How Should We Respond to Foreign Attempts at Sowing Discord and Violence

What? That's silly. I'm pretty sure that almost no one,
democrats included, believes what you just suggested.

-Meta

 

There is a big difference between a Russian citizen posting an opinion on Twitter,
and the Russian government setting up hundreds of thousands of fake accounts
in order to engage in a concerted campaign to divide Americans and get them to
kill each-other. To my knowledge, Twitter has not placed a ban on Russians in general.

-Meta

 

Can you explain further?
What exactly do you mean by that?
Are you saying we need to get rid of taxes and or things like medicare and social security??
And if so, how exactly do you figure getting rid of those things will prevent violence???

-Meta

 

No one said that.
But they do appear to be the primary culprit as of late.

-Meta

 

Idk, that was your suggestion wasn't it. Not mine...

-Meta

 

Assuming they aren't creating hundreds of thousands of fake accounts as part of some covert foreign effort and or inciting violence, then no, and why would I? Unlike some people, I actually pride myself on being relatively non-partisan and on being open to any and all civil discourse even with those whom I disagree with. BTW, if you say that you too do not have a problem with people posting things on Twitter, why does it seem as if you keep suggesting that we need to ban certain Twitter accounts simply for their beliefs and or country of origin???

-Meta

 

Ah gotcha, and yeah, that makes perfect sense!

-Meta

 

Here's an updated list of the ideas so far.
I kind of skimmed quickly through most of the posts this time,
a lot of them being off-topic, so if I missed anything, let me know.
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-discord-and-violence.543728/#post-1069748167

Ideas so far:

-Censor conservatives and or liberals from social media
-Have the AG use the Espionage Act of 1917 with more vigor
-Discontinue screwing around in foreign nations ourselves
-Get rid of our CIA
-Deal with the situation as a Unified Collective
-Officially make it espionage for a foreign entity to pay for anything that influences US elections
-Charge any US citizens caught helping or facilitating foreign influence efforts as spies
-Revoke any favored tax status for 5 years of any organization which employs agitators
-Foreign actors caught disrupting our society should be denied access to our markets and financial institutions
-Do a better job educating people about our country and how it is designed to work
-Come up with a digital solution that can identify attempts by foreign elements to commit cyber crimes
-Have Government and Private Social Media Work Together to Expose Foreign Attempts at Sowing Discord and Violence
-Ban all Foreign Access to American Social Media During Election Time​

 

I disagree, but I've added your suggestion to the list.

-Meta

 

Ideas so far:

-Censor conservatives and or liberals from social media
-Have the AG use the Espionage Act of 1917 with more vigor
-Discontinue screwing around in foreign nations ourselves
-Get rid of our CIA
-Deal with the situation as a Unified Collective
-Officially make it espionage for a foreign entity to pay for anything that influences US elections
-Charge any US citizens caught helping or facilitating foreign influence efforts as spies
-Revoke any favored tax status for 5 years of any organization which employs agitators
-Foreign actors caught disrupting our society should be denied access to our markets and financial institutions
-Do a better job educating people about our country and how it is designed to work
-Come up with a digital solution that can identify attempts by foreign elements to commit cyber crimes
-Have Government and Private Social Media Work Together to Expose Foreign Attempts at Sowing Discord and Violence
-Ban all Foreign Access to American Social Media During Election Time​

 

Do you have any alternative solutions which aren't already in the list?
Or are you of the opinion that foreign governments trying to divide us
and get us to hate attack and kill each-other through subversive means
isn't really an issue?

-Meta

 

Not really, but if you don't want to tell me what it is you mean,
that's OK, I'm not going to try and force you to.

-Meta

 

Thing is, this sort of thing can kill us. It can kill us as a country, from a functional and civility standpoint,
and it can obviously lead to the deaths of individual citizens as has already been demonstrated.

On that note, I guess its about time I go ahead and contribute a few solution ideas myself.
So here's what I think...

 

...actually, some of the stuff that I was going to suggest has already been suggested by other members.
But I'll walk you guys through my thought process here so that you can understand.

My thinking here is that there are multiple different stages between in which someone in our country
can go from being a model citizen, to a radicalized extremist, to someone who actually goes out and commits violence.
And there are multiple different methods that the Russians and other foreign governments use at various stages
in order to take advantage of division and push us along the path towards violence and chaos.

What I think, is that we should be taking a close look at each of these stages and methods,
and thinking about what things we could do at each spot in order to disrupt Russian efforts,
and prevent people getting to that next stage on the road to violence.

-Meta

 

I believe that the first stage in the game, from the Russian government's perspective,
is to take divisions which already exist within our country, and expand those divisions
further to be much wider than what they would be otherwise.

It seems that some of the ways they try to do this, is firstly by simply attempting to
make issues which we are more divided on than others, to be bigger parts of our
national conversation, even if the issue in question isn't necessarily one we ourselves
think is supper important compared to others. They simply talk about such issues,
and try to get us to pay more attention to them, and less attention to issues where
we might be more likely to agree. Occasionally, this will involve spamming of a particular topic.
Also the spreading of fake information is often used here to bolster preexisting conceptions
and or to get folks riled up and emotional so that they might become more subject to fits of passion.

Secondly, while pretending to be us, they, or at least some of them, then take very extreme positions on these issues. They impersonate one side or the other, and try to get the alternate side to view their opposition as irrational and not worth discussing things with. See, if people engage in actual civil debate, they are more likely to find agreement on some things and lesson the divide between them even if they do not ever come to agree 100%. Russian agents do not appear to want such a thing to happen though. So they take extreme positions that they know many people on one side will find completely untenable and, confident that few on the side they are impersonating will call them out, they then dogmatically stick to those positions, in the hopes that the sides will eventually give up attempting to reason with each-other.

Lastly at this stage, they try to instill hatred by being belligerent, insulting, and just generally as obnoxious as they can get away with towards people on the opposite side of the one that they impersonate. They are generally friendlier towards those on the side they're impersonating, but may occasionally chastise individuals who try to find common ground with their opposition or who hold/share views which aren't in line with that side's general stances. It is exactly this sort of thing which leads to tribalism, and over time can cause some members of the group to become more extreme, even radicalized, as they vie to remain in good standing with the group they most identify with and avoid and or ever increasingly condemn the perceived incivility of the other.

Now, even knowing these tactics, its actually still kind of difficult to tell just at a glance whether or not the person you're communicating with online is in actuality a foreign agent, because unfortunately there are likely a lot of extremist Americans who are doing a lot of the exact same things... some of them completely of their own volition and others, as previously mentioned, due to being coerced by Russian agents in some way or another. Russia's goal is thusly to simply amplify the behaviors as much as possible. I also believe that some amount of automation is used, particularly when it comes to the spam, in addition to the often cited so-called "troll farms".

-Meta