Facebook Removed References To Russia From Fake-News Report (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in April, Facebook published a report called "Information Operations and Facebook" that detailed the company's efforts to combat fake news and other misinformation campaigns on the site. The report was released in the midst of an uproar over potential Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the report doesn't mention Russia by name, saying only that Facebook's data "does not contradict" a January report by the Obama administration detailing Russian meddling in the election. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision not to mention Russia was hotly debated inside Facebook. An earlier draft of the report discussed what Facebook knew at that time about Russian meddling, but that material was ultimately removed from the report before publication. "Some at Facebook pushed to not include a mention of Russia in the report because the company's understanding of Russian activity was too speculative, according to one of the people," according to the Journal.

Comments

Strange that FakeBook wouldn't buy the lie

[Anonymous Coward]

And double down on the fake news. After all, why would Zuck own the company if he couln't lie and have them swear to it? The team that told him there was no real true information there probably made career limiting decisions, but I suppose somewhere down the road people who support either side of the myth will still be able to find work. Maybe just not exactly where they wanted to.

At least someone at facebook is rationnal

[RedK]

because the company's understanding of Russian activity was too speculative

Good on them to value fact based reporting! Those people should be congratulated and promoted.

We need less narrative pushing and more fact based analysis. The whole "Russia!" scare the MSM and Democrats are pushing is really embarassing at this point and is only serving to distract officials from conducting actual government and intelligence work, while they continue on this wild goose chase, or witch hunt, or whatever you want to call it.