Social media has become a weapon for bullies to spread their message. In brazil, fake stories were spreading on social media and changing the narrative of an election. If you can stick one negative idea into a voter's head about a certain candidate, you can shift their voting behavior. And i think the next important step that we need to discuss is how platforms become weapons for bullies who would want to win elections by using this kind of tactics.
The sound of bullies on social media can be deafening, but what about their victims? “They're just sitting there being pummeled and pummeled and pummeled,” says Fadi Quran. As the campaign director of Avaaz, a platform for 62 million activists worldwide, Fadi and his team go to great lengths to figure out exactly how social media is being weaponized against vulnerable communities, including those who have no voice online at all. “They can't report it. They’re not online.” Fadi says. “They can't even have a conversation about it.” But by bringing these voices of survivors to Silicon Valley, Fadi says, tech companies can not just hear the lethal consequences of algorithmic abuse, they can start hacking away at a system that Fadi argues was “designed for bullies.”