On Wednesday, Oct. 21, the FBI announced that operatives from Russia and Iran had targeted American voters with a disinformation campaign, pretending to be members of a far right extremist group and threatening voters to cast ballots for President Donald Trump or they would show up at their homes after the 2020 election.
The FBI said this was not a hack, but rather, operatives from these two countries had obtained publicly available voter information — names, party affiliations, addresses, phone numbers — and then used this to reach out to voters with their empty threats.
While this is the most blatant and startling attempt to sway our election this cycle, it is neither the first nor the largest.
For months, perhaps years, we have seen false and fabricated accounts on social media, some of which are posted by automated bots, others by actual individuals running dozens, perhaps hundreds of fake accounts posting memes, spreading lies and disinformation, and elevating fringe theories across platforms.
Media watchers say that the biggest problem is not conspiracies dreamed up in a coffeehouse in Tabriz, Iran, or born in a dacha in St. Petersburg, Russia, but rather fringe, wacko conspiracies from a slightly unhinged fellow in St. Petersburg, Fla., that foreign agents then amplify, turn into memes or videos, and spread around social media until some fringe pundit picks up as a “news” story on their partisan website, blog, podcast or bulletin board, which then spreads further through organic means or with additional help by the same or other foreign agents.
Some posts sound legit, but are written in such as a way that it’s clearly fake, while others are beyond-the-pale nuts: “If Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi impeaches Trump, Hillary Clinton will automatically become president.” That would be quite a feat because that’s not how the United States’ line of succession works.
“Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are building secret FEMA camps in West Texas to imprison Democrats who vote against them in the midterms.” There ain’t much in West Texas, true, but someone would have noticed a massive camp being built in the middle of nowhere. Where do the construction workers live? Who trucks in the wood and metal supplies?
We routinely have these fake accounts post some of this nonsense material to our news stories on our Facebook page. We take them down and report the fake accounts to Facebook. Some are taken down, some remain.
One such fake account on Facebook on Wednesday, Oct. 22, alleged Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be replaced after the election, and not by running mate Kamala Harris. For “evidence,” the account posted a bad screenshot of an email filed with typos and misspellings from some far right bulletin board.
The person who posted this has an account that consists of a profile picture of a Sedona landscape. Its timeline consists of a few grainy photos of a senior citizen and some children and grandchildren five years ago and a few well-wishes on few birthdays past.
Then this summer, the account suddenly started spreading far right memes, links to fringe news stories complete with hashtags and links more akin to a 25- year-old Russian hacker than the 70-year-old Clarkdale “woman” who built the account.
Clearly, this was a local grandma whose abandoned social media account was hacked and is now a meme factory for Russian trolls.
All these actions aim to disrupt our democracy. Foreign actors want to sow doubt in our election, in our leaders and in fellow Americans. They do this so they can point to sociopolitical strife the United States and tell protesters and democratic activists in Iran or mainland China or Russia that democracy doesn’t work, that republicanism causes chaos, that liberty and freedom aren’t worth the effort and they should just submit to their autocratic regimes.
If you come across this nonsense, don’t reason with the person posting. They don’t care about winning an argument, they just want the chaos. Call them out on their lies and post facts from reputable sources and news sites so other users know the post is fake and report these false accounts.
Trust that your Republican neighbor or Democratic coworker isn’t secretly trying to destroy America or ruin your life. We all want safe communities, reasonable taxes for good public services and government officials who we can trust to be fair and honest. We disagree on some policies about how to get there and how to pay for it. Social media will find ways to purge fakers and liars from their platforms, but until they do, we have to be smart and rely on ourselves.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
