Congressional hearings yesterday are aimed to help the government deal with digital threats, like fake news, as well as to hold the tech world responsible for spreading fake news during the presidential election.
It will be harder in the future to tell what’s real news and what’s not.
Government officials believe Facebook and Twitter aren't doing enough to stop fake news.
University of Houston’s Chris Bronk said says there's a naiveté about the power of Facebook and Google in the world today.
“I have almost no faith in our federal government coming to terms with this problem, or our society coming to terms with this problem -this year, next year or any time before the next presidential election,” said Bronk.
Bronk said we have an unbelievable amount of information on anything nowadays, but there's no core set of facts anymore and no journalistic bias filters.
Bronk is surprised at how Google, Facebook and Twitter were used in the election by Russian government agents.
“First off, government is bleeding the talent that could deal with this problem. Those who can advise government to do the right thing are leaving in droves. We don’t have a foreign policy apparatus that’s handling this problem very well, in my opinion. And then beyond that, it’s simply that from the White House on down, there’s recrimination about all information,” said Bronk.
He added that Russia is just the first country to figure out how to do cyber operations involving propaganda via social media.