Testimony of the Ghosts - 2016 Election Intervention and the Silicon Valley Disconnect, 2016-2017

Testimony of the Ghosts - 2016 Election Intervention and the Silicon Valley Disconnect, 2016-2017

The 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by Russia's use of social networking sites to spread disinformation and fuel social divisions; Facebook, Twitter, and Google were abused, exposing election interference by outside forces as a reality. The shock shook the very foundations of democracy and instilled a deep sense of distrust in the American public; in 2017, Congress summoned the tech companies' lawyers and legal representatives and thoroughly pursued them in hearings. Questions were asked as to why the disinformation was not stopped and to what extent the Russian ads were spread, to which the companies gave defensive and vague answers. They were thus confronted not with a neutral platform but with an entity that could shake up democracy, a memory that was recalled at the 2020 hearings, where concerns about the involvement of China and Iran, in addition to Russia, further heightened the sense of crisis. At the time, Brexit and the birth of the Trump administration ma
rked the rise of populism around the world, and social networking sites became mirrors of the fragility of democracy. These events deepened the disconnect between U.S. politics and Silicon Valley, which continues to cast a shadow over the cybersecurity debate.