Renee DiResta
Ideas Contributor
Renee DiResta (@noUpside) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, writing about discourse and the internet. She studies narrative manipulation as the technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, and is a Mozilla fellow on media, misinformation and trust. In past lives she has been director of research at New Knowledge, on the founding team of supply chain logistics startup Haven, a venture capitalist at OATV, and a trader at Jane Street.
‘Prebunking’ Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread
Preemptively familiarizing people with centuries-old anti-vaccine narratives may be more effective than retroactive fact-checking.
How to Stop Misinformation Before It Gets Shared
It's never been easier for mistruths to go viral, and content moderation is inadequate. What social media needs is some old-fashioned friction.
AI-Generated Text Is the Scariest Deepfake of All
Synthetic video and audio seemed pretty bad. Synthetic writing—ubiquitous and undetectable—will be far worse.
A New Law Makes Bots Identify Themselves—That's the Problem
California's so-called 'bot bill,' which aims to protect users from automated bots on Twitter and other platforms, is noble, flashy, intriguing...and inept.
The Return of Fake News—and Lessons From Spam
The doctored video of Speaker Pelosi proves there’s still no consensus on how to address false content. Could long-standing practices for thwarting spam provide guidance?
How Amazon's Algorithms Curated a Dystopian Bookstore
How gameable recommendation systems mislead customers about health information.
Online Conspiracy Groups Are a Lot Like Cults
Inside these closed online communities, outside voices are discredited and dissent is often met with hostility, doxing, and harassment. Sound familiar?
Free Speech in the Age of Algorithmic Megaphones
Researchers have long known that local actors—as well as Russia—use manipulative tactics to spread information online. With Facebook suspending a slew of domestic accounts, a difficult reckoning is upon us.
How Bots Ruined Clicktivism
As platforms struggle to detect and stop foreign interference in the midterm elections, there’s a thorny complication: Many of the tactics used by spammers and trolls are also leveraged by real activists.
Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach
Bad faith politicking about the way search algorithms work makes it harder for tech companies to solve the real problems.
The Information War Is On. Are We Ready For It?
Disinformation, misinformation, and social media hoaxes have evolved into high-stakes information war. But our frameworks for dealing with them have remained the same.
The Complexity of Simply Searching For Medical Advice
How the anti-vaccine movement used an information void to inject itself into the top results.
How the Tech Giants Created What Darpa Couldn’t
Facebook and Google's business models and flaws evoke a Darpa project shuttered in 2003. Americans didn’t want the government vacuuming up their data then—so why are we OK with private companies doing it now?
Up Next: A Better Recommendation System
Algorithms used by Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms keep us clicking. But those systems often promote misinformation, abuse, and polarization. Is it possible to temper them with a sense of decency?
How ISIS and Russia Manufactured Crowds on Social Media
The Islamic State built a global brand using the power of social media. Now, Russia is following a similar playbook—and it’s all too easy.
Anti-Vaxxers Are Using Twitter to Manipulate a Vaccine Bill
A small group of vocal anti-vaxxers is fighting hard to make sure a vaccine bill doesn't pass.