UK election suggests disinformation spread by politicians may be a bigger threat in 2020 than Russians or 'deepfakes.'
indicates that domestic actors could be more of a threat in next year’s U.S. presidential contest, experts say.
There was one example of foreign interference when a document leaked by known Russian accounts on Reddit was used by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to criticize the government at a press conference. This document was actually leaked back in May, and reported on, but only came to prominence when Corbyn produced it in front of cameras. It’s also worth noting that to date, the validity of this document has not been questioned.
A handout picture taken and released by the UK Parliament in London on December 17, 2019, shows Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at the dispatch box in the House of Commons in London, during the first sitting of Parliament since the general election. Rentoul claims that the reaction was overblown, in particular to the Conservative Party rebranding its Twitter account as a fact-checking operations during the first leader’s debate. “That Tory press account on Twitter has got fewer followers than I've got and yet it became a huge story. I don't I don't believe a single person in the entire country was taken in by that,” he said.
He argues that these kind of blatant deceptive tactics, particularly on this scale, had not been seen before. The three main differences Moy cites are: that politicians can now message voters directly via social media, thereby avoiding the checks and balances carried out by traditional media; the messages can now be personalized and hyper-targeted towards a very specific audience; and lastly, there is very little transparency about who pays for these ads or accountability for their content.
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