“I’ll tell you a secret: Yes, we’ll definitely meddle in the 2020 election.”

The Russian’s lack of guilt in the way they manipulate people through propaganda is astounding. Their tactic of flooding people with false information so they drown in it is startling. They were so effective in the American election that the media at times could not figure out where to look. What they do is smart and merciless to the uninformed. 

Targeting Facebook users was very interesting to me. Like the article mentioned, these users where often older and preferred reiterating what they knew instead of learning new ideas. The Russians took advantage of this and we saw people reposting false memes and information from their private groups. 

It is fascinating that they actually paid trolls to infiltrate innocent people who aren’t literate in technology. We often look to the person who is loudest and clearly the Russians took advantage of that by drowning out the opposition. 

Senator Warren recently ran a Facebook ad that said something along the lines of “Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook endorse Donald Trump.” Underneath, it says that the statement is false, but Facebook doesn’t properly regulate their ads so it was able to run. No wonder Russia was able to infiltrate so smoothly into the everyday lives of many Americans. 

This is why we need to continue to fund the media and support their efforts. The article states that people are a poor judge of what is true and false. They can’t see if something is objective like a journalist can. We need the media to use their resources to definitively say something is true or false. They are struggling to be the gatekeepers we need them to be because of lack of funding.