Looking Ahead - The Last 5 Months
Some reflections around my own work and what we have achieved together.
This weekend, while in the Italian countryside, I took some time to reflect on this year.
Before this year, I worked as a cog in a larger machine, not having much control over the objectives and use of my work.
My reality very much changed this year. It started with a moment to reflect on what motivates my work. I spoke with hundreds of amazing people in our community, trying to understand the different issues we face. I also started having a more strategic overview of why we do the work we do.
I made some choices about what I wanted my work to achieve. What I thought could be more impactful.
I observed how authoritarian forces are trying to use manipulative techniques while hiding their affiliations to try to:
1. Polarize democratic states, undermining the integrity of our democratic conversations.
2. Undermine support for Ukraine, trying to dissuade us from helping Ukraine defend against a threat that will affect us all if they fail.
3. Promote authoritarian alternatives to democracy, threatening our ways of life and security.
These are some of the objectives that I decided to fight against.
These objectives threaten the interests of everyone in our society. Civil society, media, the private sector, governments, academia, most political parties and above all, citizens.
It's also an issue we cannot fight alone. Stronger collaboration needs to happen across the board, moving away from a competitive and secretive mindset.
We need more long-term thinking, creating joint long-term efforts that we can all work towards.
Governments, civil society, companies, academia, philanthropy, and media need to work more together.
We cannot just constantly put out fires instead of dealing with the systemic issues that allow them to burn. We cannot constantly work on 6-month projects that have no long-term objectives.
I don't claim to have the answers on how to achieve this. We have very limited resources, as do most actors in the field.
However, I know that a part of this solution is to join forces, and think about and work on this together.
This is why we created the Counter Disinformation Network. I also just joined the DAD-CDM Technical Steering Committee, to co-create a common data model. It's why I'm a strong supporter of the FIMI ISAC and any other project that helps us work together effectively.
Throughout this year, I've met amazing people who have provided me guidance and their perspectives and some even joined me to work towards these common objectives.
Some governments, CSOs, academia, journalists and fact-checkers have shown that we can move beyond competition and secrecy to benefit each other by working together.
Together, we have truly countered influence operations by authoritarian forces and started to work on long-term efforts to mend systemic issues that allow them to operate.
The network so far produced 28 alerts (2 more coming soon), sent out to government agencies, EU institutions, social media platforms, and advocacy groups.
The members of the network managed to identify:
- 150 channels violating sanctions against Russian media or sanctioned individuals on social media platforms;
- 585 influence operation ads not labelled as political at the time of posting;
- 131 instances of unlabelled AI-generated images used by European political parties;
- 1.4k Doppelganger tweets;
- over 800 organisations targeted by a Russian influence operation;
- 99k violations against the French election silence period;
- two platforms' reporting systems falling short of their DSA obligations during the French elections;
Our reports have according to members of the community led to:
- the takedown of a network of inauthentic Facebook pages operated from West Africa, targeting France with unlabelled political ads;
- Geo-fencing or takedown of over 45 pages violating sanctions against Russia.
- the labelling of unlabelled political ads;
- submission of evidence to EU institutions and national authorities;
- over 20 advocacy meetings with officials from different EU countries;
- over 30 articles in the press, reaching over 500.000 readers.
We also provided over 60 researchers, fact-checkers, academics, and journalists with training on using the DISARM framework.
While I do not mention any names at this point, we aim to publish a proper report about the achievements and challenges the network faced. It aims to highlight the work that all these amazing organisations have done, showing
I hope to continue this and see what the rest of this year brings us. I'm eternally grateful for all the amazing people I'm working with and to the funders who enable us to do this work.
To a bright future together in the fight to defend our democratic systems!
Keep up the amazing work, Sam! Thanks for your leadership, your drive, your passion. You are showing us all that we CAN make a difference when we work together and when we are bold together. Thank you!