The future of Russian disinformation

The researchers behind the blockbuster reports detailing a sweeping online influence campaign by Russia during and after the 2016 election offer what to expect ahead. Bharath Ganesh of Oxford University said trolls are likely to move into the background and “embed” themselves among activist groups critical of US institutions in order to amplify their voices. That is, instead of generating their own content to inflame America’s social and political divides, they’ll likely share, retweet and otherwise engage with genuine, domestically produced content that aligns with those goals, falsely inflating its apparent reach, according to Ganesh and Renee DiResta, a researcher at New Knowledge. DiResta said it’s harder to spot manipulation when trolls are able to piggyback off real users conveying the messages they want to spread. Russian trolls are no strangers to shifting their resources around the web to circumvent rule changes and controls that social media sites instituted in response to disinformation campaigns and trolls.