We must bear in mind the difference between proof of existence of Russian efforts and proof of impact. The former is unquestionable; the latter is harder to quantify. There are estimates, however, for the number of people who may be come into contact with Russia-linked ads. Facebook initially claimed that an estimated 10 million users had seen ads bought by Russian-controlled pages, but they later told Congress that 126 million of its users may have seen content produced and circulated by Russian operatives. Similarly, Twitter, which initially identified 201 accounts linked to Russia during the election, later identified 2,752 accounts and more than 36,000 bots that tweeted 1.4 million times during that timespan. Regardless of the true count of people whose vote was influenced by the ads in a meaningful way, we can still make inferences that the efforts of the IRA to widen rifts between communities and to weaponize affect in service of this goal had an impact on the discourse surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath. The sheer number of social media posts and ads in countries around the world created by the IRA and other Russian operatives is like a Distributed Denial of Service attack on U.S. and E.U. sociotechnical networks and democratic institutions, an attempt to shut down our networks with an inundation of data that prevents normal functioning.

Perhaps the real takeaway from all this is that models for future disinformation and manipulation campaigns have already been created. Bad actors will continue to exploit the architecture of our sociotechnical systems as well as people’s affective responses to social media because Facebook has not changed its ad policies or algorithms. We need to ask ourselves, what responsibilities do social media networks owe to its users and to the public at large?

To effect any meaningful, lasting change, we must stop treating the business models of social media and tech companies as inviolable. We must stop letting the industry create and enforce its own rules. And as new technologies emerge that can enhance their already-pervasive surveillance capabilities, we should expect risk and potential harm to increase (McNamee 255). It’s like the cultural theorist Paul Virilio said, “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. . . . Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress” (Virilio 89). Similarly, the advent of social media created the potential for manipulation and disinformation that we see now, and new advances in social media and tech will only cause potential problems and vulnerabilities to proliferate.

And as the tactics of bad actors will only grow more sophisticated with emerging technology, Facebook and other social media companies must adopt some level of stewardship and fiduciary responsibility for the wellbeing of their users and democratic institutions to shield ourselves from malicious disinformation campaigns in the future.