We must understand Russia's manipulative attack during last year's presidential elections in a broader context: as a relatively traditional propaganda operation that achieved unprecedented reach because social media companies are either unable or choose not to defend themselves.
Every time our society falls victim to an information attack, we blame the attacker, but not their weapons. It's hard to accept that the platforms we use to chat with friends and share baby photos can have such a powerful impact in shaping democracy. Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have fundamental flaws that must be fixed if we're going to protect ourselves in the future.
At its peak in 2013, ISIS mobilized tens of thousands of social media accounts to spread their message and radicalize Americans. They created horrific but compelling content, and used their social bot armies to force that content into the mainstream. They were manipulating the underlying mechanics of social media, tricking platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube into amplifying their message to the widest possible audience.
ISIS lit a fuse with its message of hate and violence, but these social media platforms powered the explosion, making it simple to share and spread nearly instantaneously. Years later, tech companies have finally acknowledged the severity of the problem, establishing the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in June, 2017.
The terrorist group's years-long, highly visible manipulation of our social platforms was a clear warning that hostile actors could use our online gathering places to target Americans. The warning was ignored, and in 2016 we were attacked again. In October, 2016, Obama administration intelligence officials formally accused Russia of meddling in US elections. By March of 2017, New Knowledge, along with independent researchers from our volunteer collective, Data for Democracy, discovered 30,000 accounts that exhibited bot-like behavior in posting on the Trump campaign's Facebook page alone. Fake accounts, run by software programs, are designed to imitate real users and manufacture popular support by repeatedly posting messages to social media.
Yet only now, 11 months after the 2016 election, are we beginning to realize the cost. We have recently learned that millions of Americans were served propaganda by a foreign adversary, disguised as news stories and as persuasive comments by fake neighbors. The tech companies that enabled this continue to accept only limited responsibility, reframing the problem as an issue of free speech rather than admitting that their users were fooled and manipulated.
Yet again, as the country reeled from the deadliest mass shooting in the US history, Google and Facebook promoted fake news about the attacks. 4chan, an anonymous message board infamous for its racist and misogynist content, falsely accused an innocent man of being the Las Vegas shooter.
Despite 4chan's reputation as a hotbed of offensive memes and...
