Consider the source

Sometimes, really significant news lands softly —almost like a dud. But a significant story is like a pebble tossed into a pond. Little waves roll out, gradually covering more and more of the pond. That’s the way significant news spreads. It’s the people — especially good readers — who do the spreading.

And so it’s been with Karen Hoa’s report in MIT Technology Review, which was based on leaked Facebook documents.

Before the 2020 election, troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook.

The troll farms in Eastern Europe are professional propagandists. They were targeting the same demographic groups that the Internet Research Agency, which is supported by the Russian government, was hitting in the 2016 election: Christians, African Americans, Native Americans.

The story of how the troll farms used Facebook was published Sept. 16, and now publications aimed at the groups targeted by propagandists are trying to bring the news home to ordinary readers. The Christian magazine Relevant pointed out that 19 of the top 20 pages for American Christians were run by Eastern European troll farms.

I spent my working life as a newspaper editor. I often told our readers that I’d tried for decades to put out one really good edition — completely fair and completely accurate — and had always failed. A small town editor is always running into someone in the grocery store whose grandchild’s named was misspelled in the elementary school’s honor roll.

The failures — small and great — occurred despite efforts to be fair, accurate and objective. Some of the most common tasks in life turn out to be extraordinarily difficult. Educating and nurturing a child is harder than it looks. So is conveying information in a democracy.

Most of the newspaper folk I knew took the responsibility seriously, a trust. They knew that inaccuracy and unfairness could undermine trust. They also knew that trust is the foundation of democracies — and of all human relationships, for that matter.

We now live in an age where people who don’t even speak English can cut and paste propaganda into social media platforms. They can influence elections. They can discourage people from taking vaccinations that might save their lives.

The sources of the fundamental things in life turn out to be really important. That’s true of your sources of information. And that’s especially true in democracies.

Let’s hope the consumers choose wisely.

Hoa’s article is here: 

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/