Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020
Nina Jankowicz, an expert on Russian misinformation, says despite repeated warnings of Russian behavior in the 2020 election, Washington has largely shrugged it off.
The shadow of fake news and social media hoaxes has hung over American politics since the 2016 election, when a Kremlin influence campaign went to work in support of Donald Trump.
The years since have been filled with warnings that Russia would be back at it in 2020. As recently as this month, Facebook and Twitter warned of Russian disinformation aimed at propping up the president's reelection.
But the U.S. government's response has been to pass the responsiblity of combating the disinformation to social media companies, according to Nina Jankowicz, an expert on Russian disinformation.
This article is a good reminder that just because Facebook does press-friendly announcements of takedowns of malicious networks from time to time, there is no real mechanism to gauge how much of a grip the company has on its own infinitely vast platform. https://t.co/tdAvuRRDUb
— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) September 14, 2020
"It's already too late for massive action on behalf of the government," Jankowicz told NPR in August. "It's up to each of us ahead of the election to be really vigilant about the information we're consuming."
GUEST
Nina Jankowicz, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, disinformation fellow; author of “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News and the Future of Conflict” (@wiczipedia)
