Beacons of Internet Health
In December, the US Senate released 2 reports published by teams including Mozilla Fellows Camille François and Renée DiResta. The reports outline Russia’s multi-year, multi-platform attack on the American people to disrupt our democracy, mainly through polarizing memes.
The data that tech companies shared with the Senate in early 2018 encompassed:
With just this, investigators determined that over 30 million users on Facebook and Instagram shared Russian-created content, resulting in about 264 million engagements across both platforms. On Twitter, those Russia-backed accounts posted an average of 58,000 tweets per month, resulting in almost 73 million engagements from 2014–2017.
Among other alarming conclusions, the analyses show that:
- Black communities were specifically targeted with the intent of voter suppression and spreading distrust in US institutions,
- ads purchased on Facebook and Alphabet were mainly used to grow followership at the start; organic activity of posts created by Russia-backed accounts was the most far reaching,
- And these types of activities are ongoing, with different US audiences now experiencing a range of tactics.
This is cyber warfare occurring on private platforms.
Note that the data analyzed in these reports were handed over by the tech companies themselves. Some of them shared data in formats that aren’t machine readable, with the intention of obfuscating the research. There was no external process to review and determine which accounts may have been created by Russia-backed actors, nor was their methodology shared. It’s hard to believe that with over 2 billion monthly active Facebook users, only 78 accounts were created by these propagandists. In fact, the researchers discovered other Russia-backed accounts that were excluded from the shared datasets.
Fellows DiResta and François and their co-authors make it clear that tech companies have to do better. Among their recommendations are calls for platforms to be transparent with their decision-making systems, provide open APIs for researchers, and encourage multi-stakeholder collaborations that bring together the tech companies, researchers, government, and civil society actors to protect democracies from malicious influences.
Citizens of democracies should be aghast at such blatant manipulation of our systems, and we should be up in arms to defend our voices. The NAACP launched the #LogOut protests encouraging users to boycott Facebook and Instagram in response to the latest evidence that people of color were specifically targeted.
But we don’t have much time.
In just 5 months, the European Parliament elections will determine the 705 elected officials representing 500 million citizens from 28 countries. Russian-backed meddling in European society has already been discovered, and the European Commission published a report providing recommendations for how to approach the issues.
These sorts of issues that threaten our online (and increasingly, offline) lives aren’t new, and they can’t be solved by any one person or organization. So we’re bringing leaders together to address these issues from different perspectives, and to provide recommendations and solutions. In early 2019, Mozilla is bringing together experts like Fellows DiResta, François, Fellow Karen Kornbluh and others with European civil society and government actors to help bolster their actions to protect the European Union and its many voices.
Mozilla’s collaboration with leaders working in the misinformation space has evolved in just the last 2 years. As part of the Mozilla Information Trust Initiative, we brought on Philip Smith as a Fellow to shape our impact. With the growing international footprint of MisInfoCon and expansion of our cohort of expert Fellows, we are leveraging our position to connect leaders to share their nuanced understandings with policymakers, the public, and technologists. Together, we defend our democracy online and offline, and push companies in Silicon Valley do the same.
Demanding better from tech companies is core to Mozilla’s strategy for building a healthier internet. Last spring, we worked with Amazon to be more transparent about products that collect data, especially when it comes to kids. And in the summer, Fellow Hang Do Thi Duc helped us launch a petition demanding Venmo to respect users’ privacy by default. This year, we’re doubling-down on tech and focusing on demanding better machine learning.
As long as malignant foreign actors and powerful tech companies continue to put our data and privacy at risk, Mozilla will connect and support individuals who are beacons, lighting the way and leading the movement to action. This is our long-term investment for a healthier internet and a better world. Join the movement today.
