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Lie Machines

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Lie Machines

How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives

Yale UP,

15 Minuten Lesezeit
8 Take-aways
Audio & Text

Was ist drin?

Communications technologies can misinform people and distort their political thinking.

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8

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Powerful leaders around the world, in democracies and autocracies alike, deploy communications technologies as a way to influence people, writes professor Philip N. Howard in this sobering analysis. Individuals, companies and governments leverage algorithms and other computational means to create “lie machines” that spread disinformation for political and ideological purposes. The result? Voters become less capable of making informed and thoughtful political decisions. But, Howard argues, people can fight back, and he offers some ideas on how to do exactly that.

Summary

“Lie machines” use advanced technologies for political purposes.

A lie machine combines communities, organizations and advanced technologies to promulgate falsehoods in service of a political agenda. Lie machines deploy “computational propaganda,” which uses algorithms to create, disseminate and sell disinformation.

Lie machines persuade people that lies are in fact truth; in this way, they alter what people believe is correct and the appropriate responses to significant public issues. They thus undermine individuals’ and institutions’ authority and legitimacy. The lie machines themselves can be massive or modest in size and scale. While authoritarian governments often create and deploy lie machines, democratic regimes use them as well: By 2016, most democratic countries were making use of lie machines to distort people’s views of important public issues. Lie machines are effective, in part because they create false accounts that correspond to the known facts and are therefore believable.

Social media is a particularly effective tool for disseminating disinformation.

About the Author

Philip N. Howard is director of the Oxford Internet Institute and professor of internet studies at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up.

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