Foreign bots meddle in US midterms, criticism of the Qatar World Cup is ‘Orientalist,’ and exploiting the data void
Boasting on VK the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted to having interfered and continuing to interfere in the U.S elections. A day before the U.S. goes to the polls, Prigozhin, long suspected of having links to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll factory, gleefully claimed, “We will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.”
On cue, various mainstream news organizations in the U.S. have been reporting on Russian efforts to sow discord before the midterms. Voting day, of course, is today and Russian bots have been reactivated in part to persuade Republican voters to register their anger at the United States’ expensive involvement in Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression.
Since 2016, it has been apparent that U.S. elections are vulnerable to foreign manipulation. New research from the Election Integrity Partnership shows that Twitter recently disrupted five Chinese and Iranian-linked networks that similarly sought to sow disagreement and division online, with bots amplifying talking points on both the right and the left.
The question in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and his decision to slash staff numbers by half is: Can Twitter continue to effectively disrupt such election-related disinformation? Already Twitter has had to postpone its plans to roll out its “blue tick” verification check marks to anyone willing to pay around $8 a month until after the midterm elections.