use social media propaganda in conjunction with other
Speaker 1: methods of intimidation, including surveillance and threats of violence. Frequent
Speaker 1: targets would be political opponents, journalists, and sometimes members of
Speaker 1: the population or at least large segments of the population
Speaker 1: as a whole. If such a government can intimidate those
Speaker 1: who would otherwise speak out against it while simultaneously manipulating
Speaker 1: the conversation on social media to be in support of
Speaker 1: that same government, it's in a stronger position to maintain power.
Speaker 1: The report also details the actual communication strategies governments and
Speaker 1: political parties are using. So we've talked about the types
Speaker 1: of messages that the organization's propagate, but how are they
Speaker 1: propagating the messages? What are those strategies and the report
Speaker 1: identifies five key ways. Number one is creating outright disinformation.
Speaker 1: This can include fake news articles, fake videos, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and as technology becomes more sophisticated, it becomes
Speaker 1: increasingly challenging for the average person to determine if something
Speaker 1: they encounter is genuine or has been faked. In some cases,
Speaker 1: all it takes is a few edits to remove some context,
Speaker 1: and suddenly a message can have a very different meaning
Speaker 1: than the original intended one. So you can take video
Speaker 1: of a politician making a speech, for example, you trem
Speaker 1: a little bit off the beginning, a little bit off
Speaker 1: the end, and you can make it sound like that
Speaker 1: politician is saying the very opposite of what they actually intend.
Speaker 1: In other cases, such as with deep fakes, there's the
Speaker 1: opportunity to manufacture an entirely fake video of a person,
Speaker 1: and this is only going to get harder as we
Speaker 1: go on. This is also the most common communication strategy.
Speaker 1: It's employed by fifty two of the countries that the
Speaker 1: team researched, though in many cases we're talking about more
Speaker 1: modest examples, such as fake news sites like a like
Speaker 1: an article as opposed to a fake video. The second
Speaker 1: strategy involves mass reporting accounts or content as being against
Speaker 1: the terms of service of various platforms or organizations, so
Speaker 1: an example of this would be a concentrated effort to
Speaker 1: remove a person from Twitter by coordinating a big effort
Speaker 1: to report that user uh to Twitter with a claim
Speaker 1: that the user had violated Twitter's policies. So it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a brute force attack. You overwhelm a provider
Speaker 1: a platform with requests saying this person, this page, this
Speaker 1: entity is breaking the rules and has to be banned,
Speaker 1: and it's all on an effort to ban that person
Speaker 1: or that thing. We've seen instances of this recent lye
Speaker 1: with people going after figures they don't like and sending
Speaker 1: complaints to that figures employer I'm thinking of specifically, like
Speaker 1: James Gunn and Disney, and James Gunn was at least
Speaker 1: temporarily removed from being able to direct movies like Guardians
Speaker 1: of the Galaxy because of things he had done in
Speaker 1: his past that were, you know, legit not cool. But
Speaker 1: he had since apologized, acknowledged them, and pledged to do
Speaker 1: better long long before anyone brought this up. But it
Speaker 1: was enough to get him removed from the project for
Speaker 1: a while, and so we have seen that this is
Speaker 1: an effective tactic. The third strategy is to use data
Speaker 1: to target specific groups of people with messaging that the
Speaker 1: attackers tailored to that group of people, because it turns
Speaker 1: out that if you tell a group of people what
Speaker 1: they want to hear, that works great. So if you
Speaker 1: identify what your target audience is and what they want
Speaker 1: to hear, and then you convey your message in a
Speaker 1: way that falls in line with that, you get more success.
Speaker 1: Fourth is the awful practice of trolling and doxing. This
Speaker 1: is all about silencing people by intimidation, like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and can include revealing a person's real world address, phone number,
Speaker 1: and other personal information information about people connected to that person.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of the mafia approach of putting pressure
Speaker 1: on a person by intimidating and threatening them. And fifth
Speaker 1: is actually the easiest strategy. It involves amplifying messages that
Speaker 1: are already out there. So in this case, a government
Speaker 1: or political party can just add resources to boost the
Speaker 1: signal that are already in line with the organization's goals.
Speaker 1: They don't have to create it themselves. They just can
Speaker 1: create a whole bunch of let's say, fake accounts and
Speaker 1: retweet a message that happens to fall in line with
Speaker 1: what they believe. Now as you can imagine, the scope
Speaker 1: of these efforts varies around the world. In some countries,
Speaker 1: the researcher saw activities centered around specific events such as elections,
Speaker 1: and then it would die down. In other countries, it
Speaker 1: was more of an ongoing effort that the government would
Speaker 1: perpetually support. Likewise, some countries spend a relatively modest amount
Speaker 1: funding cyber troops, while others might dedicate many millions of
Speaker 1: dollars to a single campaign. One of the larger efforts
Speaker 1: cited by researchers was the case of Cambridge Analytica, which
Speaker 1: I covered in a past episode of Tech Stuff. So
Speaker 1: I recommend you go and hunt that one down and
Speaker 1: listen to that to hear about how that unfolded, because
Speaker 1: that was an enormous mess. All right. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll go into a little bit more about what was
Speaker 1: in the report and the ramifications we have to consider,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. The researchers created
Speaker 1: a four point scale to describe the size and capability
Speaker 1: of cybertroop forces around the world. On the low end
Speaker 1: of the scale is the designation minimal cyber troop teams,
Speaker 1: and these are efforts that haven't been around for very long,
Speaker 1: or they only manifest temporarily around those political events I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, like elections. They tend to be limited in
Speaker 1: what they can accomplish, and as a result, they typically
Speaker 1: will focus on a single social media platform to maximize
Speaker 1: their results, and they also focus exclusively on domestic misinformation
Speaker 1: campaigns and not foreign influence operations. So countries that have
Speaker 1: minimal cyber troop teams would be things like our country's
Speaker 1: like Argentina, Australia, Croatia, Greece, South Korea, and a few
Speaker 1: others on the opposite end of the scale, so that's
Speaker 1: on the lowest end. On the highest end is high
Speaker 1: cyber troop capacity. These countries dedicate a large budget to
Speaker 1: funding online propaganda campaigns. They maintain a large permanent staff
Speaker 1: of people in order to do that. They not only
Speaker 1: execute comprehensive campaigns, they also research ways to do it
Speaker 1: more effectively, so they're always working to improve the staff
Speaker 1: works full time, not just in election years or around
Speaker 1: other political events. They focus on both domestic and foreign operations,
Speaker 1: and countries in this category include China, Israel, Iran, Russia,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, and yes, the United States. Now I didn't
Speaker 1: include the other two categories because I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: all extrapolate that they fit between the lowest level and
Speaker 1: the highest level of cybertroop capacity. So really it's just
Speaker 1: stages of capability and how much these countries are spending
Speaker 1: on those efforts, making matters more complicated. As countries end
Speaker 1: up developing more effective ways to leverage social media to
Speaker 1: spread misinformation, they're also spreading those techniques around the world.
Speaker 1: The researchers specifically call out a case in which Russian
Speaker 1: operatives taught military officials in Myanmar how to manipulate people
Speaker 1: through social media, So we're seeing the skills being shared
Speaker 1: across territorial borders. So which online platforms are the most
Speaker 1: important for people who want to spread propaganda, Well, it
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that Facebook leads the pack. Now,
Speaker 1: not saying that because I think Facebook has a wretched
Speaker 1: track record when it comes to dealing with misinformation, although
Speaker 1: that happens to be my opinion, But that's not why
Speaker 1: I'm saying this. I'm saying because Facebook is just so
Speaker 1: darned popular analysts estimate that two point for one billion
Speaker 1: people use Facebook. The world's population is approximately seven point
Speaker 1: five three billion people, so about a third of all
Speaker 1: the people in the world are using Facebook. So if
Speaker 1: you want to get a message out there, you have
Speaker 1: to go where the people are that happens to be Facebook.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily the case that Facebook is less
Speaker 1: effective at policing these things than other platforms are. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's more like it's a target rich environment. It's where
Speaker 1: the people happen to be. The researchers state that as
Speaker 1: other platforms grow in use, particularly for the purposes of
Speaker 1: political discourse, they will no doubt become targets for cyber
Speaker 1: troops wishing to spread propaganda in the future. Another thing
Speaker 1: working against Facebook is that it's pretty easy to figure
Speaker 1: out how Facebook works, at least from a very high level.
Speaker 1: The entire platform is built around the concept of engagement.
Speaker 1: Facebook makes money when people interact with Facebook, so posts
Speaker 1: that inspire more interaction with the platform, whether that's in
Speaker 1: the form of comments, sharing a post, or sending likes
Speaker 1: or whatever. These things, by the way, are not equal,
Speaker 1: but they're all very anyway, those posts end up getting
Speaker 1: more visibility thanks to Facebook's algorithms. If a particular post
Speaker 1: is doing well, Facebook's more likely to show that to
Speaker 1: more people because it's already proven to drive engagement, and
Speaker 1: engagement is how Facebook makes money. Essentially, what it's doing
Speaker 1: is it's selling your time to advertisers. So the more
Speaker 1: time you spend on Facebook, the more money it's gonna make.
Speaker 1: So if you know that as someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: run a propaganda campaign, you can start to build posts
Speaker 1: that drive that kind of engagement in various ways, or
Speaker 1: you might even game the system a little bit by
Speaker 1: using some state backed accounts, some fake accounts to boost
Speaker 1: the signal. You post something, you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: people sharing it and liking it. Maybe some of those
Speaker 1: people are real, maybe a lot of them are fake accounts,
Speaker 1: and then you try and make it go viral from there.
Speaker 1: If it's inflammatory, all the better because it's going to
Speaker 1: make people either want to share it because it has
Speaker 1: uh it has affirmed a belief that they hold that
Speaker 1: other people find wrong, or people are so upset at
Speaker 1: how terrible the statement is they share it to let
Speaker 1: other people know, Hey, do you see how horrible this is?
Speaker 1: Either way, the message keeps on spreading. Other platforms that
Speaker 1: the researchers cited included Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: of course others will grow in importance over time. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've already heard about TikTok being another platform that merits
Speaker 1: special attention in the near future, if not right darn
Speaker 1: now now. On the one hand, it is distressing to
Speaker 1: think that a tool like the Internet, which has often
Speaker 1: been seen as a means to facilitate communication and the
Speaker 1: sharing of ideas and ideals in a positive sense, has
Speaker 1: been twisted to spread misinformation in various ways to make
Speaker 1: people behave the way some government or some political party
Speaker 1: wants those people to behave. On the other hand, this
Speaker 1: isn't new. Propaganda is an old, old idea. Social media
Speaker 1: hasn't made propaganda possible because those ideas and approaches have
Speaker 1: been around for centuries, but it has made it much
Speaker 1: more efficient and scalable than it ever was before. Also,
Speaker 1: you can tailor it to a level that you couldn't before.
Speaker 1: And it's a bit ironic that the platforms that were
Speaker 1: ostensibly designed to let us connect with friends online and
Speaker 1: make new ones, is simultaneously the tool of groups that
Speaker 1: are dedicated to driving deeper divides within populations. The very
Speaker 1: things that are supposed to bring us together are pushing
Speaker 1: us further apart. That a tool that is supposedly meant
Speaker 1: to allow for communication can also be a tool that
Speaker 1: suppresses it is incredibly ironic to me, and again that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the intent of the people who made the platform.
Speaker 1: But because people work the way they do, and because
Speaker 1: people who are spreading misinformation know how to leverage these platforms,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. And there's been a lot of pressure,
Speaker 1: particularly on Facebook and Twitter to do something about this.
Speaker 1: A few weeks before I recorded this episode, Twitter announced
Speaker 1: it had deleted nearly a thousand accounts that had linked
Speaker 1: to quote significant state backed information operations end quote that
Speaker 1: was in relation to the protest demonstrations in Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: and the state in question at this point was China.
Speaker 1: According to Twitter, the purpose of those accounts was to
Speaker 1: divide Hong Kong, diminishing the support for protests. Likewise, Facebook
Speaker 1: removed a few users and groups that it had identified
Speaker 1: as being part of a state backed effort to undermine
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong protesters. And because both Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: are blocked in China due to the aforementioned Great Firewall
Speaker 1: of China, the implication here is that the accounts were
Speaker 1: attempting to shape the international perception of the story because
Speaker 1: people in China wouldn't be able to see it. It
Speaker 1: also indicates the yes this was state backed, because no
Speaker 1: one in China would be able to access those platforms
Speaker 1: without the permission and cooperation of the Chinese government itself,
Speaker 1: otherwise just be blocked off. Over the summer of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: the BBC organized a Trusted News Summit in an effort
Speaker 1: to devise a strategy to combat the spread of disinformation.
Speaker 1: The company reached out to major platforms like Google, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Twitter to come up with a strategy to minimize
Speaker 1: the spread of false information and to make sure that
Speaker 1: reputable reporting could rise to the top. Some of the
Speaker 1: solutions the group came up with included the formation of
Speaker 1: an early warning system in which one company would quickly
Speaker 1: reach out to the others in the event and identified
Speaker 1: a misinformation campaign. So if Twitter got wind of an
Speaker 1: effort like the one we just mentioned with Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: Twitter executives could send out an alert through this system
Speaker 1: so that the folks at Google and Facebook would also
Speaker 1: know to be on the lookout. Those efforts actually go
Speaker 1: beyond the political propaganda covered by the Oxford Report. They
Speaker 1: also encompass stuff like anti vaccination rhetoric, which is on
Speaker 1: scientific and ultimately it's deadly because it discourages people from
Speaker 1: immunizing children against diseases, which then raises the possibility of
Speaker 1: serious and deadly outbreaks. The summit also called for newsmakers
Speaker 1: and platforms to take more care to educate readers about issues,
Speaker 1: educating and informing on top of reporting the news. In
Speaker 1: the United States, DARPA, which is the agency that funds
Speaker 1: research and development into technologies intended to contribute to the
Speaker 1: defense of the United States, has initiated its own program
Speaker 1: to counteract disinformation campaigns, which, you know, it is great,
Speaker 1: but I suspect more than a few disinformation campaigns originating
Speaker 1: from the United States have some relation distant or otherwise
Speaker 1: to DARPA. So take that with a grain of alt.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say it's kind of a case
Speaker 1: of when we do it, it's a strategic tool in
Speaker 1: our arsenal that guarantees national security, but when they do it,
Speaker 1: it's dirty, rotten, cheating. The researchers note that we can't
Speaker 1: just look to the social platforms to fix this problem
Speaker 1: because the problem extends beyond the platforms. Companies like Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook can form policies and enforce them to help
Speaker 1: mitigate the spread of misinformation, but they aren't ultimately at
Speaker 1: fault for the actual content on their services. They enable
Speaker 1: the spread of that information, they might even promote it,
Speaker 1: and they're certainly responsible for that. Their algorithms can be
Speaker 1: co opted by those who know how they work and
Speaker 1: used to malicious ends, But the root of the problem
Speaker 1: is systemic within governments and cultures themselves, not in technology
Speaker 1: in general or social media in particular. So to that end,
Speaker 1: addressing propaganda really means taking a look at the institutions
Speaker 1: and says stems within a political framework that allow it
Speaker 1: to exist in the first place. Until we do that,
Speaker 1: it stands to reason that the various governments and political
Speaker 1: parties will make use of every communications tool they have
Speaker 1: at their disposal to spread messages and suppress dissenting opinions.
Speaker 1: The timing of the study is also interesting. It's in
Speaker 1: the wake of Brexit, which many in the UK say
Speaker 1: was supported in part because of a misinformation campaign, that
Speaker 1: they were misled with false promises and pretenses, and that
Speaker 1: social media played a big part in spreading that misinformation,
Speaker 1: which ultimately lead to a vote in favor of Brexit,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people now are second guessing. Not everyone,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of people who still
Speaker 1: fully believe that the UK should exit the EU, but
Speaker 1: it did muddy the waters. There's also been reports of
Speaker 1: election interference for an election interference in the United States
Speaker 1: during the elections. Uh, And so awareness of how vulnerable
Speaker 1: we all are to manipulation is on the rise. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean our ability to suss it out has
Speaker 1: improved dramatically. If anything, it has encouraged more tribalism, in
Speaker 1: which groups of people inherently trust anything that aligns with
Speaker 1: their own worldview and distrust anything that is outside of
Speaker 1: that worldview. And to be fair, it can be quite
Speaker 1: hard to identify misinformation just on the face of it.
Speaker 1: It requires critical thinking and often a lot of research
Speaker 1: to make sure the information you're receiving is reasonably accurate.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier in this episode, with the
Speaker 1: sheer amount of data we encounter in our lives, that's
Speaker 1: not really practical. So what are we to do. Well,
Speaker 1: we could back out on our consumption and take a
Speaker 1: more critical approach to selecting our news sources. But that's
Speaker 1: a lot to ask. It would mean making a dramatic
Speaker 1: shift away from the behaviors we've cultivated over the last
Speaker 1: decade or so longer. If you want to get issues
Speaker 1: that kind of grew out of the twenty four hour
Speaker 1: cable news cycle. We can push for more transparent and
Speaker 1: democratic processes and government, but that's obviously not something everyone
Speaker 1: can do everywhere, at least not without significant personal risk,
Speaker 1: and even in countries that pride themselves on being founded
Speaker 1: on principles like that, pointing out shortcomings can lead to
Speaker 1: some ugly consequences. Just ask anyone in the United States
Speaker 1: who has publicly questioned any politician. You get attacked pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter which side you're looking at either, the attacks
Speaker 1: will follow. I think pressuring companies to be more proactive
Speaker 1: when detecting misinformation is a good step, but we have
Speaker 1: to take it upon ourselves to develop strong critical thinking skills,
Speaker 1: and we have to be willing to hold public officials
Speaker 1: accountable when they engage in shift e misinformation campaigns and
Speaker 1: we find out about it. Like the researchers stated in
Speaker 1: the paper, nothing will change unless we tackle the root
Speaker 1: of the problem. Just dealing with the symptoms isn't enough,
Speaker 1: and that sums up this episode of tech Stuff. If
Speaker 1: you've guys got suggestions for future episodes, send me an
Speaker 1: email the addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Pop on over to the website that's text stuff podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. You're gonna find an archive of all of
Speaker 1: our past episodes. There. You also find links to where
Speaker 1: we are on social media. You can reach out to
Speaker 1: me on the Facebook or the Twitter with your information.
Speaker 1: I'm sure none of you would send me misinformation, and
Speaker 1: you can also at our website click on the little
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Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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