The number of countries promoting disinformation on social media rose to its highest level during the past year, a new study has found.
The report by Freedom House found manipulation tactics in elections in at least 18 countries in the last 12 months, including the United States.
But while Russia (and America) have used such tactics to promote their own interests abroad, more countries are employing people to shape the opinions of their electorates and crack down on internal dissent, the report found.
The findings, which represent the seventh consecutive year that the think tank has recorded a global decline in internet freedom, identified several trends contributing to governments’ growing power.
They have shut down cellular internet service for political or security reasons, often in areas populated by ethnic and religious minorities.
among the places this happened last year were Tibet and Ethiopia, the authors found, says a report on The Verge.
“Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year,” the authors of the report write in their introduction.
“The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology.”
The use of paid, pro-government commentators has become widespread. While first noted by Freedom House in 2009, the practice has spread to 30 of the 65 countries it surveyed, up from 23 last year.
“In these countries, there are credible reports that the government employs staff or pays contractors to manipulate online discussions without making the sponsored nature of the content explicit,” the report said.
“Over the years, governments have found new methods of crowdsourcing manipulation to achieve a greater impact and avoid direct responsibility. As a result it can be hard to distinguish propaganda from actual grassroots nationalism, even for seasoned observers.”
The report’s authors found evidence of state-sponsored bot armies in at least 20 countries.
To name one: In Mexico, 75,000 “Peñabots” were found working against the opponents of President Enrique Peña online. The bots would rally to promote new hashtags whenever anti-administration hashtags began to trend, the report said, and “poisoned” opposition hashtags by attaching them to countless irrelevant posts.
Governments have also restricted the posting of live video on Facebook, Snapchat, and other platforms, particularly during demonstrations. Belarus was among the countries that disrupted cellular connections to prevent live-streaming during protests, according to the report.