Information & Ethics committee  You know, when I teach my students about this, I call it “atrocity pornography”—there's a way in which you're seeking confirmation for pre-existing biases. Why do people do that? People did that long before social media, and the reason they do that is uncertainty. When you're faced with uncertainty, it matters a lot less what the truth is, and it matters a lot more what mob you're with.

Information & Ethics committee  Psychologically speaking, a mob is a mass of people who are policing moral uniformity and policing in-group loyalty and loyalty to authority at the expense of critical thinking. In order to police specific outcomes in the world, it often involves a punitive orientation towards people whom you disagree with as part of the psychological characteristic of both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism.

Information & Ethics committee  You might be asking one of two things. You might be asking what role private companies have in creating more resilience against this information, or you might be asking if it is possible that companies that are expert in disinformation go out of bounds and create problems? Which one of those questions are you asking?

Information & Ethics committee  This is something that we have dealt with in a very high-profile way with other organizations that are in the disinformation space. Disinformation is a word I tend not to like, because I think people have different opinions of what is and isn't disinformation that are polarizing.

Information & Ethics committee  How do we create forward messages that promote democratic values, not just playing “gotcha” but promoting the democratic values that people need to engage in as a solution to the problems they have?

Information & Ethics committee  We have to have a process for arriving at who meets the criteria of being somebody who both holds a fairly polar position and is also an adult in the room.

Information & Ethics committee  It is not always easy to make that distinction, but if you're transparent about how you've made it, you've done the best you can in bridging gaps, so you can earn people's trust. You have to earn that. It's not going to just be given, dictated or legislated. You have to earn it.

Information & Ethics committee  I think you're right. I'll go back to something I said, but I really want to get back to speaking with MP Green because I think he raised an important point that I want to address. Really quickly, I think that's why the importance is sometimes what the exact facts are, but oftentimes, where the disinformation is really powerful, it's not actually about the facts per se; it's really about the nature of the conflict and misrepresenting how bad the conflict really is.

Information & Ethics committee  Ideally, you bring the people themselves. Ideally, you're surveying people themselves to capture that and you're also looking at online behaviour. There's usually a distance or a dissociation gap between those things. That distance is where false polarization comes in. It's distrust that's usually unwarranted.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the body that has to deliberate this has to be made up of credible adversaries. It's people who do disagree and disagree on axes that represent popular conflicts. That has to be believable to most of the people who hold those views. They have to be able to say that this is their guy, this is really what they believe and this is why they find this person compelling.

Information & Ethics committee  I would say that the way that we can shore up resilience in the face of information threats is about the creation of transparency wherever that's possible. We need lawmakers who work towards creating greater transparency in their decision-making processes with the data that they're using to make decisions and showcasing that so that how you come to this conclusion is evident for anyone who wants to see it.

Information & Ethics committee  There's no presumption needed. This is used widely by state actors to cause disruption. I assume Mr. Nimmo is no longer here, because that's his specialty.

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, they have been one hundred per cent, starting with the printing press, absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  Actually, it's even worse than that. You have all probably heard of places like 4chan and 8chan, these kinds of nasty, white supremacist communities. We did an analysis of who's influencing who, Russian propaganda or 4chan. They're getting it from the kids in their basements. They're literally picking it up from the white supremacists hanging out in their basements.

Information & Ethics committee  It is absolutely. Every religion has its fanatics.