Hitting the Books: Modern social media has made misinformation so, so much worse

It's not just that one uncle who's not allowed at Thanksgiving anymore who's been spreading misinformation online. The practice began long before the rise of social media -- governments around the world have been doing it for centuries. But it wasn't until the modern era, one fueled by algorithmic recommendation engines built to infinitely increase engagement, that nation-states have managed to weaponize disinformation to such a high degree. In his new book Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare, David Sloss, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, explores how social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have become platforms for political operations that have very real, and very dire, consequences for democracy while arguing for governments to unite in creating a global framework to regulate and protect these networks from information warfare. Excerpted from Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare, by David L. Sloss, published by Stanford University Press, 2022 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.