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2026-09-23T07:41:48Z

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{{pubdate|23|September|2026}}

I guess that by now there is little doubt that the Russian and other governments, such as Iran, are having massively successful (dis)information campaigns on social media, in the countries of Europe and the US, and likely many others too.

Their effectiveness is due to exploiting real existing disagreements in society, magnifying them, and blowing them up way beyond proportion. This ensures that society becomes further split, in fact so far that, amidst a booming economy and record low crime and unemployment rates, the fear of actual civil war and violent unrest is as high as it has not been for a century. The common ground is being eroded, and topics of low impact on the actual day to day life, such as the small number of immigrants to the EU or the tweets of the US president dominate the daily discourse, so that high-impact topics such as climate change or demographic change and their economic consequences are not even on our agenda.

In fact, calling them disinformation campaigns is highly misleading, because they are most effective if they are actually informative and correct. They are most effective if they pick up the real fears (unfounded or not) of real people, and magnify them. This forces the ongoing discourse, and puts the whole society into an ongoing reactive mode. All of us just react, breathlessly, to the latest shocking moment instead of focusing on sustained growth and improvement.

The picture above shows how foreign agents form the cores of the conversation. Note, this is not only on the conservative side, but also, and actually in an even bigger amount, on the progressive side. The researcher who created this picture points out that it felt weird to consider these accounts as equally problematic, because on his side they were resonating with him so much.

''That. Is. The. Effing. Point.''

Rarely do these agents have an explicit goal. I doubt they are attacking Star Wars because they want to see the movie tank, or because of a direct political goal. Their goal is to increase chaos, weaken coherence, reduce the ability to act. Sometimes the goals are more obvious — for example the operations in Macedonia and Greece, aiming at keeping NATO from growing further — but most of them are not. They might be just aiming at growing discord, or at training people doing this kind of operations.

The people leading these operations are likely of varying intelligence, but all of them will gather years and decades of experience in using social media for manipulation. Also, the operations are cheap and often not even illegal, most often entirely risk free.

We shouldn’t even be surprised about the existence of these operations. The West has used similar methods for decades: emitting radio signals into the communist countries is just the best known. The US is complaining about interference into their elections? Given some operations of the CIA such complaints are almost amusing. The most surprising thing would be if the US or France would *not* have similar operations ongoing. That would be almost negligent.

Why are they doing this? How would I know? My best guess is that from the point of view of Russia or Iran or North Korea the West had accumulated such a large advantage that their most effective bet to ever return to a more level playing field is to drag the West down so hard, to break us into factions, to make us betray our deepest values, with low-cost, no-risk social media operations. What are we gonna do? Impose sanctions because DeplorableJenny37369 made a retweet from a Russian IP address?

Again — this doesn’t mean that they are not real people with valid and different points of views involved. But their concerns are being hijacked, magnified, abused. Read the case studies in the references below to see these mechanisms at work. And this happens on all sides. I am sure I have fallen for these campaigns, just as basically anyone else.

How can we react?

I wish I knew. A few ideas, none of them promising.

'''Can we all just become more resilient to these operations?''' Given that these operations are run by highly trained people who dedicate their lives to social media, I guess the chances that we all get collectively smarter and wiser about all of this are not good. You see, I don’t assume that I can beat up an active Marine, so why should I assume that I will constantly outsmart an active intelligence agent.

'''Technological solutions that detect and shut down such operations?''' If we expect them to happen voluntarily by the tech companies — I doubt this to happen. I doubt Twitter has the capability or incentive to spent the resources required to counter such measures for something like the Macedonian market. Could regulation compel them? How would that regulation look like? Also, almost all measures will be countered by more sophisticated operations. This is an arms race where the defense is much more expensive than the attack, in many different ways.

'''Give up some of the level of anonymity we currently enjoy on the Web.''' I find this approach both terrifying and promising. I am afraid that this is a very high price to pay. I am afraid that this might, if not done with extreme care and massive input from those groups, be potentially most harmful to some of our most vulnerable members in society, such as those who are LGBTQ*, or who suffer from diseases or disabilities, or who are hiding from abusers, and many others. The web’s anonymity has, again and again, been described as the space that allowed them to breathe, to live, to learn how to be themselves. And no matter what the solution is — pseudonymity? asymmetric identity flows? — this has to be preserved. But this is so dangerous, so easy to get wrong. But at the same time there seems a space of potential solutions between the current one and one of full transparency. (Nevermind that for certain actors, such as the NSA, this anonymity is mostly wishful thinking on our parts anyway)

And whereas I believe that a possible solution lives in that space, I am also aware of the horrifying fact that one point in this space is exactly what most of the intervening foreign powers want and are building: a web in which the anonymity of the individual has disappeared. By moving ourselves this way we weaken our own position in the argument against such a controlled web.

'''What about a solution like SOLID?''' I am afraid that in fact such a decentralized solution will weaken the technical possibilities to detect and prevent such operations even more. As much as I’m hoping for SOLID to succeed for many different reasons, I’m afraid it might also lead us further into a world of populists and fractured societies.

'''Just switch Facebook and Twitter off?''' It will be back, probably faster and more nimble than before.

'''Factcheckers?''' As if facts mattered too much in these discussions. Some research shows that showing fact checking results next to false claims increases the appeal of these claims in some cases.

'''Increase the coherence of society.''' In my opinion this is the most promising path forward. And the way to do that is to improve everyone’s life and reduce the growing gap between rich and poor. If we reduce the economic stress many people feel, they will be more open to people who are different. If people don’t think that they can barely make it, that they are in desperate need of financial support by the government, they might be more open to the idea to use government funds to help refugees. If they realize that the world is not a zero sum game, they might be more open to change and a fairer representation. The world is getting better and richer. But the returns of these improvements are being handed out very unevenly.

''The more cohesion we have, the fewer splits and cracks there already are in society, the smaller the chances of operations succeeding that aim to exploit these cracks and splits.''

Which basically means we’re likely screwed, because I don’t see a realistic chance to get there. Also, because the path to this world is being actively blocked by the disinformation campaigns that prompted this text, which has been going on for far too long already. I am sorry for not having a solution, for not even having a good idea of the problem. But there is a problem that needs a solution, a problem that is stubborn and wicked and hard.

And yet, we must. We must. We must.

----

Reading list:
* [https://medium.com/s/story/the-trolls-within-how-russian-information-operations-infiltrated-online-communities-691fb969b9e4 The surprising nuance behind the Russian troll strategy] (research by Kate Starbird)
* [https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659545242/heres-how-russia-runs-its-disinformation-effort-against-the-2018-midterms Here’s how Russia runs its disinformation effort] (NPR)
* [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935 How Twitter bots and Trump fans made #ReleaseTheMemo go viral] (Politico)
* [https://www.wired.com/story/information-terrorists-trying-to-reshape-america/ Brett Kavanaugh and the information terrorists trying to reshape America] (Wired)
* [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opinion/midterms-facebook-foreign-meddling.html Russian meddling is a symptom, not the disease] (NYT op-ed by Zeynep Tufekci)
* [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/01/how-a-disastrous-change-in-perspective-disempowered-the-left-and-let-the-right-rise How a disastrous change in perspective disempowered the left and let the right rise] (The Guardian)
* [https://points.datasociety.net/media-manipulation-strategic-amplification-and-responsible-journalism-95f4d611f462 Media manipulation, strategic amplification, and responsible journalism] (essay by danah boyd)

The essay above started life as a [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=521510444169&set=a.502642600479&type=3&permPage=1 Facebook post] no November 4, 2018 and received more attentions than my other ramblings. I was asked to put it into a more accessible location, and also to summarize some results from the discussion that ensued. With this Medium post I at least did the former but not the latter. I strongly recommend to take a look at the [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=521510444169&set=a.502642600479&type=3&permPage=1 discussion on the public post].

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Cohesion and disinformation - Revision history

Denny: Created page with "{{pubdate|{{subst:CURRENTDAY}}|{{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}}|{{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}} I guess that by now there is little doubt that the Russian and other governments, such as Ir..."