Thread by @Skip80Cat

1/ Russian bots have no First Amendment protections and should be outlawed. ‘Bot speech’ was and is being used to undermine our democracy. For eg, on Election Day, Twitter bots sent out the hashtag #WarAgainstDemocrats more than 1,700 times.
nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/…

2/ AI expert Matt Chessen points to the ways that machine learning enhances computational propaganda, providing “radically enhanced capabilities to manipulate human minds.” atlanticcouncil.org/publications/r…

3/ Bots’ ability to spread through social media by using algorithms to replicate bots and repeat bot speech, results in insidious artificial amplification of false confirmation bias. See, eg: cjr.org/analysis/breit…

4/ Bot speech radicalizes factually inaccurate beliefs. Studies have found that people are more apt to persist in their beliefs, despite contradictory evidence, once they've written their beliefs down, a phenomenon known as the “explanation effect”. sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/…

5/ **CODE (bot language) IS NOT (legally) SPEECH** The Supreme Court has never accepted that code is protected like speech. The notion that Code = Speech is dangerous and must be rejected. technologyreview.com/s/600916/apple…

6/ Courts rejected Apple’s argument that writing breakable encryption would be “compelled speech” in the First Amendment sense. documentcloud.org/documents/2722…

7/ Bots aren't human. Police need not read bots Miranda rights and nor can bots be arrested or sent to prison. Bots have no “human rights”. Human operators behind the bots may have rights, but bots do not. en.protothema.gr/what-are-inter…

8/ Code is created by humans, *BUT* code can also be programmed to self-perpetuate--self-perpetuating code is not human expression. thedailybeast.com/why-do-robots-…

9/ Bots are virtual speech echos. Undermining US democracy is nefarious enough to earn strict scrutiny for 1A litmus. Contextually within social media, where bots were weaponized to the detriment of US national security, bot code is NOT SPEECH (human expression) in the 1A sense.

10/ Even human words aren’t always speech under the First Amendment. Speech can be regulated based on time, place and manner restrictions, such as the torts of defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. See, law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/t…

11/ Also excluded from 1A protection is speech likely to lead to tangible harm—true threats, fighting words, incitement to imminent lawless action. See, law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/t…

12/ We must combat the virtual war waged by Putin on many fronts. Why is it that so many millions of Americans were so vulnerable to this virtual weapon? According to the Pew Research Center, only 20 percent of Americans trust their government. people-press.org/2017/05/03/pub…

13/ “Instead of “rapid information operations,” the United States should work to systematically rebuild analytical skills across the American population and invest in the media to ensure that it is driven by truth, not clicks.” nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opi…

14/ Of course, Trump beats the Kremlin drum daily, encouraging US citizens to mistrust our democratic institutions. He relies heavily on Kremlin bots and trolls to amplify his Kremlin #ActiveMeasures narrative. money.cnn.com/2018/01/27/tec…

15/ Trump is an indisputable Kremlin conduit. usatoday.com/story/news/wor…

16/ Trump is in a race to obstruct all efforts to inoculate the citizenry against the Kremlin’s insidious exploitation of our vulnerable citizens. One of his first acts was to decapitate public schools. washingtonpost.com/local/educatio…

17/ As a loyalist to the Kremlin, Trump is eviscerating the US Dept of Education. americanprogress.org/issues/educati…

18/ Even conservatives opposed Trump’s moves to neutralize public school education. But, you see—Trump has no ideology, other than to serve his master, Putin. usnews.com/news/education…

19/ So, where does this leave us, besides more vulnerable to hostile foreign powers? We are left with the option that philanthropists of good conscience must step up to save our democracy. qz.com/898530/in-just…

20/ The philanthropy-savior model is not exactly ideal. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

21/ For every Bill Gates, there is a Robert Mercer. theguardian.com/politics/2017/…

22/ Our recourse is found in the ballot box. We must oppose with all of our might, gerrymandering and voter suppression—get out the vote as has never been done in US history. Only then may we inoculate the citizenry against hostile foreign interlopers. huffingtonpost.com/entry/can-we-s…