We’re all grappling with the influence that state-sponsored disinformation campaigns can have on our political conversations—and how wide-spread that interference turned out to be. So please take a moment to read this, think about it, and talk about it.
Last fall, we uncovered 84 Tumblr accounts linked to the Russian government through the Internet Research Agency, or IRA. These accounts were being used as part of a disinformation campaign leading up to the 2016 U.S. election. After uncovering the activity, we notified law enforcement, terminated the accounts, and deleted their original posts. Behind the scenes, we worked with the Department of Justice, and the information we provided helped indict 13 people who worked for the IRA.
Now that the investigations are done, we want to let you know how we’re going to help protect Tumblr in the future and what you can do to help.
Here’s what we know about these accounts
The IRA employs more than 1,000 people who engage in electronic disinformation and propaganda campaigns around the world using phony social media accounts. Their goal is to sow division and discontent in the countries they target. What makes them so difficult to spot is that they’re not spambots. They’re real people who get trained and paid to spread propaganda.
As far as we can tell, the IRA-linked accounts were only focused on spreading disinformation in the U.S., and they only posted organic content. We didn’t find any indication that they ran ads.
Remember, the IRA and other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns play off our zero-sum politics. They want to drive a wedge between us so that we spend our time fighting with each other instead of building towards the future. We’ll be watching for signs of future activity, but the best defense is knowing how they operate and how to judge the content you see.
What we’re doing in response to the interference
First, we’ll be emailing anyone who liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed an IRA-linked account with the list of usernames they engaged with.
Second, we’re going to start keeping a public record of usernames we’ve linked to the IRA or other state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. We’re committed to transparency and want you to know everything that we know.
We’ve decided to leave up any reblog chains that might be on your Tumblrs—you can choose to leave them or delete them. We’re letting you decide because the reblog chains contain posts created by real Tumblr users, often challenging or debunking the false and incendiary claims in the IRA-linked original post. Removing those authentic posts without your consent would encroach on your free speech—and there have been enough disruptions to our conversations as it is.
What we’re doing to stop future disinformation campaigns
You’ve probably read that U.S. intelligence officials expect foreign agents to try similar propaganda campaigns in the future. We’ll be monitoring Tumblr for signs of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, and if we see anything we will…
Terminate the accounts and remove their original posts.
Notify you if we determine that you’ve liked, reblogged, replied to, or followed a propaganda account.
There are also things you can do to help stop the spread of disinformation and propaganda.
Be aware that people want to manipulate the conversation. Knowing that disinformation and propaganda accounts are out there makes it harder for them to operate. The News Literacy Project has this handy checklist for spotting their tricks.
Be skeptical of things you read. Disinformation campaigns work because they know people don’t fact check. Look for reliable sources, and double-check that the source really says the same thing as the post. You can also check Snopes and Politifact. Both are award-winning resources and usually have the latest viral claim fact checked on the front page.
Correct the record. When you see people spreading misinformation—even unintentionally—politely say something in a reblog or reply. If it’s your friend, send them a message to let them know.
One last note: Please vote.
Transparency won’t mean a thing if we don’t participate in the process. Whatever your political stance, voting ensures a government that represents your interests. For our U.S. users: You can register online or by mail, and many states are holding primaries right now.
I’m grateful that Tumblr is releasing this information. I received an email saying that I had liked or reblogged posts from 17 of the Russian disinformation campaigns.
17.
Out of only 84 blogs Tumblr knows about.
Although I’ve been following the news about Russia’s interference in the US presidential election, this made it real. It’s easy to blame others for being drawn in by propaganda, until you see yourself implicated. The campaigns targeted both conservatives and liberals and sought to drive us further apart. Our political stances may still be warranted, but we should actively fight becoming so entrenched on polarized sides that we can’t even dialogue, and we should always question our sources of information.
“I am not impressed by your ability to do math. Rather, I am impressed by your ability to be kind.”—Calculus III Professor, just a few days before the final exam (via mathprofessorquotes)
Somehow I missed this article when it was published, even though it mentions Greenwich House, one of my favorite places in the city. Classes certainly have been filling up faster this year, as more and more people feel the need to create art. It’s inspiring to see the work coming out of the kiln.
This was always one of my favorite songs on the Peter, Paul, and Mary Christmas special growing up, even though I’m not Jewish. It seems particularly need this year.
The first time I rented a school bus and escorted a group of people to a series of pizzerias was October 2007. It was my 26th birthday. Friends loved eating pizza with me because I’d give them all sorts of insight into what was going on inside the oven and with the ingredients. In hindsight, I have no idea what I was even telling them because I knew relatively little about pizza making at the time. I’d read a few books and asked the right questions when a pizza maker seemed willing to chat – I even had a subscription to Pizza Today Magazine thanks to my brother Jon, who ordered it for me as a joke (now I write for them).
Living in New Jersey at the time, I would often lead day trips to nearby places like Philadelphia, Trenton, New Haven, Brooklyn, etc. So many people would ask if they could join the outings but my car only fit 4-5 people, so I had to think of a way to eat pizza with everybody who expressed interest as efficiently as possible. I asked around and found a company that chartered school buses, then invited a bunch of friends to join me on a route of NYC pizzerias.
There were 26 of us that day, all gathered in front of Franny’s, which was located at 295 Flatbush Ave at the time. I don’t remember why I picked it as our meeting point, but that’s where we congregated. I called in advance to ask permission to pack the place immediately upon opening and that’s exactly what we did. I ordered a pizza Margherita or two for every table and told people all about how the oven was built in place by a 3rd generation Neapolitan oven builder.
Franny’s has since moved down the block to a larger space (the original location is now an excellent bar called Rose’s) and just today announced their closing at the end of the summer. August 20 will be their last day of service. Franny’s wasn’t just the first stop on my first organized pizza crawl, they were one of the gateway pizzerias that drove my interest in pizza in the first place.
Today we have droves of wood-fired pizzerias around the city, but in April 2004 there were very few. Most were Italian restaurants, not pizzerias. Franny’s took the wood-fired mentality and Neapolitan pizza inspiration but landed it as something completely unique. At the time, it was the only place doing what they were doing. Now we have Roberta’s and Paulie Gee’s and all kinds of places doing Neapolitan-inspired personal pies with local ingredients. It’s common now, but Franny’s was doing it first. To be frank, the popularity Franny’s has been completely dwarfed by the places it inspired. But that’s all part of the natural cycle.
I’m sad to see Franny’s close its doors. Fourteen years is a very solid run and I’m sure owners Franny and Andrew are extremely proud of what they’ve accomplished. The impact of this pizzeria is huge and I just hope people remember that when, not long from now, Franny’s will only be mentioned in the past tense.
When I saw this, my initial reaction was denial. It must be some other Franny’s, surely. Then, I started furiously texting friends. How could this happen? Maybe one day I’ll reach acceptance. All I know is that I have a bunch of pizza to eat in the next month.
So if you’ve ever picked out paint, you know that every infinitesimally different shade of blue, beige, and gray has its own descriptive, attractive name. Tuscan sunrise, blushing pear, Tradewind, etc… There are in fact people who invent these names for a living. But given that the human eye can see millions of distinct colors, sooner or later we’re going to run out of good names. Can AI help?
For this experiment, I gave the neural network a list of about 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors along with their RGB values. (RGB = red, green, and blue color values) Could the neural network learn to invent new paint colors and give them attractive names?
One way I have of checking on the neural network’s progress during training is to ask it to produce some output using the lowest-creativity setting. Then the neural network plays it safe, and we can get an idea of what it has learned for sure.
By the first checkpoint, the neural network has learned to produce valid RGB values - these are colors, all right, and you could technically paint your walls with them. It’s a little farther behind the curve on the names, although it does seem to be attempting a combination of the colors brown, blue, and gray.
By the second checkpoint, the neural network can properly spell green and gray. It doesn’t seem to actually know what color they are, however.
Let’s check in with what the more-creative setting is producing.
…oh, okay.
Later in the training process, the neural network is about as well-trained as it’s going to be (perhaps with different parameters, it could have done a bit better - a lot of neural network training involves choosing the right training parameters). By this point, it’s able to figure out some of the basic colors, like white, red, and grey:
Although not reliably.
In fact, looking at the neural network’s output as a whole, it is evident that:
The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey.
The neural network has really really bad ideas for paint names.
I’ve been saying for years that the US focuses too much on leadership and not enough on citizenship. We need thoughtful followers who are loyal and willing to do the work and who pay attention to their leaders and will stand up when leaders or groups fall short.
Tocqueville’s argument is a radical one: that
self-governance is a learned skill. It means that to be a democratic
citizen does not require great wealth, or a particular ancestry, or
even a formal education. All it requires is practice.
But today, few Americans are getting the practice they need. Civic associations began dying out starting in the 1960s.
Today, being a member of an organization usually means making a
donation or getting an email, not attending meetings or running for
office. Modern nonprofits can be very effective, but rarely provide the democratic lessons or collective action power that the old associations did.
This is a serious problem. We have let rust one of the fundamental tools, perhaps the fundamental tool, by which we realize our democracy.
We must pick up these tools again. Many human rights and civil liberties organizations saw a rush of donations after Election Day. The next step is to do as our ancestors did, and participate.
