Social networks’ features — not their bugs — make US democracy vulnerable
His proposals include legal standards to fight online disinformation and a cyber-security agency, separate from law enforcement
US elections are threatening to become the "World Cup of information warfare, in which US adversaries and allies battle to impose their various interests on the American electorate." This powerful statement comes from a knowledgeable source: Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, who left the company this month. Stamos suggested ways to avoid this dystopian future in a post for the blog Lawfare. He confessed that his "personal responsibility for the failures of 2016 continues to weigh" on him. But he hasn’t been able to strike enough distance from Facebook to admit that it’s social networks’ key features, not their security bugs, that are responsible for making US democracy and its marketplace of ideas vulnerable to dishonest, unscrupulous actors, both foreign and domestic. His proposals include legal standards to fight online disinformation and a cyber-security agency, separate from law enforcement or the intelligence agencies, that would be focused on defending agai...
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