Jan 9: Dr Emma Briant on Twitter Files & the understanding foreign influence
Thread published on December 24, 2022.
Who is Dr Emma Briant…
Dr. Emma L Briant specializes in researching propaganda, information warfare and political communication. She is most interested in the rapid evolution of contemporary propaganda, its governance and its implications for democracy, security, inequality and human rights.
Dr Briant analyzed the coordination and increasing impacts of the digitalization of defense propaganda for her book Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change (Manchester University Press, 2015). She spent 11 years researching SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica and was central in revealing their wrongdoing in 2018 – this research formed the basis for important evidence submitted to the UK Parliament, US Congressional Committees and Testimony for the European Parliament among other public inquiries.
Dr Emma Briant: Understanding Foreign Influence
Fascinating.
It seems to have dawned on @mtaibbi that foreign influence might involve influence of domestic audiences being targeted and influenced by foreigners.
In my new book chapter coming out next year I explain the difficulties governments, researchers and platforms can face in determining what is foreign and domestic. Platforms often know better than governments here and need to help determine this.
There needs to be more information and transparency to ensure covert actors can’t hide their activities and manipulate the platforms.
A large part of that needs to be about regulating so that platforms are simply not constructed as an influence operations architecture designed to maximise hidden surveillance-driven influence operations by ANY online actor.
Unfortunately under Elon Musk this seems to be the dominant driver of design, more than ever before.
Further to this I’d be interested to know, are government agencies simply being ignored by Elon’s Twitter? What happens if there’s a major terrorist incident planned and the terrorists’ agenda and manifesto amplified on the platform? Is Twitter going to refuse to look into potentially foreign influence operations and spreading weaponised incitement? Will it now ignore emails from the CIA or FBI? What’s the current policy? Has the team for investigation of foreign influence been totally disbanded?
Oh and just a few additional questions here about whether #Twitterfiles might raise issues with Twitter’s commitments within the law.
#Twitterfiles really is a lesson on how important it is that information is made available to critics and analysts who actually understand what they are looking at. Not fed deliberately to a bunch of folks with a preformed agenda.
Further reading…
Shiona McCallum, Meta settles Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725m- BBC News
The long-running dispute accused the social media giant of allowing third parties, including the British firm, to access Facebook users' personal data.
The proposed sum is the largest in a US data privacy class action, lawyers say.
Meta, which did not admit wrongdoing, said it had "revamped" its approach to privacy over the past three years.
The harvesting of Facebook users' personal information by third-party apps was at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, exposed in 2018.
The consulting firm, now defunct, worked for Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign in 2016, and used personal information from millions of US Facebook accounts for the purposes of voter profiling and targeting.
The firm obtained that information without users' consent from a researcher who had been allowed by Facebook to deploy an app on the platform which harvested data from millions of its users.
Facebook believes the data of up to 87 million people was improperly shared with the political consultancy.
The scandal prompted government investigations into Facebook's privacy practices, leading to lawsuits and a high-profile US congressional hearing in which Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg was questioned.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $5bn to resolve a Federal Trade Commission probe into its privacy practices.
Dr Emma Briant- Maven of Persuasion
Please jump onto Dr Briant’s website for further articles, studies and testimony regarding the influence industry and how it works.
Emma L Briant (2021) ‘Briant: Canadian military’s bungled propaganda campaigns should be a lesson across NATO‘ in Ottawa Citizen.
Emma L Briant (2021) ‘The Grim Consequences of a Misleading Study on Disinformation‘ in Wired.
Chernobrov, D & Briant, E (2021) Why language matters in the ‘disinformation’ age’ in PoliticsBlog.ac.uk
Emma L Briant (September 2018) ‘Building a stronger and more secure democracy in a digital age’ A Response to Recent Interim Reports and Proposals, published by Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Inquiry into Fake News: UK Parliament.
Emma L Briant (June 2018) ‘Evidence for the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group’, published by US Senate Judiciary Committee, discussed at hearing on: Cambridge Analytica and the Future of Data Privacy.