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Facebook Reopens Probe Into Russian Involvement in Brexit (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch:
Facebook has said it will conduct a wider investigation into whether there was Russian meddling on its platform relating to the 2016 Brexit referendum vote in the UK. Wednesday its UK policy director Simon Milner wrote to a parliamentary committee that's been conducting a wide-ranging enquiry into fake news -- and whose chair has been witheringly critical of Facebook and Twitter for failing to co-operate with requests for information and assistance on the topic of Brexit and Russia -- saying it will widen its investigation, per the committee's request. Though he gave no firm deadline for delivering a fresh report -- beyond estimating "a number of weeks".
It's not clear whether Twitter will also bow to pressure to conduct a more thorough investigation of Brexit-related disinformation. At the time of writing the company had not responded to our questions either. At the end of last year committee chair Damian Collins warned both companies they could face sanctions for failing to co-operate with the committee's enquiry -- slamming Twitter's investigations to date as "completely inadequate", and expressing disbelief that both companies had essentially ignored the committee's requests... Independent academic studies have suggested there was in fact significant tweet-based activity generated around Brexit by Russian bots."
Theresa May has said Russia's attempts to "sow discord" in the West could not go unchallenged, and warned Vladimir Putin, "We know what you are up to."
Facebook's response complained that a new investigation "requires detailed analysis of historic data by our security experts, who are also engaged in preventing live threats to our service."
It's not clear whether Twitter will also bow to pressure to conduct a more thorough investigation of Brexit-related disinformation. At the time of writing the company had not responded to our questions either. At the end of last year committee chair Damian Collins warned both companies they could face sanctions for failing to co-operate with the committee's enquiry -- slamming Twitter's investigations to date as "completely inadequate", and expressing disbelief that both companies had essentially ignored the committee's requests... Independent academic studies have suggested there was in fact significant tweet-based activity generated around Brexit by Russian bots."
Theresa May has said Russia's attempts to "sow discord" in the West could not go unchallenged, and warned Vladimir Putin, "We know what you are up to."
Facebook's response complained that a new investigation "requires detailed analysis of historic data by our security experts, who are also engaged in preventing live threats to our service."
Yes! The Russians put nanobots into our brains and make us do their bidding!
Damn I don't know if we will survive 40 more years! Somebody please! Turn off the internet!
I see a lot of anonymous coward postings taking a "nothing to see here.. move along" stance... So sorry that Facebook looking into and possibly exposing something ruffles your delicate feathers so much...
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years" - Barack Obama, third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
When the Russians actually fund Communist and Green parties and generally support left-wing agitation, there's nothing to see here. But when people vote right-of-center, it must be a Russian conspiracy!
Russiagaters are getting more and more desperately pathetic with each passing day. this pic about sums it up. Anything and everything can be and will be blamed on Russia, because we need a distraction from how horrible Hillary and her party are to lose the most winnable election in history.
The problem is something called sampling bias. If you only look for meddling by Russia in only decisions you dislike, then you can only find meddling by Russia only in decisions you dislike. e.g. If your landlord claims your apartment is filthy and is the source of the cockroaches that everyone in the building has been complaining about, and he does an extensive search for roaches in your apartment and finds some, that doesn't prove his claim. For all we know, your apartment could be the cleanest one in the building, and if he'd done the same extensive search on the other apartments he would've found a lot more roaches. But by searching only your unit, he's abusing sampling bias - cherry picking data by only looking in certain places - to try to make it appear as if you're the one at fault.*
If you want to investigate something like this in an objective manner, you need to look for meddling into all big political decisions by all foreign powers. This includes meddling by Facebook (a US corporation) abusing sampling bias to try to discredit the UK Brexit vote via a press release that millions if not tens of millions of Britons will hear about in the news..
* In this case the statistical error (by Facebook) is intentional. But sampling bias can creep in unintentionally too. The classic example is a surveyor tasked with finding out how many hours city residents ride the subway on average, so the city can make better decisions on if subway service should be expanded. He starts off by asking random people on the street how often they ride the subway each week. He grows frustrated that most people don't ride the subway at all, making it difficult for him to gather the required minimum number of positive responses to minimize the margin of error. Then he's struck with inspiration. He'll simply got aboard a subway train and ask the riders how many hours they ride each week. Since everyone on the subway must be subway riders, that'll neatly filter out all the non-riders he's been wasting his time with.
The problem is when you ask people riding on the subway instead of random people on the street, the odds of you encountering a heavy subway user are higher. e.g. If 80% of subway riders ride the subway 1 hour a week, and 20% ride it 10 hours a week, you are 2.5x as likely to sample a 10 hr/wk rider than you are a 1 hr/wk rider simply because they're on the subway a lot longer. So the statistical data you gather this way ends up biased high by your sampling method.
Any reasonable person would be concerned about evidence of destabalising posting on open western media. You forget that it is a primary attack method of the Russian military and that their internet is tightly controlled. The evidence is likely to show external posts of strongly emotional appeals to both sides of any political dispute in order to break down the cohesiveness of our society.
Given many posts here they are doing a great job. We used to be largely content with voting to determine our politics and today there are many souces openly calling for civil war. Anywhere that there has actually been a civil war recently has a destroyed economy so I would not dismiss this method of attack quite so glibly.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Russia is under trade sanctions with the EU for invading Ukraine. Russia would also like to reassert influence over more of Eastern Europe and the EU stands in their way. Brexit is mana from heaven for their geopolitical ambitions.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Russia's goal is probably to keep the American voting public disunited. It is in their best interest to keep each half of the population thinking that the other half are un-American traitors.
What should make you angry is that it doesn't take much, since the politicians, cable commentators, and Internet comment sections do most of the work already. Just a few nudges are required.
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failed socialist experience to again
(emphasis mine)
I'm curious, what/when was the last 'experience' (do you mean experiment?)?
most successful nation
Not by a lot of metrics; less so than in the past and falling.
Some progressive policies =/= socialism. Some well-regulated and limited social policies =/= socialism. Criticism of the excesses of capitalism =/= socialism. Calling for limitations or regulation of capitalism =/= socialism.
Neither pure capitalism, nor pure socialism (or the closest approximations that have arisen) work particularly well for anyone but the small group who come to accumulate power. Identifying the areas of society that are best allowed to operate as a (regulated) free market, and those areas that are better run as (limited and well defined) social services is more successful, by a number of measures.
Challenging where to draw those lines is essential to prevent the excesses of an imbalance in either direction, and to that end debate and argument is useful.
Tribalism, partisanship or a refusal to accept any 'dilution' of a position, or compromise with different points of view is not.
It's more like, "Lots of us keep hearing hearing funny noises from under the bed... Don't you think we should get a torch and have a peek under there?"
Your response is something like, "There's nothing under the bed because we say so--and don't you dare even look under it."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Whatever The media and press doesn't like from people is blamed on russians to try to revert it. Their candidate was Hillary. She lost.. It's Russians influence (even they assured the elections could not be hacked and they had to accept the results they expected ).
Now, People in Britain sees the evil that the EU is (yes I'm a part of EU and hate EU government), and they vote to exit... against the Press&media will.... again "let's blame the russians"
There was a lot of debate before that, and it was dominated by Nigel Farage fanning the flames of racism. There was no reasonable discussion, just blame thrown at the immigrants.
You mean it didn't have anything to do with the police and government turning a blind eye to immigrants raping young white girls? Or "sharia only" zones being pushed by muslims? Or a decade or so of an muslim preacher openly agitating terrorism in the UK? Or on, and on and on? Where people rightly or wrongly feel like they've become foreigners in their own city?
If you want debate in Britain, just talk to Jo Cox about it. That's right, she cannot talk since she was assassinated just before the Brexit vote, and for what ? For being moderate and not joining the chorus of voices blaming the immigrants.
No, not being moderate. Because the government was and is failing it's own citizens, and someone had enough and killed her. Her death was a direct result of policies by the government in the UK over the years. I'm not saying it's correct, right, or anything else. But you're failing to see that there is an undercurrent in the UK where some people see no hope. Some people are able to flee, head to other countries. Others on the other hand see the government as the enemy because the government has done things to make itself their enemy. And the more that the government pushes against people, and they silence people, and the police act as cenors? The worse it will get.
This is fundamentally different then people who are agitating for a new political order. This is what the breakdown in the social contract looks like and the start of a societies collapse looks like.
Om, nomnomnom...