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.
> 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.
HenryBemis 1103 days ago [-]
Sounds like a perfect fit for Facebook.
EastSmith 1103 days ago [-]
Imagine Radiohead's Creep playing on the background and it fits perfectly.
remarkEon 1103 days ago [-]
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
patorjk 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
>Though it sounds similar to "The Air That I Breathe" By The Hollies
Wow you are right[1][2]. Very similar tone progressions.
> 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 1103 days ago [-]
You are misremembering
CaptainZapp 1103 days ago [-]
> 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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
cblconfederate 1103 days ago [-]
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.
comeonseriously 1103 days ago [-]
> 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...
> "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.
blfr 1103 days ago [-]
> 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.
titzer 1103 days ago [-]
> 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.
marcusjt 1102 days ago [-]
If true then surely that's better, not worse, as it means that Facebook simply needs to be suitably (financially) incentivised to change its behaviour - perhaps achievable via tighter regulation, penalties & rewards, etc etc.
yrgulation 1103 days ago [-]
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.
alisonatwork 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
djhn 1103 days ago [-]
Calling Mexico small and poor is a weird choice. Would China and Brazil qualify as well?
rodolphoarruda 1103 days ago [-]
I'm absolutely surprised that Brazil is not even mentioned in the article. Political manipulation since early 2019 in Brazil has been jaw dropping.
bloat 1103 days ago [-]
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.
CFA178B 1103 days ago [-]
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?
Facebook is the de facto social network and lets people connect and spread information on an unprecedented scale, for good or bad.
EastSmith 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
But users want the most interesting or important or relevant content to be highlighted.
BuyMyBitcoins 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
yeah. it's like we don't get an honest say in what we get to see. Like advertising, heheh.
m-p-3 1103 days ago [-]
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?
nullserver 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
A teaching moment for using strong passwords.
nullserver 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
ClumsyPilot 1103 days ago [-]
It's not a loophole if you can drive a truck through it.
That's like claiming that abusing slaves was a 'loophole'
freddealmeida 1103 days ago [-]
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
ethbr0 1103 days ago [-]
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.
Kalium 1103 days ago [-]
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.
BrianOnHN 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
It is traditional for-profit journalism.
CM30 1103 days ago [-]
> 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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
dna_polymerase 1103 days ago [-]
> Shit Zuckerburg uses Signal. Nothing surprises me anymore
Why would that surprise anyone? He had Moxie implement the Signal protocol in WhatsApp.
shillforhumanty 1103 days ago [-]
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
1103 days ago [-]
bsenftner 1103 days ago [-]
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!
1103 days ago [-]
CallingOutBS 1103 days ago [-]
> 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 1103 days ago [-]
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?
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?
babesh 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
> 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.
Gravyness 1103 days ago [-]
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.
leroman 1101 days ago [-]
We're suffering from this here as well (in Israel), we're already in the 4th consecutive election and it looks like there will be a fifth. Bibi's (and his family) use of social platforms has been in forms of - posts with blatant lies - fake profiles posting fake inciting content that is then used in their own campaigns to incite their base - fake likes - fake profiles that generate content It's got to the point that we just call any Bibi supporter as a "Bot" (once because they don't get our credit for critical thinking and second time because of the many fake profiles that generate content in his name)
erdo 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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
cblconfederate 1103 days ago [-]
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.
I live in one of those countries (Poland), and certainly the state-controlled media/energy/industry conglomerate is worse, thank you.
cblconfederate 1103 days ago [-]
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?
nradov 1103 days ago [-]
Do you have a list of which countries are oppressive and which are not?
cblconfederate 1103 days ago [-]
Many are listed in the article itself.
nradov 1103 days ago [-]
And who makes those decisions?
sprafa 1103 days ago [-]
Nobody makes any decision, stop being a douchebag. But there are places that try to classify this stuff and you know where it is.
libraryatnight 1103 days ago [-]
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.
kitsune_ 1103 days ago [-]
I think in the near future, working at Facebook will probably have same stigma as working for Philipp Morris or similar...
h2odragon 1103 days ago [-]
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.
jimmaswell 1103 days ago [-]
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.
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).
sp332 1103 days ago [-]
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.
merpnderp 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
What is the unit of measurement for criticism? As a metrology nerd this is a very important question.
merpnderp 1103 days ago [-]
You picked the wrong definition of measured. In this context it means something like to be deliberate and constrained.
spazrunaway 1103 days ago [-]
Yes. We need a hell of a lot less destructive criticism that leads to war.
sp332 1103 days ago [-]
That is why I'm anti-Facebook. Remember the role they played in the Myanmar genocide?
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 1103 days ago [-]
The problem is the constant naïve 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 1103 days ago [-]
What's your motivation with this account, that seemingly only exists to defend FB?
csemaan 1103 days ago [-]
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 naïve 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 1103 days ago [-]
> "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 1103 days ago [-]
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'.
syops 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
> "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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
humanistbot 1103 days ago [-]
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.
maxehmookau 1103 days ago [-]
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.
ch4s3 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
boredumb 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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?
pessimizer 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
As a victim of war myself, I beg to disagree with you.
CWuestefeld 1103 days ago [-]
> 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
csemaan 1103 days ago [-]
This is really all there is to it. Yet the naïve 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?
kmeisthax 1103 days ago [-]
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.
blfr 1103 days ago [-]
> 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.
hellomyguys 1103 days ago [-]
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).
xwolfi 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
Your source makes reference to an email which is no longer available, thanks to a dead link.
YellowStuDregg 1103 days ago [-]
Not to give credence to the overall article, but that part seems legit:
Stuff happens. I am sorry all over the place :roll_eyes:
loveistheanswer 1103 days ago [-]
People are capable of critizing the bad things that both FB and the Guardian have done
Proven 1103 days ago [-]
correct on all counts - thanks for highlighting that forgotten part of recent history.
0goel0 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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).
drwoland 1103 days ago [-]
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.
brendoelfrendo 1103 days ago [-]
...so who the hell DO you get your news from?
csemaan 1103 days ago [-]
Nothing original really: many, many, many sources, and I believe/disbelieve none completely. Triangulation process.
kgog 1103 days ago [-]
Probably Facebook and Youtube. :)
williesleg 1103 days ago [-]
Thanks Joe Biden.
cblconfederate 1103 days ago [-]
Azerbaijan is not poor or small, please change the submission title , it s insulting
dijit 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
> would anyone call sweden small?
Yes. I think everyone calls Sweden small. Probably even Swedes themselves. Sweden is small and rich.
dijit 1103 days ago [-]
Yes, people definitely call Sweden small.
oilbagz 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
A lot of people may also be supporting the regimes of those countries
spoonjim 1103 days ago [-]
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.
tolbish 1103 days ago [-]
Well San Francisco has the highest LGBT concentration of any metro in the US by a decent margin.
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zpeti 1103 days ago [-]
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.
mhoad 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
That's a textbook definition of institutional evil.
franklampard 1103 days ago [-]
a data scientist fired for poor performance
mhoad 1103 days ago [-]
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.
m-p-3 1103 days ago [-]
Which can be used as an excuse to dismiss her without putting Facebook in trouble for discrimination or retribution.
fakedang 1103 days ago [-]
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.
sprafa 1103 days ago [-]
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.
inglor_cz 1103 days ago [-]
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.
mgoetzke 1103 days ago [-]
EXACTLY. Micro-Targeting must be regulated world-wide to not allow it for political ads etc.
nkrisc 1103 days ago [-]
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”?
learnstats2 1103 days ago [-]
> 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.
ilovepitchdecks 1103 days ago [-]
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?
propertymagnate 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.
hntroll666 1103 days ago [-]
I tend to agree, but the Guardian does have expert knowledge on the subject of deceiving and harassing citizens.
ilovepitchdecks 1103 days ago [-]
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.)
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franklampard 1103 days ago [-]
Better headline: ex employee thinks there are too many fake Facebook pages accounts
mhoad 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
But you think that's not a problem?
That fake accounts that signal boost support for political figures is fine election campaigning?
rscoots 1103 days ago [-]
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 1103 days ago [-]
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.”
Rendered at 11:09:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
"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
Sounds like a bad joke.
Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren’t necessary
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
Hacker News has by far the weirdest downvote patterns of any forum I've used. I wouldn't pay much mind.
Isn't that just the perfect match, based on how Facebook defines "integrity"?
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.
Corporate speak for, "Meh, whatevs".
> "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.
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.
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.
The article gives examples of these pages making hundreds of pro-government comments on various political posts.
Facebook is the de facto social network and lets people connect and spread information on an unprecedented scale, for good or bad.
Just show the stories in chronological order - let the users think before subscribing to 1000 pages and having 800 friends.
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.
Allowing all the security info to be changed moments after logging on with no way to put them back is absurd.
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.
That's like claiming that abusing slaves was a 'loophole'
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Why would that surprise anyone? He had Moxie implement the Signal protocol in WhatsApp.
This goes against anyone who currently runs 'a journalism'. We need to stop giving them our attention. We won't
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!
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"?
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?
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.
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.
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
People who want Facebook, or "someone" to be the arbiter of the One True Truth are doomed to fail, because nothing is true.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Revolution
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).
Laying off the hate is likely just good advice all the time.
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.
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.
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.
Then you have a very limited understanding of the extreme issues with viral social media misinformation filter bubbles.
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.
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.
Which "Mainstream media" outlets do you consider to be nuanced and well-researched?
I would put the opposite question, which non-mainstream media outlets would you consider to be 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
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.
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.
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
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfa... (p10#20)
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.
Yes. I think everyone calls Sweden small. Probably even Swedes themselves. Sweden is small and rich.
DAE miss AOL?
All 3 are insanely difficult.
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.
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.
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”?
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.
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.
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.
That fake accounts that signal boost support for political figures is fine election campaigning?
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.
“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.”