Thank you for the question.
We've been looking.... Most of these social media companies that we use for everyday life have become the agora for democratic process. Most of the elections actually play out in these platforms. We've detected that most—basically all—of those platforms are manipulable by robotic networks to put the messages and to game the algorithms—including during the election processes—to advance particular interests, including of hostile actors.
We've been measuring, every year, how well the platforms do in taking out these robotic networks from platforms, and the results have been very disappointing. Back in 2019, when there were European Parliament elections, we bought 55,000 different actions through robotic accounts on social media—of course, neutral effects—for 300 euros. During the EU parliamentary elections, 90% of that got delivered.
We repeated the same experiment during the U.S. presidential election, once again in a neutral manner. We were able to buy likes, shares, views, custom-made comments and all of that, but this time 300,000 for $300. About 70% of that got through. Basically, there was an option for outside actors to influence the discourse.
Most of the companies were incapable of eradicating that process. If I had to measure the companies, typically Twitter is the best at it. Facebook is less so. Last year, we measured TikTok for the first time. TikTok is basically defenceless. You can do any gaming of that system that you wish. Of course, the more potential electors there are out there, the more malign things can be happening.
Clearly, that goes back to Mr. Parsons's point that there is no way to oversee what the social media companies are doing. They're declaring great success, but when we turn to the vendors of these manipulations, it's cheap, available and effective. We have to have oversight to make sure that it is neither simple nor easy.
Thank you.