The interference in voting is a funny one for me. There was a guy from the Statesman on BBC yesterday who said the Scottish referendum was interfered with by the Russians (or tried) but people had such a strong view of stay or leave that it did not work in the slightest. Thats not playing down the impact or potential impact just an interesting titbit.
The difficulty with social media and influence on democracy is that be it Russia, news outlet, blogger or individual person its hard to stop miss information and someone can start a rumour or a false hood as a individual as effectively as a country and by the end of the day it can be spread by famous people and gather pace, how do you stop that?
I see it all the time when famous people with 100s of Thousands of followers have shared a video or a picture to drive a political point only for it to be found wrong, be it by year or circumstance etc. There were loads flying about when BLM hit its heights recently where people were sharing videos with a false explanation, these things can easily cause peoples to have a clear POV based on what they have seen.
So although this Russia and press stuff is a problem I do believe as humans we have a few barriers to protect us which include our own mind and our own ability to research extensively what we read to make up or our minds. Its like a tipster on twitter telling me a certain horse is going to win a race, to I believe them? Or do I have the ability to read the form, choose how much I want to bet, research the tipster and ultimately decide on my own with the resources I have it I want to have a bet.
One of the issues the human races treating social media in a way you don't every day life. I worked with a famous Canadian tech head and he said posting pictures of your kids on the web is the same as putting them on lamposts for randoms to see, you do one but not the other and he is right. And information works where if you read it on twitter from BOB who you dont know you believe but if he came up to you on the street and said it you would laugh it off. So alot of this is on the public, not the government to deal with, we have a personal responsibility that I have noticed recently people want to take less responsibility of and hand over to the government so there is some blame to attach.
The Government can do more, all governments can, however people do need to take more personal responsibility for things that affect them, like health, lifestyle, money, work, crime etc etc
