Open Hearing

For several months now, the media has been fixated on the role that social media platforms played in spreading disinformation and discord during the 2016 elections. We've heard from the media how a series of, "Russian-linked Facebook ads were specifically aimed at Michigan and Wisconsin during the lead-up to last year's presidential election," and that, "some of those ads targeted specific demographic groups in two states." The narrative here is that ads linked to Russia were targeted at pivotal states and directly influenced the election's outcome. Russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate American social media to hijack the national conversation and to make Americans angry; to set us against ourselves, and, at their most basic, to undermine our democracy. They did it during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. They are still doing it now. And not one of us is doing enough to stop it. That's why we're here today. In many ways, the threat is not new. Russians have been conducting information warfare for decades. But what is new is the advent of social media tools with the power to magnify propaganda and fake news on a scale that was unimaginable back in the days of the Berlin Wall. Today's tools in many ways seem almost purpose-built for Russian disinformation techniques. Russia's playbook is simple, but formidable. First, disinformation agents set up thousands of fake accounts, groups and pages across a wide array of platforms. These fake accounts populate content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, and many other platforms. This playbook offers a tremendous bang for the disinformation buck. With just a small amount of money, adversaries use hackers to steal and weaponize data, trolls to craft disinformation, fake accounts to build networks, bots to drive traffic, and ads to target new audiences. They can force propaganda into the mainstream and wreak havoc on our online discourse.