McCain Institute’s Disinformation Experts Argue For Controlling Online Speech
By Staff Reporter |
The McCain Institute played host to several “disinformation experts” in Phoenix last week, where they discussed how best to control free speech online.
These experts, Bret Schafer and Rachael Dean Wilson, hail from Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund.
Schafer created and manages Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russia, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats, and government officials. Wilson was the communications director and advisor to the late John McCain.
Schafer’s Hamilton 2.0 is a continuation of his original project within Alliance For Securing Democracy, Hamilton 68, which culled data from major social media companies to identify content similarities between foreign adversaries and Americans — X when it was “Twitter” prior to Elon Musk’s buyout, Facebook, and Instagram — shortly after Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017. Musk paywalled X’s application programming interface, stymieing Schafer’s data stream.
Schafer was part of investigations into practices by social media companies that were weaponizing the government against right-wing citizens.
During last Thursday’s panel, Schafer said that an individual from Meta (Facebook) told him that they began to implement more “guardrails” following the Christchurch shooting, since the shooter used the company’s live-stream function, “Facebook Live,” to film and publish the attack. Schafer said that artificial intelligence (AI) was the “reverse” of efforts to implement guardrails, and expressed concern that there should be greater limitations on “problematic” online speech.
“I think the concern is this pollution in the information space, so if somebody has a narrative that’s particularly problematic it now seems as if it’s coming from 50, 100, 200,000 different sources and it can kind of drown out competing voices who are not using manipulated information to get their message out,” said Schafer.
Schafer advocated for social media companies to reduce the spread of content not originating from certain officials or media outlets. He recalled how those technology companies did some of this during the 2020 election. Schafer lamented that public perception of social media companies controlling content reach and visibility became “politicized” and controversial.
“The only way to make sure the people who genuinely want to actually access accurate information […] is for [social media companies] to make some decisions about what is and is not quality information,” said Schafer. “That has become politicized in ways that I think are really problematic so I think we do need to pressure the companies to the various mechanisms we can: advertisers, everything else to ensure at least around elections that they are taking an active role in making decisions about what should be prioritized because if it’s just left up to the algorithms we’re not going to see the good information surface at the top.”
Wilson agreed. She added that officials could rely on online influencers to spread their information. Combined with Schafer’s proposal of increasing and prioritizing reach for certain information from certain officials and experts, that may mean influencers would be incentivized to spread certain information in order to increase their visibility, engagement, and monetization.
“I think getting the influencers to encourage referencing experts is really important,” said Wilson.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes also participated in the panel discussions.
Like the Hamilton initiative, the Alliance for Securing Democracy was founded after Trump took the White House. The organization is led by Laura Thornton, whom the McCain Institute hired in August to serve as senior director of global democracy programs.
Among its team members are David Salvo, former Obama administration foreign service officer within the State Department, and Shanthi Kalathil, former deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for democracy and human rights at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden.
Alliance for Securing Democracy used to publicize its list of advisory members until some time late last year or earlier this year.
As of April 2023, advisory members included:
- Mike Cherthoff, formerly the W. Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary;
- Toomas Ilves, formerly the Estonia president and a World Economic Forum co-chair;
- David Kramer, formerly a McCain Institute senior director and W. Bush administration State Department official;
- Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former staffer for the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations;
- Rick Ledgett, formerly the Obama administration NSA deputy director;
- Mike McFaul, formerly the Obama administration ambassador to Russia;
- Michael Morelll, formerly the Obama administration CIA acting director;
- Ana Palacio, lawyer and formerly European Parliament member;
- John Podesta, formerly Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair and an official for both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
- Mike Rogers, CNN commentator and formerly a GOP congressman, army officer, FBI special agent;
- Marietje Schaake, formerly a European Parliament member;
- Kori Schake, American Enterprise Institute director and formerly employed by the State Department, Defense Department, and White House National Security Council; and,
- Nicole Wong, formerly the Obama administration deputy chief technology officer, Google vice president and deputy general counsel, and Twitter legal director for products.
This week, the McCain Institute announced it had been accepted to be featured in the competitive annual event, South by Southwest.
Last week’s full panel is available here:
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.