Social Media Does Not Look Good in Hearings

Wired has a good article on the hearings going on right now on Russian manipulation of social media still going on today.  The Russians have not stopped manipulation of US perceptions in social issues being discussed on social media.  Some of their observations don't track well with what I know of Russian Intelligence Services. 

It is clear Congress wants to blame the Russians for these attacks, citing the numbers and types of ads and social contacts made for the purpose of disruption more than political influence.  But that may not be such a good idea, since it is unlikely that the Russians are the only ones trying to influence election results by such nefarious means.  Focusing on the Russians, and the techniques used in the last election is not going to be very useful in finding and erasing similar attempts in the future.  This is like fighting the next war with the methods of the previous one.  As slow as the Russians have been to change their attack vectors and launch points, they will eventually get around to using something other than the Internet Research Agency to run these campaigns, and switch targets to some lesser known organizations.  Facebook says they found 370 accounts from that one agency, but said little about the other two that were involved.  They certainly won't pay in rubles anymore either. 

Terms of Service for the social media giants did not address these types of campaigns.  This is the "not my problem" solution that was adopted by television and radio before self-censorship evolved.  Given the state of those two mediums today, you might not know what self-censorship is.    There needs to be a lot more conversation about this because I'm not sure they are responsible for the content of their media, nor would we like the system that allowed them to control that content.  This goes to Diane Feinstein's comment that if social media "doesn't control its own misuse, then we will."  That is a pipe dream that looks good in a video clip but has no chance of actually happening. 

What needs to be done is to allow the social media to do what they do and stop the Russians from using them to work their magic.  That is a role of intelligence operation(s) that undermine the capacity and function of these social media campaigns and make them pay for their continued operations.  Let social media do what they do, and intelligence services do the rest.