Invisible Rulers - in praise of Renée DiResta and the Stanford Internet Observatory

2024 Book #49 - Invisible Rulers - by Renee Diresta.

I was recently shocked and saddened to read the Washington Post story that the Stanford Internet Observatory had collapsed under the pressure of hostile lawsuits from the spreaders of misinformation who felt aggrieved that they were being called out and by the politicians who chose to believe them. While it may be too late to help the Observatory, which I greatly respect, I thought the least I could do to show Renée DiResta some support was to read her book. What a fantastic choice!

TL;DR? Renée DiResta is a hero in the fight against disinformation along the lines of Chris Krebs and CISA. Read her book. You will learn things you could use!

I've read several Disinformation and Propaganda books in the past few years, including Thomas Rid's "Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare" (as well as Rid's "Cyber War Will Not Take Place" and "War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age") and Peter Pomerantsev's "This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality" and Bilyana Lilly's "Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West." Many of these books start with describing our current social media state as a continuation of the Cold War. DiResta's book is quite different and that begins with her "awakening story." As a mother in California, DiResta was appalled by the anti-vax movement that was leading otherwise non-insane Californians to refuse to vaccinate their children. Trying to be a voice of reason against this crowd, which had caused the greatest American Measles outbreak in the 21st century, DiResta quickly learned that the opposition was not in the mood for a logical discussion. She was vilified, attacked, threatened, and doxed and her own children's photos used in Memes against her. A great introduction to today's Social Media Wars!

While DiResta does discuss the role of foreign governments and their troll armies (the famous Russian IRA and China's Wolf Warriors) late in the book, most of it is about how Propaganda works and how is works in today's social media environment. For this, she brings many classic works to the forefront including Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent." Back to the early 20th century and before, it was clear that the media could "guide" people to know what issues were important, and how America should think about these issues. While there are bots and troll armies, a major concern in today's world is that Influencers are paid by their platforms to bring in a larger audience and to captivate their attention longer. DiResta tells us about five categories of influencers: Entertainers, Explainers, Besties, Idols, and Gurus -- but regardless of the type, the goal is ENGAGEMENT and as Influencers match their topics to their paycheck, they quickly learn that boosting controversial and polarizing points of view is a great way to increase their personal wealth. DiResta proposes a Trinity: Influencer + Algorithm + Crowd and gives some fascinating case studies where outright lies are spread, partly by influencers wanting to get eyeball$, and partly by algorithms that float the most-viewed content to the top of our feeds. The crowds then help to spread that content even further by sharing and the algorithms respond to that, creating disinformation storms. She tells a fantastic allegorical story about a guitarist who starts a small YouTube broadcast to share his music. When he strays into a bit of polarized political speech, engagement skyrockets, and eventually his channel becomes primarily about him sharing his thoughts on hot button topics, with a bit of music thrown in. It wasn't his passion, but it pays much better!

After that fantastic introduction, Part II of the book dives deeply into the propaganda around two case studies: "The Big Steal" and COVID. Examining the first we see that Trump's insistence that the election was stolen, becomes a platform where "everyday people" could become social media (and mainstream media) heroes/villains of the day (what DiResta calls The Main Character) by sharing their own election fraud theories. The popularity that one could gain by sharing a photo of a box of discarded mail created a storm that could lead to better exposure than an Influencer-wannabe could ever dream of! In the COVID chapter, DiResta uses the topic to illustrate all of her Part I points. One topic that caught my eye, because it is a theme that we have seen repeatedly in my lab, is discussed -- what we learned to call "Financially Motivated influence Operations" or FMOs. Similar to the online monetization, people selling quack "cures" for COVID enriched themselves by sewing controversy and then offering their product as a solution. Many conspiracy theories, including those around COVID, have waves of related products being sold as "the solution" or in some cases just "censored information." (There are still individuals spreading false 9/11 conspiracy theories and earning their living by selling their DVDs and books of things "the government doesn't want you to know.")

The book concludes with two final chapters, "The Fantasy Industrial Complex" about a coordinated attack against the EIP and the other a solid "call to action" chapter called "The Path Forward." The first shares DiResta's own battle as she is attacked as part of a mythical "Censorship Industrial Complex" brought by one of the pseudo-journalists given access to Twitter after Elon Musk's takeover. Michael Benz and his one man show the Foundation for Freedom Online use the Twitter Files to go after DiResta and other researchers who formed the Election Integrity Partnership, a group of researchers who helped to fact check viral posts and raise awareness of them to social media companies. DiResta: "There's a term for the kind of material the FFO and the network boosted: bullshit." The FFO's attack led all the way to the Supreme Court as they spread their lies in briefs in the case "Missouri v. Biden" where Missouri, Louisiana, and several individuals bring suit against the government for "censoring" them. The Supreme Court found they had no standing to bring the case - but the testimony and briefings are FASCINATING, delaying my finishing of this book by a full two days. Especially the 700 page Brian Scully deposition about CISA's MDM team (MDM = Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information). It is my sincere hope that the Stanford Internet Observatory finds a way to continue their work, but this chapter truly shows the extent to which their enemies have attacked. In response to a Washington Post article announcing their closure, Stanford shared an "Update on the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO)" post on 17JUN2024. They need financial assistance.

The Path Forward shares a few more historical examples of things that have been used in the past, including Ronald Reagan's Active Measures Working Group that used the 'RAP' approach - Report - Analyze - Publicize and the much earlier Institute for Propaganda Analysis, founded in 1937, which argued that neither suppression nor counter-propaganda are an adequate response, but that we must educate the public to be able to RECOGNIZE propaganda.

One personal desire - DiResta made us aware that while in the US, Twitter access such as my lab enjoyed for a decade, now costs $42,000 per month, in the EU article 40 of the Digital Services Act states that researchers "vetted by national public authorities shall be given privileged access to data on the design and functioning of platforms' services that are necessary to conduct research on the societal impact of platforms." I'd LOVE to see that in the US!

If this book note sounded like it was intended to praise Renee DiResta and the fabulous work of she and her Stanford Internet Observatory colleagues such as Alex Stamos and the earlier champion of free and fair elections, CISA's Chris Krebs , and the continued work of CISA under the guidance of Jen Easterly then congratulations, dear reader, you were paying attention! Now go buy the book!