Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

I'm Dan Premak, today taping from Columbus, Ohio, and on today's show, SoftBank finally takes a stand on Saudi Arabia, sort of, and something I've learned here in Columbus about the future of robotics.

But first, weaponizing social media.

Before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered earlier this month in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul,

he had been dealing with an army of social media trolls that a friend of his told the New York

Times was like, quote, sustained gunfire online.

And Khashoggi wasn't alone, as it was also something experienced

by other critics of the Saudi government, all apparently emanating out of a so-called troll

farm in Riyadh, created by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And they weren't alone,

as all sorts of other regimes in other countries have begun using social media to silence and intimidate critics.

Some are authoritarian, like when the Myanmar military used Facebook to build public support for ethnic cleansing.

Now, some is done in democracies, like in Mexico, where political parties use bots and fake accounts to influence political elections there.

And some are done by

authoritarian governments to affect elections in democracies, as we saw with Russia in the U.S.

two years ago, and who knows, maybe next week.

The bottom line here is tech companies and social media companies are paying attention

and trying to fight this, but they've often been either too lax or too slow.

Misinformation has always been a key component of bad political actors, but it's social media,

which can be manipulated so easily via smartphones that is probably the most powerful misinformation

tool ever created. In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper on this with Sarah Fisher,

Axios Media Reporter.

But first, this.

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