The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

by Cailin O'Connor

There is overwhelming evidence that foreign actors, apparently associated with Russian intelligence services, attempted to interfere in the 2016 US election—initially to weaken Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, and later to promote Donald Trump.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google have revealed that accounts linked to the Russian government spent well over one hundred thousand dollars to purchase political ads, most of which seem to have been designed to create controversy and sow civil discord. Facebook has subsequently revealed that Russian-produced political content reached as many as 126 million US users.

Russian organizations are reported to have developed a bestiary of personalities, voices, and positions crafted to influence various groups,51 ranging from members of the LGBTQ community, to Black Lives Matter activists, to gun rights supporters, to anti-immigrant zealots, and even, bizarrely, to animal lovers. One goal appears to have been to establish trust with a broad range of demographic and interest groups in order to influence them. The New York Times reported in October 2017 that the Russia-linked LGBT United Twitter account, for example, declared: “We speak for all fellow members of LGBT community across the nation. Gender preference does not define you. Your spirit defines you.” Even the dog-lover page, the Times suggests, was probably formed with the intention of developing a set of followers who could then be slowly exposed to political content. In other words, the goal was to get close, pose as a peer, and then exert influence.

And if the purpose is merely to drive polarization—as opposed to persuading everyone of any particular claim—posing to people on both sides of an issue as someone who shares their opinions, and then presenting further evidence or arguments in support of those opinions, will be very successful.

We currently have a legislative framework that limits the ability of certain industries—tobacco and pharmaceuticals—to advertise their products and to spread misinformation. This is because there is a clear public health risk to allowing these industries to promote their products. We also have defamation and libel laws that prohibit certain forms of (inaccurate) claims about individuals. We think these legislative frameworks should be extended to cover more general efforts to spread misinformation. In an era of global warming, websites like Breitbart News and Infowars are more damaging to public health than Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man were in the past, and they should be treated as such.67 In many ways, the United States is behind Europe on this front. Like the US and UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and other European nations have been targeted by fake news—often with alleged links to Russia.68 In 2015, the European Union created a specialized task force called East StratCom, with the express purpose of identifying strategies to combat fake news and propaganda.

Some readers may consider this a form of censorship and counter to the spirit of free speech.72 But the goal here is not to limit speech. It is to prevent speech from illegitimately posing as something it is not, and to prevent damaging propaganda from getting amplified on social media sites. If principles of free speech are compatible with laws against defamatory lies about individuals, surely they are also compatible with regulating damaging lies dressed up as reported fact on matters of public consequence. Lying media should be clearly labeled as such, for the same reason that we provide the number of calories on a package of Doritos or point out health effects on a cigarette box. And social media sites should remain vigilant about stopping the spread of fake news on their platforms or, at the very least, try to ensure that this “news” is clearly labeled as such.