This is scary sh!t.
Frankly, I have found it easy to convince myself that the Dems will win the presidency in 2020, and might even take back the Senate. All of this is predicated on:
1)The Dems not screwing it up; and
2) Disinformation a la Trump and the Russians not blowing up fair elections too badly.
Now we have two new reports, one out of NYU Stern, one from USC, about the risks to #2, that were reported last week in the Baltimore Sun:
www.baltimoresun.com/...
Get ready for more humanlike bots, better deep-fake videos and wall-to-wall disinformation in 2020 race
If you thought media and politics had hit a new low in the 2016 election with Russians using rubles to buy highly-targeted Facebook ads aimed at sowing racial discord in cities like Baltimore, you are really going to hate what’s in store for American voters in 2020.
That’s the word from two university reports on media, politics, disinformation and the 2020 presidential election that were released this week.
- More sophisticated deepfake videos like the one in May that purported to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words as if drunk or ill
- More humanlike bots doing their dirty work in social media as they closely mimic human behavior.
- More foreign entities, most likely Iran and China, joining Russia in attempts to undermine our democracy with disinformation and propaganda
- And most of all, more domestically generated disinformation fed by President Donald Trump’s re-election team, their allies at right-wing media sites and some strategic communications firms looking to make a buck off our polarized political climate and polluted information ecosystem.
- One of the biggest differences between 2016 and 2020 is the fact that Trump is in the White House and now has a huge arsenal of media weapons he didn’t have in 2016 as just a candidate, according to Paul M. Barrett, author of “Disinformation and the 2020 Election: How the Social Media Industry Should Prepare.”
The early pages are here:
issuu.com/…
“The fact that the president has become the disinformation-purveyer-in-chief is hugely influential,” said Barrett, deputy director New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “He sets a tone and an example for lots of other people who now think spewing untruths is a routine and acceptable way of carrying on public discourse.”
Then this from WaPo:
This week, for example, a Washington Post report showed how even as Trump stood on the White House lawn promising a package of laws aimed at reducing gun violence, his campaign was placing highly targeted ads on Facebook warning his base that Democrats were trying to take away their Second Amendment rights. He pledged himself to defending those rights.
Then there is work from USC.
Better technology used to generate more misinformation is also documented in a study done by researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.
USC computer scientist Emilio Ferrara is lead author on a study published in the “First Monday" peer-reviewed journal that examined bot behavior in the 2016 and 2018 elections. It indicated that “bots or fake accounts enabled by artificial intelligence on Twitter have evolved and are now better able to copy human behaviors in order to avoid detection.”
If nothing else, that means there will be more disinformation, propaganda and lies spread from more fake accounts on Twitter contributing to a more confusing and toxic conversation about the candidates and issues.
USC computer scientist Emilio Ferrara is lead author on a study published in the “First Monday" peer-reviewed journal that examined bot behavior in the 2016 and 2018 elections. It indicated that “bots or fake accounts enabled by artificial intelligence on Twitter have evolved and are now better able to copy human behaviors in order to avoid detection.”
If nothing else, that means there will be more disinformation, propaganda and lies spread from more fake accounts on Twitter contributing to a more confusing and toxic conversation about the candidates and issues.
Sorry, I don;t have a link.
This, of course, is incredibly scary stuff. It’s about cheating and winning, but it’s about more than that: it’s about an assault on our entire system of government that will leave voters confused, fed up and disgusted.
The only good news out of this is that:
1) Dems and their voters are now forewarned; and
2) They have a massive incentive to fight back, hard. Can they achieve this? I have no idea.
3) At the very least, there have to be spectacularly strong hearings on electoral cybercheating up in the House.
4) We need to be designing new laws to deal with all of this, and then dump them on McConnell’s desk with great fanfare.
I would just have one message for wealthy corporate interests on the “other side, who might be willing to live with this crap to “stay rich”:
If you believe that leaving our government in the hands of lying, corrupt, incompetent anti-Democratic monsters will lead to a good economic result, you are spectacularly mistaken. You need to study what is going on, and then climb on our bus to give your children and grandchildren a shot a a future. Of course, NOT climbing on our bus in this era of climate change is simply malpractice.
God, this is all going to be SOOOO ugly.