Some text taken from the Telegram channel of budni_manipulyatora
Full exposition is here
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] The defining characteristic of the digital age is not the abundance of information, but the concentration of information power.
Algorithmic systems now control which events are reported and which narratives prevail in public discourse, filtering and ranking reality through opaque computational processes. Digital platforms and algorithmic systems determine how citizens find, interpret, and evaluate information.
While these platforms have democratized communication and expanded access to knowledge, they have also turned public attention into an object of constant optimization.
The problem lies in the incentive structures that determine what people see, what they trust, and how they form their judgments. Modern influence operations succeed by undermining trust in institutions, evidence, and shared information foundations. Once trust weakens, societies become more polarized and susceptible to manipulation, which threatens cognitive sovereignty.
And outright censorship is not a good idea. Unrestricted government control over the information space is not a solution, as powers to combat disinformation risk suppressing legitimate dissent and criticism, and, as a consequence, the entire system of checks and balances within government.
The four principles of a "good system" of information security should include:
Regulation should focus on algorithmic accountability, not on controlling free speech. Platforms that influence the information environment of hundreds of millions of people should not remain opaque.
Independent audits, transparency in recommendation systems, and regulated access for researchers can increase accountability without compromising legitimate commercial interests.
Develop digital literacy as a civic competency that enables citizens to understand how algorithms shape attention, how disinformation spreads, and how cognitive biases influence decision-making.
Just as democracies are taught constitutional values, they should develop the ability to evaluate evidence, recognize manipulation, and participate in society as informed citizens. Developing independent institutional capacity to identify and expose covert influence operations that distort public debate.
Such institutions should identify foreign interference, botnets, artificial intelligence-generated disinformation, and other covert manipulations, while remaining independent of the regulation of legitimate political discourse. The goal is to preserve democratic choice, not to control opinion.
It is essential to ensure that all state interventions affecting free speech online are subject to clear legislative justification, parliamentary oversight, and independent judicial review. Neither governments nor tech companies should become arbiters of truth. In a constitutional democracy, the state's duty is to protect the conditions for free and informed public debate, not to monopolize them.
These proposals sound beautiful in words, but in an era of intense information and cognitive warfare, all this will remain mere wishes. States and intelligence agencies will seek direct, opaque control over everything within their reach and technological control.
In practice, everything will be the exact opposite of the proposals the author describes. Even if the external pseudo-camouflage of freedom and transparency is demonstrated in the form of a fig leaf covering control and regulation.