We may be living in the golden age of misinformation. Our favorite social media platforms are awash in it. Our current president and his administration are masters at it. And we’re all nervous about its potential to disrupt this year’s presidential election in ways that are even more damaging than 2016, when the democratic process was subverted by bad actors and trolls, both foreign and domestic. Yet the tech giants that run the biggest platforms for political misinformation have been slow to understand and react to the problem—and their motivation for doing so at the expense of profit has been called into serious question.
Renée DiResta, who works at the Stanford Internet Observatory, has studied digital misinformation around the world since long before the 2016 election. She has some of the clearest insights on the tactics of the malign forces that remain committed to influencing the outcomes of our elections and, perhaps scarier yet, sowing doubt in the credibility of the…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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