Euroviews. Social media empowers disinformation operations. What can the EU do about it?

On 26 January, news broke that digital forensic experts had unearthed a major Russian disinformation operation targeted at the German government. 

The operation leveraged 50,000 fake accounts and bots on X (formerly Twitter). They sent more than 1 million posts over one month from 10 December, pushing tried and tested disinformation narratives.

The German foreign ministry, which commissioned the investigation, concluded that governments need to counter the proliferating disinformation campaigns and be mindful of their ramifications for elections. 

Whilst governments certainly need to step up their defences against foreign disinformation and election interference, the German foreign ministry seems to miss a key point. 

It is not by mere coincidence that social media, and specifically X, became a vector of foreign disinformation.

Social media companies, driven by their vested financial interest in propagating disinformation, have formed an unholy alliance with authoritarian states and malign actors seeking to interfere in democratic countries’ internal processes. 

Whilst the European Union has started to reckon with this, it must ensure that its first salvo does not fall short.

Humans’ natural struggle for recognition has always incentivised oddity — the further away an expression is from the median, the more reactive engagement it receives. 

However, the emergence of digital socialisation has done away with the restraints keeping the discourse from gravitating towards the extremes. 

Social media encourages rapid interaction, anonymity and lack of accountability. It has a low barrier to content creation and trends towards information overload. 

Collectively, these have given rise to a context, in which incendiary and sensational