Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Is Putin using fake news to pull strings in Brexit Britain? BY
It was not supposed to be this way. Social media was meant to boost democracy and transparency and empower individuals.
But now it is becoming clearer by the day that Russia is using giants such as Facebook and Twitter to meddle in UK politics on a scale not previously appreciated.
For months we read about Vladimir Putin’s possible collusion with the Donald Trump campaign.
But closer to home, research by Swansea University found tens of thousands of Russian-based Twitter accounts posted 45,000 messages about Brexit in 48 hours during last year’s referendum.
Another study by the University of Edinburgh found 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency had tried to influence UK politics.
One fake news account stirred up anti-muslim sentiment by tweeting a picture of a woman in a hijab supposedly ignoring the Westminster Bridge attack.
She had, in fact, been seeking help for the victims but by the time that became clear the post had been retweeted 100,000 times.
Today we can reveal that Russian “bots” (automated accounts that can publish multiple tweets) pushed out thousands of messages a day from millionaire Brexiteer Arron Banks’ group Leave.eu.
The Electoral Commission is probing whether he was the “true source” of loans worth £6million to the campaign. He has insisted it was not “funded by Russia”.
But MPS are now questioning how much Kremlin interference may have twisted the vote.
So far the Government has been reluctant to investigate, no doubt fearing it would deepen Tory wounds on Europe.
Others dismiss the claims as a conspiracy theory. There were many reasons people were persuaded to follow then UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s call to vote Leave, ranging from concerns about immigration to the lure of taking back control.
Besides, any misinformation spread by Russia was dwarfed by the biggest piece of fake news of all: the promise of £350million a week for the NHS.
And that was promoted the oldfashioned way with an advert on the side of the bus.
Yet it would have been in ussia’s interest and in keeping with its recent record to disrupt the Brexit vote and June’s election. Putin is waging a new Cold War – this time using 140 characters. Russian troll farms are employed to sow discontent, malign leaders and stir up hatred in the West. Cyber attacks have been launched on the German Parliament, taken a French TV station off air and disrupted elections. All the evidence points to a strategy by Putin to destabilise democracies and break alliances which have stood up to him.
Shadow Culture Minister Liam Byrne says: “Russia got the ideal outcome from the referendum.”
What happened was straight from the “new Russian playbook”. “You fabricate a massive row on Twitter that’s emotional and confrontational. You then put Facebook spend behind it so it is widely shared.”
Many of us were unaware how easily social media can be manipulated.
The big companies know your age, address, education, friends, interests, opinions and pastimes and algorithms target advertising directly at you. And it’s no more difficult for rogue organisations to identify your political leanings.
The US is introducing a rule that political material on social media should carry the name of the organisation behind it.
And MPS here are calling for a complete overhaul of election law to bring it up to date with advances in technology.
At the moment the Electoral Commission does not have powers to probe social media spending by foreign countries or individuals.
Tory MP Damian Collins, who heads the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, says Russia’s actions are “one of the genuine threats to our democracy”.
He wants Facebook and Twitter to give his committee lists of Russian-backed accounts and any evidence Kremlin-backed organisations targeted referendum voters.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is also launching an inquiry.
Labour MPS are calling for a wider investigation similar to American special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the links between Russia and the Trump camp.
Liam Byrne says: “We have evidence of wrongdoing. But we don’t know how extensive it is, whether there is collusion with UK citizens and how much is being spent.
“The Mueller inquiry is uncovering how 140 million Americans were exposed to this material but we don’t know how prevalent it was here.
“It’s a mystery...but you cannot have a mystery over whether a foreign country is harming our democracy.”
Hear Jason Beattie, Ben Glaze and Nicola Bartlett discuss Russia’s meddling on our Ayes to the Left podcast via mirror.co.uk.
CULTURE COMMITTEE HEAD