This TED Talk features scientist and entrepreneur Sanon Aral, recorded live at TEDxERN

2018.

So on April 23rd of 2013, the Associated Press put out the following tweet on Twitter. It said, breaking news, two explosions

at the White House, and Barack Obama has been injured. This tweet was retweeted 4,000 times in less than

five minutes, and it went viral thereafter.

Now, this tweet wasn't real news put out by the Associated Press. In fact, it was false news or fake news that was propagated by Syrian hackers that had infiltrated

the Associated Press Twitter handle.

Their purpose was to disrupt society, but they disrupted

much more because automated trading algorithms immediately seized on the sentiment on this tweet

and began trading based on the potential that the president of the United States had been

injured or killed in this explosion.

And as they started tweeting, they immediately sent the stock market crashing, wiping out

$140 billion in equity value in a single day.

Robert Mueller, special counsel prosecutor in the United States, issued indictments against three Russian companies

and 13 Russian individuals on a conspiracy to defraud the United States by meddling in the 2016

presidential election. And what this indictment tells as a story is the story of the internet research agency,

the shadowy arm of the Kremlin on social media. During the presidential election alone, the internet

agency's efforts reached 126 million people on Facebook in the United States,

issued 3 million individual tweets,

and 43 hours worth of YouTube content,

all of which was fake, misinformation designed to sow discord

in the US presidentialS. presidential election.

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