Thread by @sinanaral

[Thread] Preserving Democracy: @deaneckles and I just published our paper in @sciencemagazine on "Protecting Elections from Social Media Manipulation.": bit.ly/2L7gMw9 1/

While Robert Mueller is warning election interference is "among the most serious challenges to democracy" he has ever seen and FBI Director Christopher Wray is telling us "the threat just keeps escalating"... too little is being done. 2/

Research by @Graphika_Inc shows Russian misinformation reached 126M on Facebook, 20M on Instagram & spread 10M tweets to 6M followers on Twitter. Work by @BrendanNyhan & colleagues estimates 27% of voting age Americans visited a fake news website weeks before the 2016 election 3/

Experts disagree on if this could tip an election. Kathleen Hall Jamieson argues hacking and interference tipped the 2016 election for @realDonaldTrump (amzn.to/2Hx8YBu). @davidlazer, @BrendanNyhan, @MattGentzkow, @HuntAllcott argue it was too small & concentrated 4/

Trouble is we still don't know because we haven't measured it!... Fortunately, the effect of social media manipulation on elections is imminently measurable. Tools exist to measure is effects on voting: go.nature.com/2O1nEdV, bit.ly/2HyfcRv, bit.ly/2ZyjOxa 5/

More tools: bit.ly/2Ue9olc, go.nature.com/2oIvUEI, bit.ly/2LeJA4p, bit.ly/2VYXjVl... 6/

There are clear challenges... The platforms are facing what I have called a "Transparency Paradox" (bit.ly/2HomCFM)... They face strong pressure to be more *open* and more *secure/private* at the same time... 7/

This requires the release of data for scientific research, but using privacy preserving techniques like Differential Privacy. 8/

As @CraigSilverman pointed out, @SocSciOne is facing long delays accessing relevant data and funders who are threatening to pull out: bit.ly/2ZnjUwr, bit.ly/2MJRKoQ... And, as @SolomonMg has replied... @facebook is dedicated and working on it - its hard work. 9/

But, we must succeed. Liberal Democracies Worldwide Depend on IT: There are questions about interference during Brexit, and elections in Sweden, Brazil, India and more.... 10/

Legislatures must act, but prudently: There are 4 Bills in front of the US Congress. If HR1 is too controversial, surely the FIRE Act, the Secure Democracy Act and the Voting System CyberSecurity Act are worth discussing and voting one. 11/

More broadly, Legislation must be carefully thought out as we manage tradeoffs between Privacy vs Election Integrity & Free Speech vs Harmful Speech. Regulation of Political Speech must also be considered and Legislatures must consult experts to act prudently. 12/

@deaneckles and I discuss these and other tradeoffs here:

science.sciencemag.org/content/365/64….

We argue that we must be more proactive in preserving Election Integrity & hardening Democracy against future attacks while preserving Privacy and Free Speech. We feel it is our civic duty. 13/

@deaneckles For those who are interested, I will be on @Morning_Joe (745am), @YahooFinance (12-1pm) and @VelshiRuhle (345pm) tomorrow discussing these and other related issues. 14/

Also of interest here may be our supplementary materials, which go deeper:

science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/…

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