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Canadian Government Teams With Facebook To Protect Election Integrity (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
There are nearly as many Canadians who use Facebook daily as there are people in this country who are registered to vote -- which is why the federal government is working with Facebook to protect its next federal election... Facebook is now facing perhaps its biggest test as it looks to curb foreign electoral interference and the rampant disinformation on its platform, both of which undermine the nature of democracy. Facebook Canada's election integrity project includes a partnership with a local digital news media literacy organization MediaSmarts, as well as a "cyberhygiene guide" that highlights particular vulnerabilities such as phishing and page-admin authentication. Facebook also has a crisis email line to help politicians and parties with hacking concerns... Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada's head of public policy, said the social media company is working on preventing bad actors from interfering with the democratic process. "At Facebook we take our responsibilities seriously," Chan said. "We don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy."
At the launch of "the Canadian Election Integrity Initiative," Canada's Minister of Democratic Institutions argued that social media sites "must begin to view themselves as actors in shaping the democratic discourse."
The article points out Facebook "has promised to hire thousands of workers globally to help review flagged and suspicious content, as well as use machine learning to identify suspicious patterns of behavior on its platform."
At the launch of "the Canadian Election Integrity Initiative," Canada's Minister of Democratic Institutions argued that social media sites "must begin to view themselves as actors in shaping the democratic discourse."
The article points out Facebook "has promised to hire thousands of workers globally to help review flagged and suspicious content, as well as use machine learning to identify suspicious patterns of behavior on its platform."
Wow, that's not Orwellian at all.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
By "election integrity" they mean making sure the correct candidate gets elected by votes ore stolen election. We can't have another donald trump or other populist candidate win. Facebook's censorship will really help them out!
Once you introduce a third party to "manage information" then it's already compromised.
I feel so much better, to know that our esteemed tech companies like Facebook are acting to protect us and keep us safe.
Canada's next federal election will likely be 2 years away on October 21, 2019. The federal government can sometimes be very competent in areas like this. They can also fail spectacularly but as long as this effort doesn't get to much media or political attention it will likely do well.
The pay system is f%#ked and but it's not an IT problem. It's an organizational psychology problem. The pay algorithms are extremely complicated, are based on a large number of variables and are in some cases contradictory. But that's not the worst of the problem. It's the way the government makes the rules. The various unions and the government negotiate by making proposals that add to the pay rules. Now each new rule that they add on its own might make sense if you didn't know all the existing rules. So after the unions and the government have finished their negotiations the new rules are sent to payroll to be implemented. Now payroll has no way of pushing back on the rules, or saying that they are stupid, complicated or contradictory, so in the past they used humans to make the best compromises possible and minimize the complaints. Then some bean counter realized that payroll was huge and expensive and totally out of line with what other organizations were spending. They unfortunately came up with the wrong solution. Instead of simplifying the rules they decided to move all the different pay systems into one giant system. It was doomed from the start.
Elections, Integrity and FaceBook.
If the Russians ever tried anything, Canada has an elite force of eskimos on snowmobiles who have .303 rifles and it would be very bad for Putin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...by an open process run by a government than a closed process run by a private corporation the size of a government with no responsibility to the public whatsoever.
Because of the open process, this is going to timidly filter out a little of the worst of the worst, and that's about it.
Farmer teams with fox to protect chicken integrity.
Requiem for the American Dream
,i>All I can say is we are hosed.
Even more hosed than it looks now.
Elections aren't about being fair. They're about stabilizing the country.
They work by trying to figure out in advance how the civil war would come out, and being believable enough that the losers will think they'd also lose the civil war to revise the results.
The easiest way to be believable, of course, is to be transparently honest. Even being honest isn't enough if the process appears dishonest. Corrupt or controlled of press and interpersonal communication channels, which becomes known (or belief this is the case even if it is not) can be enough to pop the bubble of belief.
Elections can stand a little dishonesty. But massive corruption may convince the citizens that they're a fraud and a war to "overthrow the tyrants" might succeed. Then you get the violence.
Try thinking about it this way and then looking at current events in Venezuela, or Spain. (Or look at the aftermath of the US elections, when the press first had the left convinced they were winning, then went on make them think they had a big margin and were cheated.)
If Canada does something like what is described, and the winners of the next election gore enough oxen when they wield power afterwards, be prepared for such "unrest" there, as well.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why don't they help us with single-payer insurance first!!
I don't think Markelova and Baburov really belong here. You can probably add Yuri Schekochikhin though.
The Federal Liberals are likely far more scared considering what's happening in provincial politics right now. The largest voting block is Ontario, and the provincial liberals are polling at 11% vs Conservatives at 33% and the NDP at 20%. The policies of the provincial liberals(green energy boon dongle, massive corruption, sanctuary city BS) and so on are pissing people off. Round that out with Trudeaus "oh we'll take the illegals..." really pissed people off. The last time 80% of Canadians agreed on polling over anything was with hockey. And the vast majority are pissed off over all of these illegals getting free shit, while they're kicking single mothers and fathers out of hotels and onto the street.
Most places in Canada already have a 4 year backlog for low-income housing. In my area of Ontario is 6.5 years. People don't mind the government giving assistance, but they want it to goto actual citizens first.
Om, nomnomnom...
Oh, I like this game.
I'll take, kill Putin, marry Russia, and fuck Trump.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is not just an oxymoron, it is a hydroxymoron or something like that. What are they thinking? As a Brit, I've always felt that our cousins were pretty sane too.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
So some Canadian parties claim a monopoly on "democratic" positions and want to ban anything and anyone contradicting their views.
The censoring is outsourced to private companies like Facebook to circumvent pesky anti-censoring laws. That has the additional benefit, that there is no constitutional oversight and no address for anyone wronged by out of hand censoring.
This authoritarian approach is justified with talk of "Fake-News" and "Hate-Speech", but what it comes down to is censoring of unwanted political viewpoints or even uncomfortable truths. A few hand picked extreme cases are presented to justify implementing censorship.
Here is a nice wired article, how Facebook "learned" to do "the right thing (TM)" ahead of German elections:
https://www.wired.com/story/fa...
In Germany a law threatening up to 50M fines to companies like Facebook was rushed through legislation just before elections. It's not hard to imagine how FB in response will crack down on anything deemed "politically incorrect".
And please spare me the "private companies can do as they like" drivel. Companies like Facebook and Google are nowadays at the hub of information flow. It's ridiculous to make a big deal about the alleged "Russians" influence on public opinion and elections by means of RT and a few bots, but turn a blind eye when FB or google push a political agenda (either of their own accord or because they are instrumentalized by political parties).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
While on the surface the decision seems benign and unbiased, it is very hard to do anything that is not.
Basically at least in Canada the way demographics and voters go, is the further left of center you are, the younger you probably are, and the more likely you use social media like Facebook. So the use of Facebook in any way is going to disproportionately impact some political parties over others. The current Liberal government is centrist left. So one might argue this is simply a political ploy to improve their chances during the next election against their really only rival which are the less centrist right Conservative party. Now I am sure all this is done under the auspices of the Ministry that does the elections which is supposed to be bipartisan, but I'm not sure the Conservatives will feel/spin it that way.