What Kind of Disinformation Did You See in the Election?

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The first thing that's distinct is weturn a quarter into 20 21, is the fact that many of the purveyors or spreaders of misinformation were actually just regular domestic americans doing their thing. Not so irregular, really blue check influencers to in the role that they play in spreading disis disinformation was a very, very apparent. And then at some point all these sort of, like, scatter shot, desperate pieces of disinformation kind of coalesced into broader narratives.

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.