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Facebook Users Cry 'Censorship' After Being Told Which Russian Troll Pages They Liked (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: As the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference reaches a fever pitch, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who followed pages created by Russian trolls that those pages have been removed. And some of the affected users did not like this. A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias. Others took on a more conspiratorial tone, claiming that Facebook failed to reveal which pages were removed (despite the alert containing a link listing the pages in question). Facebook first released the information in December, creating a help page that showed users if they liked or followed pages and accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, Russia's notorious troll farm, but today's alert seems to have inspired newfound alarm. The fact that Facebook explicitly stated which pages were deleted seems to have done little to reduce the anger over the allegedly clandestine silencing.
from the article:
> Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,”
yes, your feelings affect the facts
except they don't
This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be, and many people seem to prefer not to think of themselves as having been manipulated by Russian trolls. Or maybe they are just so far down the rabbit hole they can't climb back up yet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Republicans whine and cry when you point out that Moscow Donald has been caught red handed committing treason, and that the republican party is committing obstruction of justice to cover for Russia's attack on America.
When people say "I want the truth," what they really mean is "I want evidence that justifies my forgone conclusions."
They want the beliefs they already have to turn out to be true. So they will like anything that reinforces it.
They might reject this and say they want to learn what the real truth is. But the moment you start giving them evidence that they don't like, they pull out every irrational trick in the book to reject it. And they insist that they aren't doing this.
It really is quite amazing how good people are at this.
(of course, there are SOME people who have an honest interest in truth and the will to overcome their biases in the pursuit of it, but they are so rare as to be statistically insignificant)
Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias.
One summer in college, I was fortunate enough to take a Chemistry course taught by Bassam Shakhashiri.
One of the things he would do is ask, "How many people think it's A?" and a bunch of people would raise their hands.
Then he would ask, "How many people think it's B?" and a bunch of other people would raise their hands.
He would then say, "Science is not a democracy. The answer is ____."
Truth is not a democracy either.
People don't like to be shown for fools, and these messages are Facebook telling them they've been taken. Furthermore, they're already invested in whatever political side was favored by the Russian posts they liked, so it's easy to discount this as targeting their personal beliefs. It's like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe a sunk cost fallacy situation. People seem more likely to double down on their position even when it's made clear that they were wrong.
That's the problem with the "Like" button. Just because those troll pages were lies, doesn't mean that some people stopped "liking" them. It also doesn't mean that the users "Agree" with them. "Like" is just too broad a term.
This is why the utopia of a democratized internet of citizen reporters and transparency is a false hope. As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
Uninformed crowds voting for what they believe sounds correct or newsworthy (or worse, what's just trendy or fun, no intellectual effort required) leads to very damaging scams and fake news flying around like a virus on an unvaccinated population.
Smart governments know that information is not just something that can be left to figure itself out at the whim of the crowd.
You have to be a complete moron, if you get any of your news, from ONE source. Shoot, sometimes I find LESS bias, by reading from news sources OUTSIDE of the USA, than I do INSIDE the USA. Everything is so politicized, it's hard to know what is real, what is fake, what is "edited" to sway people on either of the two political groups in the USA. I'm conservative (NOT to be confused with the so called Republican party) but, I read several sites that are considered left leaning. Why? Because I want to know the thinking process of "the other side" so to speak. To try and figure out WHY they have such views. Believe it or not, a RATIONAL person, will, on occasion, agree with someone on the left, not because of politics, but because they are correct in their view.
The DNC and the Clintons were in deep with the Russians (the fake dossier paid for by HRC PAC and the DNC, from the Russians, the uranium One deal, the 500 thousand Bill Clinton got after the deal went through when HRC was Sec. of State)
That's "in deep" by your reckoning? What about in 2008 when Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, $50 million more than Trump paid for it a few years earlier? Couldn't be that Trump was helping launder money for the Russians, right? No, the house must have doubled in value in a few years, right? Never mind that it was the highest price paid for a Palm Beach house (by $13 million), that's just what the market could bear, right? Maybe the guy just really liked the property, even though he specifically said he didn't plan to live in the house or the US in general. No, he said it was an investment property, and if I know anything about real estate investments, I know that you should pay double what it's worth, and more than any other property in the area. I'm pretty sure that's how investment works. And this is a continuing pattern of Trump selling condos and other high-value real estate, a notorious target for money laundering, to a long list of shell companies. This is following Russia identifying Trump as exactly the kind of person they might want to groom as an oblivious foreign agent because of his easily manipulated personality, only to drop the effort after a decade or two because he's too unpredictable. Instead you want to try to drag up a payment made to Bill Clinton for $500k, and use that as evidence that they are "in deep" with the Russians. Where's the paper trail on that payment to Bill, by the way, which connects it to Russia?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Something got fucked up in your post. I think you meant to link to "actual text messages from the FBI demonstrating malfeasance towards Republicans", but instead of you linked to some crap on Fox News.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
This is why the utopia of a democratized internet of citizen reporters and transparency is a false hope. As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
The problem is that there is no penalty for producing information that is outright fabrication, no punishment for acting against the interests of the greater good of an information based society. You can lie and fabricate for your own selfish ends as much as you like, and people don't realize that.
In a way, the Internet is like an early capitalist economy, where any actor can engage in predatory monopolistic behavior without any fear or repercussions. In a truly free market, you should act as destructively as possible towards ecenomic rivals before they catch on and do the same to you. In an open Internet, why not just produce lies and propaganda to support your POV or political ends? If you don't do it, your rivals will.
An open and free Internet is an achievable goal. It just requires a few rules that can be enforced fairly for all parties involved. Eventually there will be some sort of Internet laws created that are agreed on by a number of countries, and all the rest of the world will be forced to play by them or kicked off the Internet. It will be something like:
1) No attacking underlying infrastructure
2) No censoring other parties
3) No spreading false or misleading information.
It won't likely be soon though, so expect more bullshit like this until it happens...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas,
Everybody's looking for something.
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.