Social bots — or anonymous, fake personas that broadcast false, manipulated automatically generated content — are highly destructive and must be banned from social media platforms immediately.  A 2016 study from the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute found that social bots made up nearly one-fifth of the political discourse on Twitter during the 2016 campaign season.

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From the researchers:  "Twitter bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, 'like' candidates, grow their social influence by following legitimate human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations. Because of social bots’ sophistication, it is often impossible to determine who creates them, although political parties, local, national and foreign governments and even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation."

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These are not harmless games being played.

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In July 2019, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that revealed all fifty states were targeted by Russia in the 2016 presidential election.  The report says that "The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level.”  Although the Committee "has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting machines were manipulated...Russia may have been probing vulnerabilities in voting systems to exploit later."  Further, "Russian efforts exploited the seams between federal authorities and capabilities, and protections for the states.  The U.S. intelligence apparatus is, by design, foreign-facing, with limited domestic cybersecurity authorities except where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can work with state and local partners.  State election officials, who have primacy in running elections, were not sufficiently warned or prepared to handle an attack from a hostile nation-state actor."  Read the entire report here.

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According to a 37-page federal indictment of thirteen Russian nationals issued by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, leading to the 2016 presidential election the Russians stole Americans' identities, created fake drivers' licenses, bank accounts, and PayPal accounts in the names of fictitious Americans, faked social media accounts, created and distributed inflammatory digital ads and images, organized political rallies on U.S. soil, and even had two operatives on the ground in America.  The pair traveled to at least nine states posing as tourists to gather information for their bosses back in Russia.  Read the entire indictment here.  The indictment mentions Facebook and Instagram 41 times.  Facebook finally admitted that divisive, Russian-placed political content reached 146 million Americans on their platform alone.  Read more about the responsibility of social media platforms here.

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When the infamous Mueller report was finally released to the public in April 2019 it was clear from the very beginning:  "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion."  It continues, "The Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out the earliest Russian interference operations identified by the investigation-a social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States."...the Office determined that Russia's two principal interference operations in the 2016 U.S. presidential election - the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations – violated U.S. criminal law." 

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Two other studies clarify even further how Russia exploited data provided by social media firms.

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The first, from the University of Oxford and Graphika, found that "Between 2013 and 2018, the Russian Internet Research Agency's (IRA) Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached tens of millions of users in the United States; over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA’s Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way; peaks in advertising and organic activity often correspond to important dates in the U.S. political calendar, crises, and international events; IRA activities focused on the U.S. began on Twitter in 2013 but quickly evolved into a multi-platform strategy involving Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among other platforms; and the most far reaching IRA activity is in organic posting, not advertisements."

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Further, "Russia’s IRA activities were designed to polarize the U.S. public and interfere in elections by: campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016, and more recently for Mexican American and Hispanic voters to distrust U.S. institutions; encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational; and spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum." 

 

"Surprisingly, these campaigns did not stop once Russia’s IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues, national security issues, and issues pertinent to younger voters.  The highest peak of IRA ad volume on Facebook is in April 2017 – the month of the Syrian missile strike, the use of the Mother of All Bombs on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan, and the release of the tax reform plan; IRA posts on Instagram and Facebook increased substantially after the election, with Instagram seeing the greatest increase in IRA activity; the IRA accounts actively engaged with disinformation and practices common to Russian “trolling.” Some posts referred to Russian troll factories that flooded online conversations with posts, others denied being Russian trolls, and some even complained about the platforms’ alleged political biases when they faced account suspension."  Read the entire report here.

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The second study, from New Knowledge, revealed in part the following:  "The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets; the IRA created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem;  the IRA exploited the trust of their Page audiences to develop human assets, at least some of whom were not aware of the role they played. This tactic was substantially more pronounced on Black-targeted accounts; the degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content."

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The report continues, "Despite statements from Twitter and Facebook debating whether it was possible to gauge whether voter suppression content was present, there were three primary variants of specific voter suppression narratives spread on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube:  Malicious misdirection (Twitter-based text-to-vote scams, tweets designed to create confusion about voting rules); Candidate support redirection (‘vote for a 3rd party!’); and Turnout depression (‘stay home on Election Day, your vote doesn’t matter’).  Read the entire report here.​

 

 

 

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Evidence:

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Ian Chaffee.  "Real or Not? USC Study Finds Many Political Tweets Come From Fake Accounts."  USC News.  8 Nov 2016

Jessica Guynn.  "Facebook Expands Scope of Russian Influence on Americans for Second Time."  USA Today.  1 Nov 2017

James Andrew Lewis.  “After the Breach: The Monetization and Illicit Use of Stolen Data.”  Statement Before the House Committee on Financial Services   Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance.  15 Mar 2018​

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.  "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election."  Volume II of II.  March
   2019

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.  "Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election."  Volume I of II.  March
   2019

Philip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly, and Camille François.  "The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States,
   2012-2018."  University of Oxford and Graphika.  Computational Propaganda Research Project. 

Renee DiResta, Dr. Kris Shaffer, Becky Ruppel, David Sullivan, Robert Matney, Ryan Fox, Dr. Jonathan Albright and Ben Johnson.  "The Tactics & Tropes of
   the Internet Research Agency."

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