How Do Platforms Respond to Violence in a Digital World?

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In 20 16, we had almost no researchers looking at this. We didn't have the platforms viewing it as their responsibility. And by contrast, now it's not as if the facebook and and twitter have these automatic tools that just will automatically find everything and solve. It's kind of like your building up a constitution for how you want to run your digital country in response to things that are going wrong. Said, lik, you've got these little explosions here, like oga. I guess we need the law for that.

Disinformation researchers have been fighting two battles over the last decade: one to combat and contain harmful information, and one to convince the world that these manipulations have an offline impact that requires complex, nuanced solutions. Camille François, Chief Information Officer at the cybersecurity company Graphika and an affiliate of the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, believes that our common understanding of the problem has recently reached a new level. In this interview, she catalogues the key changes she observed between studying Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and helping convene and operate the Election Integrity Partnership watchdog group before, during and after the 2020 election. “I'm optimistic, because I think that things that have taken quite a long time to land are finally landing, and because I think that we do have a diverse set of expertise at the table,” she says. Camille and Tristan Harris dissect the challenges and talk about the path forward to a healthy information ecosystem.