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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 wonder if Russia is behind Facebook's reopening of this probe into Russian meddling in Brexit. If you're Russia it seems like the best way to stir up shit in opposing powers is to let them tear themselves in half over whether or not Russia was involved in influencing their government in some way.
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!
but it was Mays own party that proposed Brexit on a gamble. After the country actually voted in favour of it, 3 separate politicians assumed responsibility for the fiasco and each stepped aside as the brakes were nowhere to be found on this train. Even Boris Johnson had a swing at the corpulent trashbag known as Brexit. the UK even went so far as to say the legislation was somehow nonbinding, and when pressed by the EU to exist in a timely fashion had the audacity to demand "a good deal" in exchange for leaving. They did not in fact get a deal.
now may's trying again, desparately, to save face and pin the blame on russia? Seriously? At some point someone has to call her bluff and ask what strategic or tactical advantage Russia gains by sabotaging a nation into exile from a trade group russia already has formal relations with (the EU)? In other words, why would russia intentionally make it more cumbersome to trade with the UK?
Good people go to bed earlier.
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.
Thanks for that, Ivan. Always good to know what Putin's St Petersburg astroturf army is thinking
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Thanks for that, Ivan. Always good to know what Putin's St Petersburg astroturf army is thinking
It's pretty hard to figure out what the left's astroturfing army is thinking these days. Either it's russians everywhere, including under your bed. Or it's nazi's everywhere, including under your bed. I bet psychiatrists are making a mint though.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
It would be a lot more believable if there were any signs of using EFFECTIVE methods of countering Russian propaganda. A commonly stated goal of Russia is to undermine faith in western democracies. Instead of changing policies to restore faith, they are using Russia to avoid actually implementing populist agendas.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...who's interest is it in with depopulating Syria, and causing the refugee mess in Europe.
Brexit is a seperate issue to American elections, do read the summary before posting !
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.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
There have been a lot of media reports of massive Russian meddling in the Brexit campaign, but the first investigation found they spent £0.73:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/12/13/facebook-russians-spent-just-73-pence-ads-brexit-campaign/
Of course, this didn't stop the left wing media claiming there was Russian involvement. Sure, if they spent £0.73 then there was Russian involvement, but the scale of involvement has been intentionally misrepresented.
What the leftists can't seem to handle is that Brexit and Trump occurred, not because of Russian meddling or because people were tricked, but because a great many people wanted them to happen. If the leftists left their echo chambers for a brief moment, they might actually realise that.
At least Macron understands that people genuinely don't like the left wing agenda. When asked if given a vote on the EU would the French vote to leave, he said "probably":
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/955019112031244288
Of course, the French will never get a vote. After the March elections it may well be that Italy do get a vote, and that would really get the ball rolling.
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.
In the specific case of Brexit, there are two different challenges to consider.
The first is whether or not *any* foreign government had the ability to influence the preferences of the British people when it came to the vote. I notice that much discussion is being given to the potential for Russian meddling, but I also note that nobody batted an eye when Barak Obama not only made very pro-Brexit comments, but also made it very clear that if Britain elected to vote to leave, then Britain would be put to "the back of the queue" when it came to negotiating a trade deal with the US.
Or how about the fact that the government of the day spent literally millions of pounds of Tax-Payers money to fund their part of the campaign, by physically posting their views to every single household in the country via a mail-dropped leaflet. This was clearly an attempt at influencing public opinion, and the money to do so was spent only by the "Remain" campaign, because that happened to be the position taken by the Prime Minister of the day [not even the "Government of the Day", seeing as how numerous ministers favoured leaving].
So the first issue is a pretty specious point, really. However accurate and however valid the point is, it's largely irrelevant to point to some underhand foreign government meddling in the Brexit vote when the standing UK Government of the day were tilting the odds so far the other way...
The second point concerns the foundation of democracy itself. The final Brexit vote was split 52:48 (%) in favour of leaving the EU. This vote, which was operated on 100% democratic principles [i.e. of "one person, one vote" - and not the "first pass the post" method used for UK General Elections], was a significantly stronger vote in favour of an outcome than any UK General Election in living memory. For example, when David Cameron [who was Prime Minister at the time] won his second term in office, he secured 44% of the popular vote.
44%. The Brexit vote secured 52% - an outright majority. Yet Cameron was returned to Government with a large majority... Even more curiously, nobody demanded a recount or a second General Election even though he only won 44% of the vote... [OK, cheeky argument, since the two events were handled under different rules]. But the point stands.
You only have to look at the way that political elites have reacted to the vote - one in which the British people had the temerity to vote for what they actually wanted - to see how important this vote was. Since the decision was made the EU has gone out of it's way to try and bully, cajole, frighten or threaten the UK into having a second Referendum to overturn the first decision.
Whether or not you agree with the decision to leave the EU, this external force from the EU, which is a million times worse than any influence Russia could have brought to bear, must be resisted at ALL costs. If the UK caves then there is nothing to stop the EU from becoming a totalitarian state - which might sound a bit melodramatic, but consider the significance of a state which simply sets aside democratic decisions because they are not what the elite wants.
We would do well to remember that the more we allow ourselves to be torn up by this, the better it is for Russia or any foreign state with an axe to grind.
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election, but didn't undermine the electoral process with protest court cases. The UK should look to that example and respect the decision.
And if the UK or other countries want to make material improvements, then there is nothing to stop them from putting more effort into stamping out voting fraud, is there? Don't see much on that topic...
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"
The Russian propaganda is "Your politicians don't listen to you and your democracy is a farce." That line is a lot harder to sell if you are politicians DO listen to you, and your democracy ISN'T a farce.
For example, had the Democratic nominee been Bernie Sanders, the emails showing the corruption of the DNC would HELP him, not hurt him, because it would paint him as an underdog fighting against corruption. THAT would be an effective countermeasure.
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Brexit is nothing more than the voice of racism
It's only the fucking idiots that keep telling everybody they're racist that think that.
Perhaps if the country had been able to properly debate the impacts of immigration and bring it under control without being accused of racism then people wouldn't have felt disenfranchised and used their one opportunity to vote against a status quo that didn't recognise or represent their interests.
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.
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.