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Pretty long article that I doubt most will read in its entirety, if at all.

It was, however, a good read about social engineering, and I've summarized the points made and the solutions proposed below:

>Fear and anger produce a lot more engagement and sharing than joy.

>The result is that the algorithms favor sensational content over substance.

>Continuous reinforcement of existing beliefs tends to entrench those beliefs more deeply, while also making them more extreme and resistant to contrary facts.

>The Russians appear to have invested heavily in weakening the candidacy of Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary by promoting emotionally charged content to supporters of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, as well as to likely Clinton supporters who might be discouraged from voting.

>We also have evidence now that Russia used its social media tactics to manipulate the Brexit vote.

>A team of researchers reported in November, for instance, that more than 150,000 Russian-language Twitter accounts posted pro-Leave messages in the run-up to the referendum.

>[B]ad actors plant a rumor on sites like 4chan and Reddit, leverage the disenchanted people on those sites to create buzz, build phony news sites with “press” versions of the rumor, push the story onto Twitter to attract the real media, then blow up the story for the masses on Facebook.

>Facebook and Google responded by reiterating their opposition to government regulation, insisting that it would kill innovation and hurt the country’s global competitiveness, and that self-regulation would produce better results.

>Polls suggest that about a third of Americans believe that Russian interference is fake news, despite unanimous agreement to the contrary by the country’s intelligence agencies.

Solutions proposed:

1) [I]t’s essential to ban digital bots that impersonate humans

2) [T]he platforms should not be allowed to make any acquisitions until they have addressed the damage caused to date, taken steps to prevent harm in the future, and demonstrated that such acquisitions will not result in diminished competition.

3) [T]he platforms must be transparent about who is behind political and issues-based communication.

4) [T]he platforms must be more transparent about their algorithms.

5) [T]he platforms should be required to have a more equitable contractual relationship with users.

6) [W]e need a limit on the commercial exploitation of consumer data by internet platforms.

7) [C]onsumers, not the platforms, should own their own data.

8) [F]inally, we should consider that the time has come to revive the country’s traditional approach to monopoly.

[thisacctforreal]

I suspect people worried about these issues are a bit more likely to make time & muster attention to read the articles on the topic.

This article was at the very end of my one-sitting article-reading endurance, but it had enough of a flow for me to finish with only a bit of skimming near the end.

Thank you for preparing a great summary :)

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You're welcome!

After reading a few paragraphs I realized it was going to be largely anecdotal, so I figured paring it down would save some people ten or twenty minutes. I agree, however, that the flow made it more manageable to enjoy.