The DUPING of America

By now I am sure you are all aware of the incredible story of Google, Facebook, and Twitter taking ads from Russian trolls with the intent to influence America’s last election. In essence, Russia has declared Cyberwar against America, and our social overlords at these three companies were asleep at the switch when this was done right in front of their faces. Even worse, it looks now like some Facebook ad salespeople even guided some of these trolls on how best to reach their intended targets with these “fake” ads.

Every day we awake to new news coming out about the depth of what Russia has taken to try and create a new type of civil war between not the North and South but the left and right. They have figured out that most American’s are easily duped along their partisan way of thinking and that during their election if a story helped give credence to their way of thinking, they embraced it as truth without even questioning its authenticity.

I admit that when it comes to reading any stories, my background in debate makes me question any story I read and try and check its authenticity. I got pretty high in State Debate tourneys and was actually good at debating both sides of the issue regardless if I believed the premise of the debate. But if you have ever debated any subject, especially at the high school or college level as part of your education, you know that facts are extremely important, and lies and conjecture could easily cause you to lose the argument when you were in front of debate judges.

But I am finding that not many people who read social media are willing to take the time and check out a story for its authenticity and instead are much more likely to take what they see as “gospel” especially if it underscores their opinions and beliefs. This is something that Russia knows all to well and has their “cyberwar” machine in high gear. Their goal is to try and divide us as much as possible and in the process sow seeds of destruction not only to our way of life, which they actually covet but our government that they, in their wildest dreams, would like to overthrow.

What worries me about this is that I don’t think that most people in the US understand the gravity of this situation. America’s Forefathers fought for the right of us to determine our leaders and have the freedom to vote our conscience. An outside force like Russia highjacking this the very heart of the US constitution should infuriate people. On my case, I want to be the last person ever to be duped by a foreign government whose attention is out in the open and yet many embraces these “fake” stories

Of course, outside sources trying to influence what our people think and how they vote is not new. The British tried desperately to reach the settlers and colonists in the “New World” to try and keep them in the British Kingdom. Some of the pamphlets they distributed were as much fake news then as recent fake news is today. I but have read how the Nazi’s tried to get their message to the US in the early 1930’s and lest we forget, some British Royalty and even some US leaders were Hitler sympathizers. Certainly “fake” news was deployed here too to cover the real vision Hitler had to wipe out all but an Arian race.

But there is one very big difference on how the Fake News of the past was spread to influence how people thought. In 1772-1776 it was done through pamphlets and very crude news gazettes. Before WW II it was done through newspaper and radio. But in both of these instances, the messages were very broad and not personalized. But this time around this level of fake news is distributed by a social network medium that is highly personal and can include very targeted ads or fake stories. As we see with the current reports from very credible sources, A foreign entity-Russia-has taken direct aim at trying to destroy America’s values, the way of life and pit bother against bother to sway the results in their favor.

Whether Facebook, Google or Twitter like it or not, they now have a major responsibility to be very clear about what “fake ads” were bought by which foreign entities and contrast them to the facts that are known so that the American Public can see how they have been duped. Just as importantly, any social network that helped spread fake stories needs to own up to this in a big way and start putting key measures in place to screen their ads in the future and make sure this does not happen again.

Of course, this gets right to the heart of each of these company’s business models, which is almost exclusively based on ad revenue. A recent Guardian story laid out Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s predicament given their business model and why they are under such serious scrutiny by US Govt. officials now. Taking Fake Ads may be profitable but not very responsible and that has to be corrected. For Zuckerberg and Facebook, along with Google and Twitter, ads are at the heart of these distribution mediums, and they need to get serious about educating people about what was said in these fake ads and identify who bought them in detail. Then put in safeguards to make sure this does not happen in the future.

“Fortunately, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, has called for the ads to be released publicly. Schiff has been working with Facebook to find a way to make that happen.The American people deserve to see the ways that the Russian intelligence services manipulated and took advantage of online platforms to stoke and amplify social and political tensions,” Schiff said.”

These ads need to be released soon and with it very clear descriptions of who was behind them and where possible, tie their motives to the ad’s message. This needs to be done soon so that by the time our next election happens in 2018, this does not happen again.