The pundits have long warned that China and Russia will seek to interfere in the 2024 elections in the United States. But it has already started, according to this article in today’s New York Times. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said it had identified 4,789 fake Chinese accounts on Facebook. The fake accounts copied political content from X (Twitter) and other online sources, seeking to deepen the partisan divides that are tearing at the fabric of America’s democracy.
When are we going to realize that social media platforms must be moderated? X, under the precise management style of Elon Musk, is actually moving away from content moderation. The Big Tech companies that dominate the social media landscape must be held accountable. It’s all well and good that Meta announced that it found nearly 5,000 fake Chinese accounts on Facebook, but how did it allow such a massive penetration to occur in the first place?
It has reached the point that the U.S. government should invoke emergency national security powers to impose fines on Big Tech until they make convincing progress in cleaning up and protecting their social media platforms. If it doesn’t, the chances that Americans can trust the outcome of the critical 2024 elections are remote indeed. That is one of the key Chinese and Russian goals–destroying American confidence in our own institutions. And they’re using American-owned social media platforms to achieve that goal.
