Unless Twitter and Facebook take action, online propaganda efforts are about to get much, much worse

It should not be surprising that the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's (redacted) report on Russian hacking and online propaganda efforts was the target of, of course, further online propaganda efforts. NBC News reports that over 5,000 crudely crafted Twitter "bot" accounts were removed by Twitter after they were used to condemn Mueller's report as part of a "Russiagate hoax."

But the accounts weren't Russian, reports NBC. They appeared to be the work of a Saudi Arabian firm operating most recently as @TheGlobus or @ArabianVeritas, and it appears to be a trolling-for-hire outfit devoted to promoting whatever propaganda effort a client is willing to pay for.

“The landscape has changed,” said Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who focuses on global disinformation campaigns. “Since 2016, everybody’s doing this. It’s trolling as a service. And since there are no consequences, the least sophisticated of all the actors are doing this.”

The short version is that no matter how aggressive state-sponsored propaganda efforts from the Russian, Saudi Arabian, and other governments might have been in the last few years, it may be nothing compared to what will happen during the 2020 elections. Hoax-based propaganda efforts using fraudulent Facebook and Twitter accounts are cheap, simple to run, and can be done with little to no technical skills. Advertisement-based hoax news sites were proven to be a potential gold mine for Macedonian and other grifters in 2016; in 2020 it will be possible for corporate, governmental, and private actors to order up ready-made networks of social media bots to promote customized hoax campaigns.

While previous astroturfing sought to plant notions of true grassroots support for particular lobbying ideas by presenting industry-orchestrated demonstrations or signature-collecting as the work of civic-minded citizen groups, online propaganda efforts eliminate any need to come up with actual living, breathing humans to play those roles.

from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2PwBxBF