Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media

by P.W. Singer

Digital sociologists describe how social media creates a new reality “no longer limited to the perceptual horizon,” in which an online feud can seem just as real as a face-to-face argument. The difference in being online, however, is that now seemingly the whole world is witnessing whether you accept the challenge or not. This phenomenon plays out at every level, and not just in killings; 80 percent of the fights that break out in Chicago schools are now instigated online.

Attacking an adversary’s most important center of gravity—the spirit of its people—no longer requires massive bombing runs or reams of propaganda. All it takes is a smartphone and a few idle seconds. And anyone can do it.

A generation ago, Al Qaeda was started by the son of a Saudi billionaire. By the time of the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS, the internet was the “preferred arena for fundraising” for terrorism, for the same reasons it has proven so effective for startup companies, nonprofits, and political campaigns.

By creating an atmosphere in which certain views are stigmatized, governments are able to shape what the majority opinion appears to be, which helps steer the direction of actual majority opinion.

As groups of like-minded people clump together, they grow to resemble fanatical tribes, trapped in echo chambers of their own design. The reason is basic human nature.

Tempting as it may be to blame the internet for this, the real source of these digital echo chambers is again deeply rooted in the human brain. Put simply, people like to be right; they hate to be proven wrong.

U.S. Army colonel turned historian Robert Bateman summarizes it pointedly: “Once, every village had an idiot. It took the internet to bring them all together.”

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” declared the legendary sociologist and New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a widely attributed axiom.

As psychologist Sander van der Linden has written, belief in online conspiracy theories makes one more supportive of “extremism, racist attitudes against minority groups (e.g., anti-Semitism) and even political violence.”

As Samuel Woolley, a researcher at Oxford University who studied the phenomenon, has written, “The goal here is not to hack computational systems but to hack free speech and to hack public opinion.”

“Anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering,” observed the wise Master Yoda. And that suffering leads to the Dark Side: what is better known on the internet as trolling.