Concerns about foreign influence in Dutch city council elections next week
Next week, residents of the Netherlands will vote for their municipal councils, determining how their cities and towns will function in the coming years. According to researchers from Post-X Society, which calls itself a watchdog for democracy, people in distant countries are trying to influence that vote. Parliament and the Cabinet share these concerns, NOS reports.
Post-X Society says it observed various forms of digital interference during last year’s parliamentary elections. “Troll armies” - large groups of fake accounts active in Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, among others - were relaying political messages, particularly from the far-right. And many of the topics they covered are also relevant in next week’s elections, Pieter van Boheemen, director of Post-X Society, told the broadcaster.
“Accounts in distant countries repost messages about asylum centers or wind turbines, causing the system of, for example, X to ‘think’: hey, this is getting a lot of attention, let’s make this bigger.” As a result, the public debate is not authentic. “The debate is being shaped by someone who pays for it.”
Post-X Society also saw a lot of AI-generated content, including fake videos depicting violence against mostly left-wing politicians and fake footage of violence against asylum seekers, such as a video showing a fighter jet targeting refugee boats at sea. The aim is to sow division and doubt, Van Boheemen said. “They are deliberately stoking sensitive issues in the Netherlands.”
According to Van Boheemen, “anyone with a credit card” can be behind these troll armies. He suspects that countries like Russia and China have much to gain in this way.
Post-X Society did not research the effect of this kind of digital interference on elections, but Van Boheemen points out that even a few hundred votes can change a great deal in local elections like next week’s.
State Secretary Willemijn Aerdts of Digital Economy and Sovereignty takes this kind of influence “extremely seriously,” she told NOS. “You want people to be able to make their own decisions based on accurate information.” According to her, the Cabinet also thinks that other countries may be the instigators of these misinformation campaigns. “We certainly know that other countries have an interest in doing this,” she said. “It often has to do with destabilization.”
There are also significant concerns in parliament. MPs Queeny Rajkowski (VVD) and Barbara Kathmann (GroenLinks-PvdA) think that social media should do more against this kind of content. “They have the responsibility to ensure the online public space is safe,” Rajkowski told the broadcaster.
“We are talking about messages that reach millions of people, which is truly worrying,” Kathmann said. “That’s why platforms need to intervene more quickly to reduce their reach.”
According to the MPs, the European regulations against online influence are not being properly enforced, and so the big tech companies do as little as they can get away with. The EU supervisory authority must be much more “on top of things,” Rajkowski and Kathmann told NOS.
