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Last week, I headed to Congress to testify before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. I was grateful for the opportunity to share a few thoughts with Representatives for their hearing on “online imposters and disinformation.” Select highlights in this thread👇
Too often, disinfo is portrayed mostly as a “content” problem (ex. fake news, deepfake). Content is an important dimension, but I argued that the “actors” behind the campaigns and the “behaviors” employed to manipulate audiences are underappreciated yet crucial vectors in disinfo
This is the “ABC” of disinfo: ACTORS who manipulate, BEHAVIOR designed to deceive, CONTENT crafted to harm. Paper linked, but the short story is actors & behaviors are harder dimensions to analyze given huge information asymmetry btwn platforms vs. others science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/…
This in turn speaks to the problem of designing systems that guarantee security & privacy while ensuring that academic researchers, infosec researchers, human rights investigators can access the data they need to help tackle the issue. How far are we from that? Very far.
I used the 2016 Russia campaign to illustrate how much is still missing from public view (and therefore from our ability to build resilience). So much data released by platforms and regulators, yet so many remaining data blind spots: GRU, private messages, moderated content, etc.
There were also hopeful bits in there: about how much progress we’ve made since 2016, and about the vibrant interdisciplinary field dedicated to these issues. And to highlight the global dimension of the problem, I proudly wrote a French-American friendship scarf / Fin de thread 
Thread addendum (it's never really la fin du thread): huge thanks to @benimmo, my co-author for the written statement, to the @Graphika_Inc team, who has been stellar and so patient in helping us prepare the testimony, and to colleagues who provided feedback (merci @pnhoward) 🙏
@benimmo @Graphika_Inc @pnhoward In the light of today's new and great Senate Select Intel Committee report on Russian active measures in the 2016 U.S. election, I'll highlight this bit from my testimony regarding the remaining data blind spots on this campaign (science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/…).
