Thread by @tristanharris

LISTEN: Huge new episode of "Your Undivided Attention" w/ Renée DiResta (@noUpside): "From Russia, with Likes (Pt 1)"

In 2017, the Senate Intel Committee gave Renée the FB/Twitter dataset of Russia's 200k+ FB posts, groups, ads, pages, tweets. Listen:

humanetech.com/podcast/

Renee was one of only two teams given full access to the dataset, and manually reviewed more than 200,000 posts and memes to understand the Internet Research Agency's disinformation techniques.

Often people ask, "what's different this time?" Haven't we always had fake news, propaganda? Is there really something new here?

Renee responds to that critique: 1) Mass Consolidation of Audiences, 2) Unprecedented Targeting, 3) Gameable Algorithms you can exploit.

In part 1 of our interview, she covers both how Russia tried to influence both the RIGHT and LEFT political identities in the United States.

On how Russia targeted the political right:

And how Russia targeted LEFT political identities – going after authentic grievances of U.S. voters with Bernie, Jill Stein messages.

And then how Renee saw Russia target Americans on both sides of the aisle in the last week preceding the 2016 election:

On the right: 🤬 ANGER.
On the left: 😕 APATHY.

Listen:

People often think, "but I already knew who I was going to vote for, those Russian ads or posts wouldn't have influenced me!"

But this wasn't about WHO to vote for-- it was about influencing attitudes, apathy, and turnout.

Most importantly, it was an influence campaign targeting ALL Americans – not either side.

Ultimately is this what social media is for? Mass disruption of elections? DOWNGRADING sensemaking critical for democracy?

@aza and I explore what a society-oriented version of Fbook might look like– rearranging the shelf space of choices around embodied experiences & our values