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Event description

A former Facebook data scientist on the company’s integrity team, Sophie Zhang, recently identified that Facebook wasn’t paying enough attention to coordinated disinformation networks. This included a loophole in Facebook policies linked to creation of unlimited amounts of fake “pages” which, unlike user profiles, don’t have to correspond to an actual person – but could still like, comment on, react to, and share content. 

This challenge of countering bot swarms (swarms of automated programs that are not really humans and could potentially draw away and deny system resources or attention from actual humans) and mass false accounts is not a new phenomenon – rather this challenge is something that initially only nation-states could do online since the start of the 2010 and, as tech has become democratized, individuals now in 2021 can do with ease. Other social media platforms face similar challenges. 

For example, the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch for example finds that only 12 prominent anti-vaccine leaders are responsible for about two-thirds of anti-vaccine content on major social media sites. Such challenges have been growing since the mid 2010s – when most of the general public were unaware of how bot swarms could amplify a few human individuals to look and appear like a much larger number of people. Nowadays the public is growing increasing away of the disproportionate possibilities where a few people can recruit millions of human members of the public and indoctrinate them with fear and doubt. These bot-human hybrids (also known by researchers as “cyborgs”) can deny system resources or attention from actual humans and pose challenges for public and private organizations alike. 

Join us for a two-part special GeoTech Hour series. On Wednesday 21 April – the first part I of this special GeoTech Hour series will focus on the just how the democratization of technologies has made these issues a system issue that requires “whole of society” solutions and strategies – and assemble individuals who have spent the last decade working on different parts of the challenges, both on the defense and offense side of employing tech to counter coordinated inauthentic behavior. 

Then on Wednesday 28 April – the second part II of this special GeoTech Hour series – we will continue the conversation focusing on new data and technological solutions to identify bot swarms and mass false accounts that are only now possible in this digital arms race as well as the importance of recognize at the end of this day these are challenges of human belief and perceptions of media-mediated reality. The second GeoTech Hour also will consider novel strategies to counter what, up until now, has mostly been a defensive posture to those who would spread coordinated inauthentic behavior that deny system resources or attention from actual humans online.

Featuring

Pablo Breuer
Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council

Alex Ruiz
Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council

Sara-Jayne Terp
Nonresident Senior Fellow, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council

Hosted by

David Bray
Director, GeoTech Center
Atlantic Council