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."

Comments

"Protect Election Integerity"

[BlueStrat]

Wow, that's not Orwellian at all.

Strat

Re:"Protect Election Integerity"

[Suki I]

No, they are the same side.

Re:"Protect Election Integerity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.

It's because the other side believes might makes right, and like to burn down black churches.

Sure. Ask James Damore about that.

All he had to do to invoke the SJW/"progressive" wrath was to quote actual scientific research debunking the idea of a discrimination-based "pay gap" between men and women.

Of course, after Google doubled down on SJW stupidity, stating "Of course all pay differences are the result of discrimition!", they got sued for discrimination. SJW cannibalism at its finest! I'm sure Damore's attorneys will be paying real close attention to Google's defense against claims they discriminated based on sex.

When everything is about race and identity, it all becomes meaningless noise.

Re:"Protect Election Integerity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea it's a fucking Orwellian shitshow.

In Germany we have Facebook deletion centers whose only task is to delete controversial content. They are staffed with hundreds of people and they stocked up before the election. Said centers are being coached by hard left foundations and staffed with hard left staff that happily deletes posts that aren't violating any laws but don't suit their political worldview.

An ex employee recently reported they actively target the AfD, a conservative/right party that's been gaining a lot of popularity, to delete posts that could benefit them.

> "We don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy."

That's exactly what Facebook is doing.

Re:"Protect Election Integerity"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful! So what if assaults are up 200%, murders are up 50% and rapes are up 1000%? The average woman rape victim is thanking us because of how diverse their rapists are!

Re:"Election Integrity" LOL

[Suki I]

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!

Exactly. And Facebook should never appear in the same sentence as integrity, unless modified with "lack of."

I'd rather have my content modified...

[rbrander]

...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.

Next up

[easyTree]

Farmer teams with fox to protect chicken integrity.

Re:Next Canadian Federal Election - October 21, 20

[Mashiki]

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.

Fancy wording for "Censoring"

[gotan]

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).