The impact of disinformation and inauthentic behavior on social media platforms has made a significant impact on political discourse and the integrity of democratic elections worldwide. Governments, candidate campaigns, and other political groups can affect this malicious behavior through a variety of providers and proxies, ranging from official agencies tasked with the creation and dissemination of propaganda, to campaign staff and volunteers, or quasi-criminal consultants.
The focus of today’s presentation will be on the growing “disinformation for hire” ecosystem that can provide disinformation services to companies or individuals at scale. I will first discuss the general trends we are seeing in the build up this industry. For example, so-called gray and black PR companies exist in varying forms around the world. They can often take the shape of independent consultants or entities offering social media marketing (SMM) services. The rise of professional marketing enterprises devoted to black PR represents a troubling trend in some regions, with the services becoming more accessible and turn-key – especially regarding inauthentic amplification. Disinformation for profit allows digital “marketing” experts and teams to hone their skills and gain experience from a variety of different use cases. They become competent in an array of digital platforms and mediums and follow the ongoing development and evolution of controls in order to stay ahead. They are not confined to activity within only a single political election cycle allowing for a growing professionalization of manipulating digital tools to create, coordinate, and amplify inauthentic content.
This presentation will also examine the results of two investigations I conducted on two US-based companies that have employed the use of disinformation for hire services to demonstrate the skills, tactics, and impact of the growth of that industry. The first case study will be about a soon to be released investigation of a former US media executive who created his own digital media network and employed some of the same foreign content writers that ran “fake news” websites aimed at the 2016 presidential elections. The second case study will look at another not yet released investigation in which a right-wing news site verified by Facebook employed a Vietnam-based group to conduct disinformation-like services to promote the outlet on social media.