“Remember,” he told a crowd in 2018, “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” – President Trump
And You Shall Know the Truth, and the Truth Shall Make You Free – John 8:32 – KJV
Disinformation
It was already happening, but we didn’t know it. In 2016 the Presidential elections in the United States were influenced and undermined in a way unique to our modern times. Before, we considered social media, Facebook and Twitter in particular, as innocuous ways to keep up with friends, hear about local concerns, and voice opinions. But the private owners of those platforms knew that the “magic” (read profits) was in their ability to gather specific information about each user, and then sell that information to advertisers.
Campaign ads could be “micro-targeted” to the exact views and concerns of individual users. Instead of the “broad-brush” advertising of television, where hundred of thousands of viewers saw the ad, but only a few thousand were the “targeted” market, on Facebook and Twitter there was the ability to hit near one hundred percent. The same ad could be “tweaked” with dozens of variables, to specifically match the thousands of pieces of individual information on file.
But it was more than just ads. It was “news” stories, maybe real, but just as likely created from nothing, to motivate the user towards a particular view or action. Those worried about immigrants were told about grisly crimes, Roman Catholics shown late term abortions, Jews and Christians saw the dangers of Muslims to Israel. They were posted specifically to their news feeds looking like “regular” news stories: true or not, they looked REAL.
Psycho-Engineering
We blamed “troll farms” in Macedonia. We blamed Russian intelligence. We blamed unknown fat men in their parents’ basement. And all of them did play a role.
But we didn’t blame the political campaigns themselves. While professionals scoffed at the amateurs at the Trump Campaign of 2016, in one area they were far beyond everyone else. They learned how to manipulate social media and they were taught by the best. Cambridge Analytica, a pioneer in social media “psycho-engineering,” a company largely owned by American billionaire Robert Mercer and lead by conservative political operative Steve Bannon, became part of the Trump Campaign. And Facebook put their employees side-by-side with the Trump workers.
Facebook, “the referee,” was playing for a team on the field. We know the results of the 2016 election. In a contest decided by such a small margin, everything made a difference.
The Death Star
The Trump Campaign is no longer a bunch of amateurs. Brad Parscale, the leader of the 2016 social media campaign, is now the overall campaign manager. They plan to spend a billion dollars on their social media campaign alone, a billion dollars. It has already begun: thousands of ads, “news stories”, and manipulations went out during the Impeachment trial. If you just watched your social media, and you were a “targeted user”, Trump was clearly exonerated, clearly innocent of any wrongdoing. It really was a “perfect call”.
President Trump understands the strategy: destroy the legitimacy of any news source that doesn’t tell his story. As he said in 2018, …what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening”. Believe what I say, believe what your targeted “feed” shows; ignore the “mainstream media”. Don’t engage in a “national conversation” with “fake news” facts.
A billion dollars: not from Russia, or Macedonia, or from the basement. A billion dollars of social media manipulation from the fourteenth floor of an office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia. Money directed not just to get your vote, but also to keep those who would vote for the opponent to stay home. A fortune directed to persuade, but also to confuse and deny, muddying the discourse.
By the way, Brad Parscale won’t be the only social media manipulator in 2020. The Bloomberg campaign’s “Hawkfish” operation is spending millions of dollars to try to match Trump’s efforts. Even if Bloomberg himself fails to win the Democratic nomination, he promises that infrastructure will be available to the winner.
The Truth
It won’t just be memes and ads. It will be comments, stories, and this year, texts. You have to sign up to get “mass” texts, but if each text is sent out by a single “send” button, then there are no controls. Texts will arrive; looking like it’s from a friend, just a conversation about “the news” of the day. But, of course, it won’t be “the news,” it will be whatever the campaign wants you to know, to think, and to do.
We will all know that it’s happening. But when we see it, in texts, on Facebook, on Twitter, and through all our other media, we will begin to question what “the truth” really is. Repetition will make fake seem real, false seem true, wrong seem right.
Maybe someday we will regulate social media. But if our twenty-four hour news networks are an example of regulation, that won’t help the problem. And meanwhile our data will continue to be collected, a little piece at a time, so that the message is honed to exactly influence – you.
The definitive Atlantic Magazine Article on Parscale and the Trump Social Media Campaign – The Atlantic – by McKay Coppins
More Information about Bloomberg and Hawkfish – CNBC
