“I created a new Facebook account, picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic w/ my face obscured & clicked “Like” on the official pages of Trump & his reelection campaign

FB’s algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox & fan pages ‘In Trump We Trust.”

Trumps reelection campaign was in the midst of a multimillion$ ad blitz aimed at shaping understanding of the impeachment proceedings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads flooded, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Dems plotted a coup..

That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread

Right-wing websites amplified every claim

Pro-Trump forums teemed w/ conspiracy theories. An alternate info ecosystem was took shape around the biggest news story in the country

“There were days I’d watch an impeachment hearing filled w/ damning testimony about Trumps conduct, only to look at my phone & find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration.”

A stream of pro-Trump propaganda on phone

“That’s right, the whistleblower’s own lawyer said

‘Coup has started’

“Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding’

‘The only message these radical socialists &extremists will understand is a crushing’

Only one man can stop this chaos …”

“This Strategy has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion.”

“They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out.

Scholars call it: censorship through noise”

Post 2016

Trump and his domestic allies were beginning to adopt the same tactics of information warfare that have kept the world’s demagogues & strongmen in power.

Strategists & experts spoke of dystopian picture of the GE—shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering & anon mass texting

In the hands of a president who lies constantly, traffics in conspiracy theories, & readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.