Op-Ed: How you can fight Russia's plans to troll Americans during Campaign 2020 (via latimesopinion)
The Russians don’t particularly care about the details of our social and political issues when they are trolling Americans. Their focus is to gin people up to be against one another regardless of their identity or political beliefs. That’s why Russia tries to infiltrate groups of both Black Lives Matter and white nationalists online.
We don’t know if these efforts are working, but we believe Russia is trying to divide U.S. society by seeding extremist views. And the current political environment, coupled with the nature of social media, makes combatting these efforts a bit tricky. Short, shareable content is the currency of social networks — and it does not naturally promote nuanced conversations. Micro-targeting makes it easy to feed people customized content based on what they already like, which enables manufactured content to get a foothold with the right audience and go viral more quickly.Everyone has the opportunity to fight Russian efforts to drive U.S. citizens to extremes before the November election.
Most importantly, users could be more careful about what information they share online. Don’t forward content from unknown sources. Don’t post content that you have not fact-checked. Be aware that even a humorous meme may have an underlying dark goal — to make you think less of another group. Americans are less likely to have their emotions manipulated if they are aware that manipulation is the goal. Behind the veil of extreme positions are groups of people who may well have much in common. It’s important to recognize that disinformation efforts targeted at emotional beliefs could furtherMarek N. Posard is a military sociologist, Jim Marrone is an associate economist and Todd Helmus is a senior behavioral scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Rand Corp.
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