Bruce Schneier, a security researcher whom I respect a great deal, lays out a possible plan for countering foreign influence operations.
I've been thinking about this stuff too. Consider the badge a grassroots kill chain effort. Yes, and the eerie similarities between the Trump 2016 campaign messaging and the Russian influence ops were one of the reasons so many people assumed that they were in close contact for an extended period of time. One (admittedly idealistic) alternative explanation sounds optimistic; If two separate influence operations are similar, the ops should be more typically predictable, so countermeasures should be more typically successful. Alternatively, two ops can form a feedback loop from publicly available information alone, so there's a natural tendency for efforts to coalesce. Agreed. Please, let's not go about this by criminalizing VPN or Tor or whatever else affords any bit privacy on the internet, because there are absolutely methods to statistically analyze patterns of interactions that prove whether or not social network activity is automated (oh snap he almost says that in the next sentence, srry). It's trickier to root out organically-controlled accounts, but knocking the bots out should always be near step #1. And in OP's lniked essay, step #1 was reserved for meta-analysis treatment, so step #2 can suffice. I have little faith in "the media". We are transitioning from the information economy to the attention economy, and in case you hadn't noticed, it's gettin' purdy ugly. Ethos appeals simply generate more engagement. Historically, people can't be bothered to pay too much attention to politics during times of economic stability anyway. So when the traditional news business models have been turned on their heads, and budget-borne desperation is setting in, I find myself driven further away from traditional media when they assume I'm interested in horrific stories of murder and other indecencies, but pretty much never mention the unmistakable downward trend in violent crime over the last few decades (especially local news). 2020 is gonna be nasty. Treat yourself to some countermemes: P.S. I have long maintained that Hubski should not allow the same user to bump a post up on the feed more than once. Currently, one person can reply to themselves in a thread indefinitely and the parent post will be ranked higher in others' feeds. But luckily it doesn't matter, because almost nobody shitty comes here, and when they do, we all report them, because we're all part of a cult that I'm currently using to help spread anti-propaganda propaganda. P.P.S. This comment was written early in the A.M. of yesterday, when I badged the post ~30 hours ago, and I've intentionally delayed posting it until regular 'murcan working hours the day after to generate maximum engagement on this particular platform. Do you feel like that's disingenuous? P.P.P.S. I'm relatively proficient in coding and mathematics, and I'm not adverse to transitioning from physics into combating influence ops against what I perceive to be representative governments, but I want at least one layer of contractorship between me and any government organization. P.whatever S. and I'm not done here yetIt needs to be made unacceptable -- or at least costly -- for domestic actors to use these same disinformation techniques in their own rhetoric and political maneuvering...
Social media companies need to detect and delete accounts belonging to propagandists as well as bots and groups run by those propagandists.
The media needs to learn skepticism about the chain of information and to exercise caution in how they approach debunked stories.
Thanks for the reply (and the badge!), and I largely agree with what you said. I think the bit about the attention economy is the key point, or at least comes from the same place as the key point. Because the problem is that any and all defenses to influence operations are predicated on people caring enough to be willing to give things up to get it. Nothing is free, and I don't think a top-down solution is workable in this instance. In addition, there's a further disincentive. To quote (or at least paraphrase) a bit from Yes, Minister: no one is going to change the system that got them elected.