Election 2016

FBI Director Calls Out Fake News and “Trolls” a Year Too Late

Written by SK Ashby

FBI Director James Comey spoke at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Wednesday night where he warned Americans about the influence of fake news propagated by foreign governments.

Comey says the things you're reading may have been "shaped by troll farms."

U.S. adversaries, including Russia last year, have "used all kinds of vectors to try and influence and undermine our own faith in our democratic processes" and have relied on increasingly sophisticated tactics, the FBI director warned. [...]

"The most important thing to be done is people need to be aware of the possibility that what they're reading has been shaped by troll farms looking to push a message on Twitter to undermine our confidence" about the electoral process, Comey said.

Being right doesn't always necessarily feel like a victory.

Some of us have been warning about paid trolls and sockpuppets since long before the 2016 election, dating back to the Koch-funded astroturf campaigns of 2009 and 2010, but the disaster of the 2016 election and the involvement of foreign governments is what it took for authorities and members of Congress to finally take the matter seriously.

I suppose it's significant that the urban dictionary definition of "troll" is now included in the FBI director's lexicon, but it certainly should be. Paid trolls are a fact of life in 2017 and America doesn't hold the patent on them.