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Facebook To Show Users Which Russian Propaganda They Followed (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Facebook will show people which Russian propaganda pages or accounts they've followed and liked on the social network, responding to a request from Congress to address manipulation and meddling during the 2016 presidential election. The tool will appear by the end of the year in Facebook's online support center, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. It will answer the user question, "How can I see if I've liked or followed a Facebook page or Instagram account created by the Internet Research Agency?" That's the Russian firm that created thousands of incendiary posts from fake accounts posing as U.S. citizens. People will see a list of the accounts they followed, if any, from January 2015 through August 2017. Facebook will only be showing people the names of the pages and accounts, not the content. A user will only see what they liked or followed, so if they simply saw IRA content in their news feeds, they won't be notified.
More transparency is a good thing.
If Facebook wants their platform to be taken seriously as a place for discussion they need to start doing this will all the organizations that try to use it for the purpose of spreading propaganda. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Maybe we need a better criteria for voting eligibility than a pulse.
Or, it could mean that we're ready for an actual democracy, not a pretend one where votes in certain states count for more than votes in others.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why did you leave out the DNC paid for that report or Natlia got her entry into the US approved by Obama administration.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d...
Actually, I'm a fan of the electoral college. At least, I understand what it's benefits are. I'd be interested to see straight popular vote, but my suspicion is that everyone would end up hating it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us. Unlike Congress (specifically the Senate, with two Senators per state), the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government.
Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states, and could literally tell all the other states to go piss up a rope without fear of losing. It would also heavily slant the Executive branch's agenda towards the concerns, demands and desires of the megacities, but screw over everyone living outside of them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And, the more things change...
Interesting how "the usual suspects" openly scoffed at accusations of Russian propaganda when the purported Russian propaganda was in support of their causes.
Back then, the Russian propaganda was mostly along political lines, supporting whoever was most sympathetic to Communism. Now, Russia being nationalist and not Communist these days, and not so much pushing an ideological line, their propaganda is more like "How much can we screw them up?" So when the Left's ox gets mauled by the Russian bear... Suddenly, what was an object of derision ("The '80s called, they want their foreign policy back") becomes A Clear And Present Danger.
I wonder what could screw us up more than Trump in the White House... And the left says "Hold my joint."
Because... the fact that she came into the US while Obama was president is a completely trivial piece of information. And... the first thing you said was relevant, though misleading - Fusion GPS is a research firm which was originally hired to look into Trump by a GOP client during the Republican primary, and then by the DNC during the general election. So that report was paid for partially by the DNC and partially by an unspecified Republican client. If you read the article at the link you posted it spells this out.
Is facebook now the thought police? why are they only targeting Russian propaganda? why cant they show me when i have liked or followed ANY propaganda?
Oh wait, its because they have their own political agenda.... The board should be sacked along with all C suite executives at they no longer are interested in maximizing returns for their shareholders. They have instead opted to use their influence to try and sway popular opinion, its a bold strategy but not one that will maximize returns as it is based on the personal beliefs of people instead of a rational analysis of the market direction. That and they should know that to pick a side in any battle is strategically risky as it may not be the side that wins in the long term.
What you're basically saying is that empty land area matters more than what the majority of actual people want.
mainly it doesnt allow the coastal elites control of the country. my state of NY is a perfect example of why the electoral college is better than a straight vote. NYC covers an area of what, 30 square miles? if that?? Yet due to its population density, it has control over the entire state, eventhough the entire state minus NYC does not want anything to do with the policies that come through due to the influence of NYC
now imagine the entire country being run by NYC and a few other big cities. No thanks
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
or maybe we could limit the power of the federal government and stop expanding it so that way the states have more power than the fed, as intended
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The EC is fine. The biggest problem is that we need more viable parties, and with First Past the Post that's just not going to happen. This massive partisan divide that we have is completely artificial. This country mostly agrees on things, except for a few specific issues. However, running on an "everything's fine" campaign doesn't get anyone elected, so we campaign on wedge issues.
I've heard it said that America required an existential external threat in order to function properly, that an overarching national crisis was required to elevate all of us above our partisan bickering. It's suggestive at least that the Hastert Rule was adopted after the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, today we have nothing left but wedge issues and team politics.
This is a mathematical weakness of our democracy, that we can only accommodate two political stripes at a time. There are actually more distinct points of view out there, which are not enjoying separate representation. From what I've read, there are at least six "real" parties in this country.There are assuredly dangers of multi-party systems, but it's apparently all-too-easy for one powerful individual to hijack a political party for their own ends: both major candidates did so last election, in different ways.
The right solution here is to use some other voting method: IRV, range voting, approval voting, whatever. It doesn't require changing the Constitution or the Electoral College, but it does require teaching math concepts to the U.S. electorate and convincing the courts that this doesn't violate "one man, one vote".
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The vast majority of my food comes from California, within a few hundred miles of where I'm sitting now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us
So instead a few "battleground" states (PA, OH, FL) get to set the agenda for the rest of us.
I don't see the difference.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Except :
One pro-Trump Facebook ad called for the "removal of Hillary Clinton from the presidential ballot" while another blamed Black Lives Matter for a "gruesome attack on police". Meanwhile, a fake gay rightsâ(TM) account praised Bernie Sanders as a "hero", and an anti-Trump profile advertised a "not my president" rally after the election, which attracted interest from nearly 50,000 people on Facebook and said: "Racism won, Ignorance won, Sexual assault won ⦠STOP TRUMP!"
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
People still aren't getting it. Or are being purposefully obtuse to try and keep the "Russia!" panic alive and try to paint Trump in a bad light. If he's such a bad president and bad person, why do you people even need to make stuff up to defame him ?
The only thing creating division in the U.S. right now is not the President, it's all the #RESIST BS that keeps shoving "Russia!" hysteria and spinning everything the President does as negative. It's gotten so bad that if the man cured Cancer tomorrow, he'd be accused of putting Oncologists out of a job.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Humans aren't ready for the Internet. That's the big problem.
I don't respond to AC's.
the Electoral College is the only thing that allows smaller states to get a voice in the Executive branch of government
First: of course they would still have a voice, it just wouldn't be as loud. Instead, it would be proportional to the number of voters in those states.
... except when it comes to the electoral college.
Second, and more to the point: why do you think states should have any say at all in who gets elected president? This is an odd argument - the whole point of democracy is that voters, people, get to decide who leads them. Not states. And by-and-large we adhere to the one-man-one-vote principle, remember that whole "all men are created equal" business?
"All men are are created equal... provided that they live in the same state. People who live in populous states can go fuck themselves."
Of course, most of this is blowing smoke anyway. The real consequence of the electoral college is that few people get any say at all in who gets elected president, whether they live in a big state or a small one. Only people who live in the swing states actually matter.
People in Alabama support pedophiles. Why should I want them to set any agenda for anyone anywhere?
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are, but not to the extent of the red states. Here is a list of the 100 poorest counties in the United States. Not one of them is anywhere near what you would call a "big city".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't see any redeeming features.
It gives less populated states a say in a system that would otherwise make them irrelevant. Not a lot of a say, but some. States like Montana and Alaska are valuable resources for the United States and I'd like to keep them.
And, if that was the way it was intended, you'd have a point... but it wasn't. The Constitution empowered the federal government over the states specifically because the Confederacy of States (where the states were more powerful than the fed) was a spectacular failure... so spectacular of a failure that it took them less than 7 years to realized they needed something exactly the opposite.
Your post isn't insightful, it's simply repeating the lies of people who hate the UNITED States or America.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
What you've described now is already what's happening. Except instead of pandering to population centers they're pandering to the isolated inhabitants of regions without the economy to support a large population. My life and opinion shouldn't be worth less because of where I live.
Subverting democracy aside I shouldn't have to put up with the hairbrained ideas of places managed so badly that nobody wants to live there, decided by desperate people who lack to common sense to leave when their job dies.
When you say "grown by", do you mean the people who own the farms or the people who actually do the work?
You are welcome on my lawn.
My food isn't sentient and I'm so rich I wouldn't starve anyhow. Maybe the country should be listening to my ideas and not the ideas of people who claim they have to pay a bunch of illegal immigrants less than minimum wage in order to run a successful business that I depend on for living.
Dunno about GP, but I like the fact that big, heavily-populated states (California, New York, Texas) don't get to set the agenda for the rest of us.
Yes, Tyranny of the Minority is fun when you're the minority.
Remove the Electoral College, and you have a situation where candidates only need pander to a small handful of states...
You mean they'd have to pander to a majority of the people, who are worth less than you are worth because you dislike their politics.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
"Empty land" is what feeds the majority of America. Not fucking over farmers is in the best interest of y'all city folk,
City folk didn't purposefully elect a prick to screw with their political opposition. City folk don't want to screw over farmers. Nor is it in the farmer's best interests to screw over city folk, cuz we do things like eliminate polio, invent dwarf wheat, bring down the cost of manufactured goods, and raise the quality of life. We have also made it possible for the US to have the world's best military, because everyone has brave muscular men, but few have an unlocked GPS system.
We're all Americans and our votes should count equally.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Can we get the same feature for other propaganda as well? Chinese propaganda, american propaganda, and most importantly: Corporate propaganda.
According to WP:
Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.
That describes just about any advertisement or political statement made by any politician during the past decade.
We are being manipulated constantly, from all sides. My profession is information security, so I have a lot of exposure to "evil russians". Here's a consistent pattern that I've noticed again and again and again, and I'm beginning to believe that it applies to the russian infowar approach as well: Russian methods are more obvious, more transparent. Might be less experience or a reduced sensitivity to exposure (Russians distrust their government even more than americans do, and basically assume that all politicians are corrupt anyways, so there's less need to pretend). But once you look past that, there's really not so much difference. Western manipulations, or security attacks, are less obvious, more tricky, spend more resources on appearing as something else or remaining unnoticed. There is also a lot more misdirection in the western approach. But when you look at plain data, the USA is as much an attack source as Russia, if not more so (this recent article lists the USA far ahead of Russia, with Turkey and Brazil ahead of the evil ex-communists).
We are clearly seing a revival of Cold War animosities. Maybe trecking out NK and Iran as the "Axis of Evil" doesn't have the desired effect anymore? Maybe a large event (not necessarily a war, but could be) is being prepared and the public opinion needs to be set up properly first? Or maybe the people in charge are just boneheaded idiots who seriously think that Russia is a big danger, but climate change is a fabrication. No, you cannot possibly be that stupid, you would forget to breathe if you had that much of a brain damage.
But "fake news" isn't news at all, it's been around for hundreds of years. As has been propaganda, and the main source of propaganda, at all times in history, has always been - surprise - your own government. Which is logical, of course. The local/national government has the most to lose or win from your opinion, so they have the greatest interest in influencing it.
So please give us fake news background checks not just for selected sources. The person that writes a Firefox extension that automatically overlays advertisement with fact-checking background information deserves a Nobel prize. The person who hacks the cable broadcast infrastructure to put that on all the TV stations - we'd have to invent a new prize for that person. The manipulations that were done in the name of profit begin to make those done in the name of war appear harmless. Sugar industry, tobacco industry, oil industry - these fuckers are ready to destroy generations of people so their next quarterly earnings reports are good. With such friends, who needs enemies? I personally am much more worried about these guys.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org