[HN Gopher] Facebook slow to address political manipulation in p...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook slow to address political manipulation in poor, small
countries
Author : erdo
Score : 321 points
Date : 2021-04-12 09:16 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| ilovepitchdecks wrote:
| Because of the sensational headline, I'm not even going to click
| on this. Is there even a real difference between The Guardian and
| the Daily Mail?
| hntroll666 wrote:
| I tend to agree, but the Guardian does have expert knowledge on
| the subject of deceiving and harassing citizens.
| ilovepitchdecks wrote:
| After I read your comment the second time 5 minutes later, I
| had a realization (?): Are you actually being sarcastic?
| (That would explain the downvotes too. And your username.)
| [deleted]
| propertymagnate wrote:
| I suspected the headline was sensationalist but on reading the
| article, I would say it isn't, and the headline is correct.
|
| It has examples of the campaigns of national political parties
| of different nations (hence world leaders) using a loophole
| that facebook pages can do certain things facebook accounts
| can't to boost their engagement and/or avoid the scrutiny an
| account would get.
|
| It also has a really good non-techy breakdown explaining how it
| works. I think it's HTML5? Having read it, I would say it's a
| really good piece of journalism.
| Jonnax wrote:
| It's an article about governments creating fake facebook pages
| posing as people to influence political debate on facebook.
|
| Detailing how it works and as well as how slow facebook are to
| respond.
|
| What is sensational about that? Unless you dislike reporting of
| propaganda efforts by governments.
| zpeti wrote:
| I wonder if writers of articles like this are aware of the
| complexity of a problem like this, algorithmically, legally and
| ethically.
|
| All 3 are insanely difficult.
| sprafa wrote:
| The incredible thing is Big Tech has convinced us the solution
| is "too expensive" when they are making hundreds of billions of
| dollars in revenue.
|
| Here's the truth - if you own a social media platform and you
| allow for microtargeting and psychological profiling, you have
| responsibility for what's mass shared throughout.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| EXACTLY. Micro-Targeting must be regulated world-wide to not
| allow it for political ads etc.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Good governance tends to get into money. It needn't be too
| expensive, but it definitely costs _something_.
|
| Facebook, Google et al. are trying to run a billion-sized
| community with extremely tight budgets, because they do not
| want to sacrifice their profits or make their services paid
| instead of free.
|
| Of course it does not work.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Despite the fact the article makes it clear this problem is way
| to detect, it doesn't matter. Facebook created the problem,
| they don't get to just say, "it's too hard" and throw their
| hands up. If they can't fix it then they should scale back
| their operations until it's a manageable size.
|
| Imagine I'm out in a park firing guns into the air and you come
| up to me and say, "don't you know those bullets might come down
| somewhere and hurt someone?" And I say, "do you know how hard
| it would be for me to calculate exactly where each bullet would
| land and where I can aim it safely?" Would you just walk away
| and say, "oh yeah, that's too hard of a problem to solve, carry
| on"?
| mhoad wrote:
| I'm not sure if you actually read the article but it was
| written with the whistleblower who was literally a data
| scientist and kept pointing out how easy it was to clearly
| identify (and therefore stop) these cases in question. They
| weren't sophisticated in any way. The problem here wasn't that
| it was difficult, it's because Facebook had no incentive to
| care
| gregasquith wrote:
| The quote "There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that
| is not being responded to because it is not considered enough
| of a PR risk to Facebook," kind of sums it up!
| bsenftner wrote:
| That's a textbook definition of institutional evil.
| franklampard wrote:
| a data scientist fired for poor performance
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Which can be used as an excuse to dismiss her without
| putting Facebook in trouble for discrimination or
| retribution.
| fakedang wrote:
| A data scientist fired for poor performance because she
| didn't perform some perfunctory tasks while she dedicated
| herself to investigating and uncovering all these fake
| bots.
| mhoad wrote:
| Making an argument that even the person who was supposedly
| fired for poor performance was STILL able to find what she
| found with almost zero effort on her behalf isn't the
| compelling argument you seem to imagine it to be.
| learnstats2 wrote:
| > the complexity of a problem like this, algorithmically,
| legally and ethically.
|
| I disagree with the framing of this as "complexity" when it's
| really "Facebook's profits would be reduced/Facebook's business
| model would be compromised".
|
| The complexity comes from Facebook's goal of maximising profits
| within the permitted algorithmic and legal space.
| nullserver wrote:
| Off topic.
|
| Last week wife got an email that her Facebook was logged into.
| Told her to open app and change password immediately.
|
| Too late. Account email and phone number already changed. No way
| to use old ones to get control back.
|
| 15 year old account with a huge amount of memories gone.
|
| Best possible was to indicate a problem, so account is disabled.
| But no way to use it anymore.
|
| Apparently this has happened to around half of her cohorts. It's
| now part of life to just make new accounts periodically.
|
| Utterly shocking that account email and phone can be changed in
| 20 minutes and no way to change them back.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A teaching moment for using strong passwords.
| nullserver wrote:
| That's missing the point. And frankly victim blaming.
|
| Allowing all the security info to be changed moments after
| logging on with no way to put them back is absurd.
| nitrogen wrote:
| The reverse compromise, where the email is hacked would
| require exactly that though. It's not a problem with one
| solution. It's many problems that require a human point of
| contact.
| Iolaum wrote:
| It's actually a moment for 2FA.
|
| Also the other commenter is right about victim blaming. The
| notification about a suspicious login should give appropriate
| options to safeguard one's account from a takeover.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'm inclined to feel like the political landscape is already
| FUBAR in lots of these corrupt countries, so any negative from
| Facebook doesn't really make a difference, but the good that can
| come from Facebook ("Facebook revolutions"[0]) exists, so it's a
| net positive.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Revolution
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Facebook is worse than state-controlled media in those countries,
| and they have a moral obligation to stop doing business in
| oppressive countries. People know that state-controlled media is
| biased, but oppressive leaders can demand censorship from
| facebook at whim and nobody knows about it.
|
| And i would not be surprised if bribes inside facebook are
| involved , as some of those countries are known to run extensive
| bribery operations e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijani_laundromat
| nradov wrote:
| Do you have a list of which countries are oppressive and which
| are not?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Many are listed in the article itself.
| nradov wrote:
| And who makes those decisions?
| sprafa wrote:
| Nobody makes any decision, stop being a douchebag. But
| there are places that try to classify this stuff and you
| know where it is.
| SSLy wrote:
| I live in one of those countries (Poland), and certainly the
| state-controlled media/energy/industry conglomerate is worse,
| thank you.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| But you know that it's state-controlled. Would you say that
| facebook in Turkey is not state-controlled, even though it s
| not branded as such?
| disabled wrote:
| From the Guardian article
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-...:
|
| > "But it quickly became clear that no one was interested in
| taking responsibility for policing the abuses of the president of
| a poor nation with just 4.5m Facebook users. The message she
| received from all corners - including from threat intelligence,
| the small and elite team of investigators responsible for
| uncovering CIB campaigns - was that the abuses were bad, but
| resources were tight, and, absent any external pressure, Honduras
| was simply not a priority."
|
| We can assume that hostile nations have known this for awhile,
| and they have also been exploiting this. This is tragic but true.
|
| Sophie Zhang is a hero.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| What about more clearly identifying when a comment, like, etc is
| made by a page instead of an account, and include the account(s)
| managing the page in its transparency report?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It's not a loophole if you can drive a truck through it.
|
| That's like claiming that abusing slaves was a 'loophole'
| blfr wrote:
| > The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses
| of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order
| to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or
| affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted
| quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries
| such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving
| slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia,
| Mexico, and much of Latin America.
|
| Alternatively, Facebook itself is more interested in manipulating
| political outcomes in the US, Taiwan, South Korea, and Poland,
| and less so or not at all in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico,
| and much of Latin America.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Not pertinent to the main issue, but I just find it funny how
| the guardian never forgets to include such "facts" about
| countries: "poor, small and non-western countries". Does
| similarly when it talks about racial "equality" up to the point
| its readership will pretty much always associate certain
| countries and ethnicities with poverty. Basically, promoting
| stereotypes.
| djhn wrote:
| Calling Mexico small and poor is a weird choice. Would China
| and Brazil qualify as well?
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I'm absolutely surprised that Brazil is not even mentioned
| in the article. Political manipulation since early 2019 in
| Brazil has been jaw dropping.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I don't think the intention here is to imply that all of
| these countries are all three adjectives. It's that poor
| countries, small countries and non-western countries appear
| to be getting less prioritization than rich countries, large
| countries and western countries.
| MajorBee wrote:
| Does it do anyone any favours by pretending that these
| countries are not "poor, small, and non-western"? I suppose
| you can replace "poor" with "developing", but it's a fine
| balancing act between unfaithful stereotyping and patronizing
| epithets.
| titzer wrote:
| > Alternatively, Facebook itself is more interested in
| manipulating political outcomes in the US, Taiwan, South Korea,
| and Poland....
|
| It's even worse than that, and more craven. They are only
| interested in maximizing shareholder revenue, and have
| absolutely no loyalty or political agenda beyond that. They
| lack any moral compass and are only held in check by the
| potential for consequences, be that in the marketplace or the
| threat of government investigations.
|
| They absolutely do not give a shit about anything but that
| sweet cash money and gobble gobble growth. Anything they seem
| to care about at any given moment, anything they mouth in the
| press, anything they add to their koolaid or internal reality
| distortion field, is a means to that end.
| csemaan wrote:
| The Guardian, and a few other outfits in global media sold its
| readership very hard on the "Gadhafi killing his own people"
| fallacy to enable Islamist gangs to plunder and maim and kill and
| ruin the societal fabric of Libya (and a few southern neighbors).
| Since then, Libya is a wasteland, its inhabitants enslaved as a
| whole (as opposed to the few political (read Islamists)
| prisoners' under the Gadhafi dictatorship), deaths in the tens of
| thousands, prisoners are not accounted for under any authority.
|
| Also the Guardian, just like most MSM holds a grudge against FB:
| how dare they eat their pie, all of it, and they let people
| escape from their 'single-eyed war-enabling worldview'?
|
| Lay the FB 'hate' aside, will ya? For all its dehumanizing power
| (as much as the rest of 'social media' and technology in general)
| FB has not committed the 1/10000th of the harm these champions of
| virtue in the MSM have done for the last couple centuries
| (steamrolling their power on most wars, worldwide or not).
| Proven wrote:
| correct on all counts - thanks for highlighting that forgotten
| part of recent history.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But the Lybia revolution against Ghaddafi wasn't fought or
| financed only by the Guardian's readers. For instance, with
| unemployment at 30%, maybe the population just had nothing else
| to try than the removal of their dictator like neighbor Tunisia
| had just done.
|
| I agree with you "western" (let's say democratic instead)
| medias are very biased. I live in Hong Kong and I couldn't
| believe what I was reading in british media about our
| "oppression" while kids were breaking the pavement down my road
| and doing V for vendetta graffiti under the cries of "Fuck the
| Popo".
|
| But all in all, it's fine, to be honest. We don't ask media to
| be without bias, but to be clear about them. We know somewhat
| the editorial position of the Guardian, they're one opinion
| amongst many.
|
| What turn countries into rubbles, is when people can't
| understand who's telling them what. Facebook is too blurry, you
| don't know if it's your sister, a CIA agent or a FSB one
| talking to you about a solution to a problem. People get angry
| in closed networks, that echo and echo until they feel the
| entire population think the same way. And you can't really calm
| them down with deep and complex analysis because while anger is
| easy to spread with a quick BS meme, calming down people
| requires focus, dual way communication and effort on every
| side.
|
| That's what happened to HK at a small scale, a sort of
| irrational mass anger, but that's not what happened in Lybia.
| Simply because in Lybia, people weren't the richest most
| powerful people on the planet. They tried the last resort
| solution, they won somewhat, now after the destruction they
| have to rebuild and they're learning it's way harder. We've all
| been through these phases, no need to argue the Guardian caused
| it :) I'd be partial to Facebook though :D
| csemaan wrote:
| There was never a popular upheaval in Lybia, the Islamists
| were offered to dismember the country by a few European
| powers (mainly France and the UK) with Arab allies for good
| optics (Qatar). https://iai.tv/articles/why-they-killed-
| gaddafi-auid-1757
| ivanbakel wrote:
| Your source makes reference to an email which is no longer
| available, thanks to a dead link.
| csemaan wrote:
| Stuff happens. I am sorry all over the place :roll_eyes:
| YellowStuDregg wrote:
| Not to give credence to the overall article, but that
| part seems legit:
|
| https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659
|
| https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/c
| mfa... (p10#20)
| blfr wrote:
| > Lay the FB 'hate' aside, will ya? For all its dehumanizing
| power (as much as the rest of 'social media' and technology in
| general) FB has not committed the 1/10000th of the harm these
| champions of virtue in the MSM have done for the last couple
| centuries
|
| All the problems you list with legacy media are true but also
| have a clear expiration date as these outlets are usually money
| losers. Meanwhile Facebook looks like it's here to stay.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Hmmm, strange that you and other FB defenders aren't actually
| discussing the claims in the article. Instead, you want to turn
| everything into a vague, abstract "new tech vs old media"
| battle. Both can have their problems.
| sp332 wrote:
| So at any given moment, we're only allowed to criticize one
| thing - the worst thing in the entire world? After all,
| anything else is, you know, not _that_ bad.
| spazrunaway wrote:
| Yes. We need a hell of a lot less destructive criticism that
| leads to war.
| sp332 wrote:
| That _is_ why I 'm anti-Facebook. Remember the role they
| played in the Myanmar genocide?
| u801e wrote:
| Which genocide are you referring to?
| newswasboring wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
|
| I'm guessing this one. Although facebook didn't invite
| this violence directly, they were the primary tool of
| propaganda. Now I'm not saying it's easy to solve this
| problem but facebook seems to be actively overlooking
| these things as it has happened repeatedly.
| csemaan wrote:
| The problem is the constant naive pounding on FB prompted by
| MSM hacks (drill a little bit and you'll discover the
| motivation: some of it surfaces from time to time, like the
| obvious blackmailing of FB by mass media in Australia,
| Canada, most of European countries, and maybe soon coming to
| the USA).
| jamespo wrote:
| What's your motivation with this account, that seemingly
| only exists to defend FB?
| csemaan wrote:
| That's true, I barely ever contributed here (maybe
| never), although I enjoy reading and following the
| comments. I have always been annoyed by the naive FB-
| hate, particularly because it forced FB to cave to the
| media powers. There came a once in a lifetime opportunity
| to free us from the 'one-eyed-propaganda' of media
| conglomerates, and us the victims, shot the only probable
| source of escape.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > "There came a once in a lifetime opportunity to free us
| from the 'one-eyed-propaganda' of media conglomerates,
| and us the victims, shot the only probable source of
| escape."
|
| Have you seen the rampant propaganda and manipulation of
| facts from social-media-driven left wing and right wing
| groups? It is far more inaccurate and vile.
| csemaan wrote:
| That's exactly why I think it could have saved us from
| the one-eyed worldview of media powers. Just weed through
| the forest and work your brain to collect 'information'.
| merpnderp wrote:
| He did not say "don't criticize" he said to "lay off the
| hate" which to me means make sure your criticism is measured
| and reasonable.
|
| Laying off the hate is likely just good advice all the time.
| salawat wrote:
| What is the unit of measurement for criticism? As a
| metrology nerd this is a very important question.
| merpnderp wrote:
| You picked the wrong definition of measured. In this
| context it means something like to be deliberate and
| constrained.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I've learnt those blaming the evil "MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!!!!!" are
| rarely worth listening to.
|
| You know why it's mainstream? Because it's nuanced, and well-
| researched and run by actual real-life journalists.
|
| You know what you're left with when the media is no longer
| mainstream? The extremes.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's mainstream because it's owned by wealthy people who can
| maintain circulation even if it is losing money, and because
| those people are willing to float administration and
| intelligence narratives uncritically and anonymously.
| csemaan wrote:
| As a victim of war myself, I beg to disagree with you.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > You know why it's mainstream? Because it's nuanced, and
| well-researched
|
| Ahem.
|
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows.
| You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know
| well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You
| read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no
| understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
| article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--
| reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets
| cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
|
| "In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
| multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of
| the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
| the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what
| you know."
|
| -- Michael Crichton
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem with this quote is twofold:
|
| 1. It assumes that inexperience in reporting correlates
| well across disciplines (i.e. if you read one badly
| researched physics article, it means the sports pages are
| similarly bullshit)
|
| 2. It assumes the existence of better-informed alternative
| media
|
| In the particular case Crichton cites, it's entirely
| reasonable to assume a news outfit might have better
| reporting on Palestine then on physics, if only because
| politicians have an incentive to talk to news outfits where
| scientists might not. In fact, much of journalistic ethics
| and process revolves around trying to determine political
| "truth", as much as something like that can exist.
| Conversely, there are plenty of scientists who can explain
| the details of the Standard Model or Quantum Field Theory;
| but don't have a single clue as to how trade negotiations
| work or why we sided with Saudi Arabia despite them not
| sharing our values one bit.
|
| Michael Crichton assumes knowledge is an RPG stat and that
| if a newspaper fails a knowledge roll once we should
| discard the paper because it's writers didn't put enough
| points into INT.
|
| Second, most alternative media I've encountered does no
| better on the "wet streets cause rain" problem. Actually,
| my experience is that they're _more_ prone to shoddy
| reporting, because their goal isn 't to try and find out
| something approaching the truth. It's to sell me a series
| of plausible lies that lead up to their particular
| political bias.
|
| For example, let's talk about climate science. It's a
| demonstrable fact that the Earth is warming due to human
| activity, but there's multiple ways one can be wrong about
| that. The kind of inaccurate reporting I'd expect to see
| out of a mainstream outfit would be something like "CO2
| causes ozone depletion". A right-wing alternative rag would
| instead try to deny the science altogether, either by
| casting FUD on the scientific process or worse. The former
| is something that might be technically incorrect, but the
| latter is deliberately trying to convince me that black is
| white, up is down, and short is long.
| csemaan wrote:
| This is really all there is to it. Yet the naive would
| still want to ask why, as in what's the motivation of
| pushing baloney? The answer is in another question: is
| there an industry more entrenched at the intersection of
| power/control/money?
| boredumb wrote:
| The Guardian is not nuanced or well-researching and it's ran
| by receiving funding from billionaires in order to push
| public opinion. They are also considered mainstream media by
| any rational person.
|
| Which "Mainstream media" outlets do you consider to be
| nuanced and well-researched?
| maxehmookau wrote:
| The Guardian claims to be, and is, a left-leaning media
| outlet that holds widely left-of-centre mainstream views.
|
| I would put the opposite question, which non-mainstream
| media outlets would you consider to be nuanced and well-
| researched?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This feels to me like a bit of a 1 dimensional appeal to
| authority. Consider the role of old guard media in selling
| the war in Iraq to the American public. Their pieces weren't
| well researched and turned out to have been fed to them by
| the administration. The Osama Bin Laden cave base diagrams
| also come to mind in the same vein. The NYT Daily's
| "Caliphate" podcast series is another great example.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Sure, I didn't suggest that they were unimpeachable but the
| "alternative" sources so often touted by self-proclaimed
| Facebook experts are orders of magnitude worse.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I depends what you mean by "alternative sources". Lot's
| of places still have local papers that are pretty good
| for local news. There are international papers that have
| a different point of view to the American corporate
| press, which is quite useful from time to time. There's
| also good bit of quality opinion and some reporting on
| substack. And then there are some select reporters that
| have a narrow beat who do great work in their niche, but
| may work for a place that is overall questionable.
|
| American news consumers should be critical, and pay
| attention to times when major competing news outlets are
| running the same headline about a complicated story.
| syops wrote:
| Who do you consider to be non-MSM?
|
| Facebook has been around at scale for a short period of time so
| the total amount of harm it has done so far won't compare to
| propaganda done by others but this should not detract from
| worry/blame/concern about Facebook. I won't lay the FB hate
| aside as you put it because I see the great harm it can and
| does do. Humans are easily manipulated and Facebook can do this
| at an unprecedented scale.
| csemaan wrote:
| Humans are easily manipulated, I agree with you. Contrast the
| multi-faced manipulation from an aggregator like FB with the
| power of the unified worldview given to you by the media
| conglomerates.
| syops wrote:
| So who are the non-MSM in your opinion? Facebook is more
| than merely and aggregator. They know how to keep peoples'
| eyes glued to them. They know what stories/narratives will
| push your buttons so to speak.
| csemaan wrote:
| I am sorry I can't answer your question: I read many many
| sources (from big name media to small time bloggers),
| contrast and apply common sense. I know my limitations to
| access the 'truth', and I live with that, always in
| doubt. That said, regarding Facebook, I genuinely never
| used it really (I have a placeholder account), never used
| Instagram, never used Messenger, never installed any of
| these apps on my phone, never log into these web apps on
| my PC. I use WhatsApp constantly to communicate with
| friends and family across the world.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > "That said, regarding Facebook, I genuinely never used
| it really (I have a placeholder account), never used
| Instagram, never used Messenger"
|
| Then you have a very limited understanding of the extreme
| issues with viral social media misinformation filter
| bubbles.
| syops wrote:
| You apply the term MSM and thus must have a notion of
| what constitutes the MSM, right? So which media sources
| don't count as MSM? If you can't name such sources then
| why use MSM instead of "mass media"?
| csemaan wrote:
| We are completely gone off-subject, but here is my take:
| I don't believe the MSM/Non-MSM divide creates any
| magical trust or value. The national (or international)
| household names (say WaPo, NYT, CNN, Fox, Slate, BBC, The
| Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Le Monde, Le
| Figaro, El Pais, Al Jazeera, etc.: extrapolate
| worldwide...) just have the power to do more
| harm/control/propaganda. Non-MSM (or non household
| recognizable names) are not more trustful in my view,
| obviously. In short: read, contrast, doubt, apply common
| sense.
| syops wrote:
| Then why use MSM instead of just "mass media" or instead
| of just saying, "verify sources to the extent possible"?
| My claim is that Facebook has far more power to do damage
| than the sources you've stated.
| 0goel0 wrote:
| This is a terrible take, and it seems like you have a grudge
| audient Guardian. Following your own logic, lay off the
| guardian hate. Their reporting is solid, and much needed these
| days.
| csemaan wrote:
| I have no grudge against The Guardian in particular, I have a
| grudge against ALL media (purporting to be 'left' leaning)
| that fed us lies (under the guise of R2P) to ease most wars
| and imperialist adventures. This post links to The Guardian,
| and The Guardian was most vociferous in the destruction of
| Libya (and Syria).
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| ...so who the hell DO you get your news from?
| kgog wrote:
| Probably Facebook and Youtube. :)
| csemaan wrote:
| Nothing original really: many, many, many sources, and I
| believe/disbelieve none completely. Triangulation
| process.
| drwoland wrote:
| Do you have a source for the guardian editorial policy
| being pro the toppling of Gaddafi's regime in Libya? The
| Guardian is far from perfect but generally they were and
| are against military intervention by the UK.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| MSM of course has played a huge role in many negative things
| that have happened across the world, but to say we should hold
| off on any FB "hate" because of this seems weird? Also for most
| people FB has a bigger impact on their perception of the world
| than any MSM and their impact is only growing (while many MSM
| are struggling to survive).
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| People are capable of critizing the bad things that both FB and
| the Guardian have done
| h2odragon wrote:
| Leaders "deceiving their citizens" was _never_ a problem until
| facebook came along! How unconscionable that they didnt
| anticipate and fix this problem!
|
| People who want Facebook, or "someone" to be the arbiter of the
| One True Truth are doomed to fail, because nothing is true.
| oilbagz wrote:
| ITT: folks whose livelihood depends on that Facebook Ads campaign
| manager payout, vs. those of us who would rather live in a world
| free from this sort of manipulation.
|
| DAE miss AOL?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| A lot of people may also be supporting the regimes of those
| countries
| williesleg wrote:
| Thanks Joe Biden.
| erdo wrote:
| I presume a firefox extension along the lines of Social Fixer
| would be able to filter all the likes/comments that come from
| pages rather than personal accounts. (But of course, a user needs
| to be aware of the issue in the first place, in order to want to
| install an extension to fix it)
| gregasquith wrote:
| Yeah, the problem is those that are seeing/potentially being
| manipulated by this are (I would imagine) highly unlikely to
| use a browser extension or (more likely, in developing nations
| where Facebook is forcing itself on users through the
| Internet.org project) on the mobile app anyway
| EastSmith wrote:
| This would have not be a problem if there was no algorithm to
| show you the top stories.
|
| Just show the stories in chronological order - let the users
| think before subscribing to 1000 pages and having 800 friends.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But users want the most interesting or important or relevant
| content to be highlighted.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| It seems like Facebook users don't have a choice in which
| content gets highlighted. I would much prefer a simple
| chronological feed of only posts from my friends and followed
| list.
| no-s wrote:
| yeah. it's like we don't get an honest say in what we get
| to see. Like advertising, heheh.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| I think in the near future, working at Facebook will probably
| have same stigma as working for Philipp Morris or similar...
| spoonjim wrote:
| Is it just me or are activist women in Bay Area tech
| disproportionately transgender? It seems like 20% or even more
| when you hear these "woman fighting corrupt behavior from the
| inside" stories.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tolbish wrote:
| Well San Francisco has the highest LGBT concentration of any
| metro in the US by a decent margin.
| franklampard wrote:
| Better headline: ex employee thinks there are too many fake
| Facebook pages accounts
| mhoad wrote:
| Let me give you some more context rather than this shitty
| throwaway cynicism. This is an issue that the employee thought
| was important enough to share that she had to give up almost
| $70k in severance.
| https://twitter.com/szhang_ds/status/1381518041737949185?s=2...
| Jonnax wrote:
| But you think that's not a problem?
|
| That fake accounts that signal boost support for political
| figures is fine election campaigning?
| rscoots wrote:
| It's only a problem if citizens are somehow influenced by the
| # of Facebook likes a politician gets.
|
| Those who'd hold Facebook to account for not programmatically
| 'fixing' this would do well to also acknowledge the
| underlying human failings that make these shady strategies
| allegedly effective.
|
| Maybe even a small attempt to improve voter literacy in
| Honduras?
|
| Easier to just shift the entire moral blame to FB and
| implicitly hope every similar social media company acquiesces
| to your worldview forever.
| franklampard wrote:
| It is and actions were taken:
|
| "As a result, we've taken down more than 100 networks of
| coordinated inauthentic behavior. Around half of them were
| domestic networks that operated in countries around the
| world, including those in Latin America, the Middle East and
| North Africa, and in the Asia Pacific region."
| commoner wrote:
| The Guardian has more coverage in this article, which was
| published at the same time:
|
| "How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a
| whistleblower's account" -
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-...
|
| It's interesting how Guy Rosen, a co-founder of the spyware
| company Onavo, is now Facebook's "vice-president of integrity":
|
| > Facebook had "moved slower than we'd like because of
| prioritization" on the Honduras case, Rosen wrote. "It's a bummer
| that it's back and I'm excited to learn from this and better
| understand what we need to do systematically," he added. But he
| also chastised her for making a public complaint, saying: "My
| concern is that threads like this can undermine the people that
| get up in the morning and do their absolute best to try to figure
| out how to spend the finite time and energy we all have and put
| their heart and soul into it."
|
| > Rosen had joined Facebook in 2013, when the company acquired
| his startup, Onavo, a mobile web analytics company that Facebook
| would go on to use to track usage of rival apps.
|
| Details on Onavo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > It's a bummer that it's back and I'm excited to learn from
| this and better understand what we need to do systematically...
|
| Corporate speak for, "Meh, whatevs".
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| > Guy Rosen, a co-founder of the spyware company Onavo, is now
| Facebook's "vice-president of integrity"
|
| Isn't that just the perfect match, based on how Facebook
| defines "integrity"?
| thisisnico wrote:
| Strategically placed someone that would align with their
| values and goals while making appearances that they care
| about "integrity". This strategic placements of persons
| happens everywhere.
| qwertox wrote:
| > It's interesting how Guy Rosen, a co-founder of the spyware
| company Onavo, is now Facebook's "vice-president of integrity"
|
| Sounds like a bad joke.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Imagine Radiohead's Creep playing on the background and it
| fits perfectly.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I thought that song was originally written by Nine Inch
| Nails, or am I misremembering?
|
| Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren't necessary
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren't
| necessary
|
| Hacker News has by far the weirdest downvote patterns of
| any forum I've used. I wouldn't pay much mind.
| tribesmith wrote:
| You are misremembering
| patorjk wrote:
| You are, it's a Radiohead tune. Though it sounds similar
| to "The Air That I Breathe" By The Hollies, but that song
| is from the 70s. NIN broke out a few years before
| Radiohead (Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989 while
| Pablo Honey was released in 1993).
| remarkEon wrote:
| >Though it sounds similar to "The Air That I Breathe" By
| The Hollies
|
| Wow you are right[1][2]. Very similar tone progressions.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7duPNQCp-w4 [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Sounds like a perfect fit for Facebook.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Wow this could be a lot more serious than I thuoght. People in
| the West need to realize that, in countries without free press,
| facebook is much more important for people, and probably the
| major source of news. And this girl appears to have been super-
| productive , which makes her firing suspicious imho. And not
| only that, i suspect many of the 'delays' will be found to be
| inside operations.
|
| I think there will be more to this story as it unfolds. And
| this doesnt even cover twitter , which afaik does not even try
| to weed out trolls.
| CFA178B wrote:
| There was never any point in facebook being any "force for good"
| or "revolution" as people might have hoped for. If you read
| investors reflections on early FB days strategic meetings, you
| see the picture much more clearly. Tech gets cheap, people are
| dumb, surveillance pays, what's not to like about this business?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| It's happened:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Revolution
|
| Facebook is the de facto social network and lets people connect
| and spread information on an unprecedented scale, for good or
| bad.
| john_minsk wrote:
| Facebook shouldn't moderate anything;
|
| Facebook content should drop in value to where it belongs:
| personal updates from friends and funny videos;
|
| People need to start voting on actual policies each
| politician/party proposes, not based on Facebook information from
| unknown accounts.
|
| Will that be enough?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Azerbaijan is not poor or small, please change the submission
| title , it s insulting
| dijit wrote:
| Poor and Small are comparatives.
|
| Compared to the UK, USA, France, Italy, Germany, China, Russia
| and on and on: Azerbaijan is poor and small.
|
| It ranks 112th in the world for size, 99th for population, 86th
| for GDP.
|
| When comparing things, especially when it's relevant to the
| subject (facebook doesn't care about comparatively small and
| poor countries) then it is not offensive.
|
| Unless you want to take offence.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's average, about the population size of Sweden, would
| anyone call sweden small? The problem is that the title
| deflects from the issue which is not that these countries are
| poor (Azb is rich enough to run an extensive laundering
| operation to whitewash their corruption). Facebook does the
| same in Turkey for example, and who knows how many other
| countries.
| triceratops wrote:
| > would anyone call sweden small?
|
| Yes. I think everyone calls Sweden small. Probably even
| Swedes themselves. Sweden is small and rich.
| dijit wrote:
| Yes, people definitely call Sweden small.
| bloat wrote:
| The quick summary here is that while a person is supposed to have
| only one Facebook account, that account can have an unlimited
| number of Facebook pages, which can all be set up to look like
| individual users, and can all comment, like, and post just like
| an individual user.
|
| The article gives examples of these pages making hundreds of pro-
| government comments on various political posts.
| Gravyness wrote:
| What's up with this articles that jump into "facebook is evil" so
| fast? Its obvious that a huge, worldwide company is slow to
| address manipulative ads in small communities.
| babesh wrote:
| Facebook is power and control over several billion people and
| countries across the world. That is superpower level power.
|
| Mark Zuckerberg will never give up that level of power because
| either he wields that power or someone else will.
|
| Weak countries don't matter in matters of power and this is an
| example of it.
|
| Also, Facebook has no issues at all when it comes to manipulation
| when it is to its benefit. It has done so before.
|
| If you believe that Facebook doesn't have that power then you
| must also believe that people aren't easily manipulated.
| Advertising is proof against that belief.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > Mark Zuckerberg will never give up that level of power
| because either he wields that power or someone else will.
|
| I'm leaning towards this is the most misunderstood aspect of
| Zuckerberg. The Google founders also lamented how difficult it
| was to steer morally straight when so many internal company
| issues arose when the stock price was flat: their most talented
| employees leaving and morale dropping. Zuckerberg is a smart
| cookie and is probably quite aware what's been created with
| Facebook. But it's absolutely worse under a bean-counter "money
| at all cost" corporation. Long term, federating and allowing
| people to retain their social graph across any client platform,
| breaking up the network effect, seems to be the only way
| forward.
| known wrote:
| "Media is not spreading free opinion; It's generating opinion"
| --Oswald (b. 1918)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West
| libraryatnight wrote:
| If we discovered any other type of product was this dangerous,
| it'd be pulled from the shelves. But in this case the ones that
| would do the pulling are probably benefiting the most from
| manipulation.
| freddealmeida wrote:
| I think we need a new journalism. One that can avoid the last 20
| years of structured news. Though I think this is impossible now.
| Not without an outsized reaction by the population that doesn't
| even care.
|
| Facebook exists because most people can accept those crimes
| committed against them. They really don't even understand them
| all. Shit Zuckerburg uses Signal. Nothing surprises me anymore
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > Shit Zuckerburg uses Signal. Nothing surprises me anymore
|
| Why would that surprise anyone? He had Moxie implement the
| Signal protocol in WhatsApp.
| shillforhumanty wrote:
| Nah we don't. Journalism was never for interest of the people.
| Those get shutdown as 'foreign actors' and we can't have
| foreign actors messing with our thoughts unless vetted by our
| ICs. We need less gullible brains, but that would make us
| realize how far the corruption goes, so far that no one can
| currently dare call it corruption.
|
| This goes against anyone who currently runs 'a journalism'. We
| need to stop giving them our attention. We won't
| bsenftner wrote:
| I', so tired of explaining to people that journalism is about
| making money, period. The "news" is the click bait and the
| ads and opinions are the product. Always has been this way,
| since the dawn of printing for the public.
|
| Why anyone is still on Facebook amazes me. You all know the
| corporations is one of the more evil presences in our
| society. Smoke up boys!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| CallingOutBS wrote:
| > Shit Zuckerburg uses Signal
|
| Was this ever confirmed?
|
| Is it possible Zuckerberg just installed it to check out the
| competition? Is it possible he has it installed as a WhatsApp
| backup, if FB/WhatsApp is down (exactly the sort of thing the
| CEO of FB/WhatsApp needs to be prepared for)?
|
| And we've concluded "Zuckerberg uses Signal"?
| HenryBemis wrote:
| If he installed it for 5mins to 'test the competition'....
| then.... he did it on his "main" phone? Don't they have
| throwaway phones for that? Would he allow his full contact
| list to be uploaded?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| We don't need a new journalism, we need a _new_ economic model
| to support the _old old_ journalism (pre-1990s).
|
| The three foundational planks that we've since lost are (1)
| strong _newsroom_ editorial control of content, independent of
| revenue, (2) long form & investigative journalism as a stable,
| viable profession, & (3) journalists and journalism outlets
| with reputation (able to counter-balance the weight of those
| they report on).
|
| The greatest tragedy of Google and Facebook has been that they
| appropriated advertising money that used to support actual
| journalism, and in return offered us free social and utility
| apps, but definitely not journalism.
|
| IMHO, we should just say the hell with it, tax advertising
| revenue, and fund journalism as a public good.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| While I agree, this reads as "faster horses."
|
| Though I would be for it, half of the US will vehemently
| oppose funding "fake news" with tax dollars.
|
| That leaves "ditching the horse altogether" as the only
| option.
|
| What does that look like?
| nradov wrote:
| Substack is that new economic model for a limited number of
| investigative journalists who have strong name recognition
| like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. But it probably won't
| scale to the levels were need.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Substack is currently awesome but it isn't going to be able
| to pay for journalism on any significant scale, as you
| mentioned. Journalism needs to be paid for by philanthropy.
| Absolute independence from market forces and political
| pressures. There are enough billionaires that could fund
| endless journalism off a fraction of their interest
| earnings.
| Kalium wrote:
| How much do you trust the independence of the Washington
| Post, now that it's owned and backed by Jeff Bezos? They
| clearly have freedom from market forces and political
| pressures now.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It is traditional for-profit journalism.
| Kalium wrote:
| It's easy for people to look at the highlights of journalism
| and think we must go back. It's more challenging to remember
| that yellow journalism and worse came from that _old old_
| journalism. Perhaps it 's only the best results of the old
| way we want, rather than all of them?
|
| The greatest tragedy of modern journalism has been its
| inability to adapt business models to a changing world. The
| _old old_ assumption was that newspapers and TV had a near
| monopoly on user attention, with a tragic unwillingness to
| consider that maybe this wouldn 't always be the case.
| Outlets more focused on subscriptions and less on advertising
| seem to have come through better.
|
| Perhaps the alignment between advertising and journalism was
| coincidental, rather than some iron law?
|
| > IMHO, we should just say the hell with it, tax advertising
| revenue, and fund journalism as a public good.
|
| Don't we already have outlets like that? How do you feel
| about Voice of America or People's Daily? IMHO, a lot of
| people distrust them as rather less than independent.
| CM30 wrote:
| > IMHO, we should just say the hell with it, tax advertising
| revenue, and fund journalism as a public good.
|
| What about the independent journalists and outlets that rely
| on said advertising revenue? Or the more mainstream ones that
| do likewise?
|
| Seems like this may make it worse for those, unless you've
| got a way this can only affect ad network providers rather
| than those utilising their services.
| bobiny wrote:
| I think journalistic work in gathering and checking facts and
| statements is fundamentally the same. Delivery sucks though.
| There is to much news generated each day, but feeds like in Fb
| or Twitter are not cut out to track issues. So we just
| endlessly consume information without achieving understanding.
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