I really don't get this whole Russian interference moral panic. Like sure, maybe there are some people paid by foreign governments to target people on social media, but at the point people are susceptible to that they're already so addled by other factors it's basically irrelevant surely? I feel like I must be missing something obvious?<p>For instance here in the UK there's a huge amount of pearl clutching about Russian disinformation leading to the vote to leave the EU (Brexit). But I really don't believe some older folks saw a few adverts on Facebook and that was it. Radicalisation, such as it is, set in decades before through a news media that was overwhelmingly anti EU, incredibly biased to the point of being propaganda and often with no basis in fact.<p>The idea some Russian millenials in a St Petersburg basement lead to Brexit, or Trump, or whatever else they're being blamed for now seems utterly fanciful. Radicalisation for these people set in long before any of this and it was bought in the shop as a newspaper or delivered as part of your cable package.
> “To be very clear, there is no similar operation going on anywhere in the world,” said Johannes Bahrke, a spokesman for the European Commission.<p>The general idea of spotting and analyzing ongoing disinformation campaigns seems similar to the Taiwanese system that was recently discussed on HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20083829" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20083829</a><p>That also includes a strategy of responding to detected campaigns before they go viral by issuing counter-statements. The EU might want to do something similar.
One of the biggest issues with any system is to stop spread of false information. All social networking platforms are designed to give importance to viral content so they can get opportunity to monetizing these things. Most likely by the time they figured out that there is something wrong with the content its already been exposed to the people.
The first thing the EU should do is ban political contributions from non-Europeans, the way the US does for non-US-persons. Unfortunately this is not within the remit of the EU, however, and can only be undertaken by member states.
In the country in which I live, what I fear the most is Brussels meddling in the democractic process. Although an immigrant, I have become very attached to the institutions and culture of my host country. Every move closer to the EU, of which we are not a member, menaces those institutions. Yet Brussels has no problem financing NGOs, articles, 'economic research' etc. that want just that. Some are known, yet for others, the source is quite opaque.
It's incredible that The New York Times continues to chase the Russian troll story about election interference but not once mention that Google executives were recently caught saying that they will not allow another Trump "situation" and they plan to actively manipulate search and news results to make that happen.<p>Google has <i>so much more</i> leverage than any "troll" yet doesn't even get a passing mention because The New York Times and Google agree on which political party they'd like to see win the 2020 election.
I dont know, the idea that people even cared for EU elections sounds ludicrous. I mean they completely ignored the result in the selection of the new EU leading person and nobody cares.