Post-Truth by James Ball

Author:James Ball [James Ball]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785902505
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2017-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Twitter has often faced criticism for slow and inadequate responses to online abuse, but in this instance banned multiple accounts for the racist abuse they sent. However, when faced with tens of thousands of accounts – some of them newly created only to send abuse – closing individual accounts is like bailing out a boat with a thimble. Twitter’s ability to fuel mobs is a consequence of the way the system is built, with any user able to talk to any other, and unless a user has deliberately set their account to be private, their tweets can be made visible to anyone. For any topic with enough people having strong views one way or the other, stepping into the conversation comes with the risk of attracting an online mob – which makes any kind of attempt to reach across the fence an unappealing prospect.

The architecture of social media leaves us open to lines of deliberate attack from those trying to deceive or discourage us: we believe we’re in groups of like-minded people, and this leaves us open to be exploited by malicious actors – potentially including Russia, or others seeking to manipulate elections. The New Yorker showed how this happened in pro-Bernie Sanders groups, and suggested (though was not certain) that the Kremlin may have been involved in these and similar activities.

‘John Mattes, a Bernie Sanders organizer who ran a Facebook page for supporters in San Diego, noticed a surge of new adherents with false profiles. One “Oliver Mitov” had almost no friends or photographs but belonged to sixteen pro-Sanders groups,’ the article explained.28

On September 25th, Mitov posted to several pro-Sanders pages: ‘NEW LEAK: Here Is Who Ordered Hillary To Leave The Four Men In Benghazi!—USAPoliticsNow.’ It was a baseless story alleging that Clinton had received millions of dollars from Saudi royals. Mattes said, ‘The fake news depressed and discouraged some percentage of Bernie voters. When I realised it, I said, “We are being played.”’

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