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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
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.
It'd be sad if it wasn't so predictable.
Incorrect. It is still sad.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
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.
come from an outfit called "The Internet Research Agency", which you can read about on Wikipedia.
TL;DR: The Internet Research Agency is a St. Petersburg based company which has among its customers the government of Russia. The company specializes in astroturfing -- not just in the US but in Russia as well. In Eastern Europe they're focused on Ukraine but in the US they post on both sides of issues (e.g. posting as socially conservative groups or as radical LGBT groups) in order to stir up division, e.g. posing as American Muslims or gays or as American evangelical Christians.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
An old co-worker had a habit of posting obviously fake right wing news articles, so-and-so arrested for treason, Obama caught admitting to X, etc.
When I saw it I would usually post a quick comment pointing out it was fake (often providing counter-evidence) and he'd reply "opps" and move on to most the next obvious piece of BS.
Eventually I prodded a bit too much during the health care bill and he unfriended me.
I still have no idea if he actually believed some of that fake news or if he simply didn't care.
I stole this Sig
And still predictable.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Oh puh-lease. These accounts and ads got canned because they violated Facebook's TOS, which forbid pretending impersonating other people or deceptively misidentifying yourself.
The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
What made the USA great was the ability to read, publish, self publish, review publications, talk about books and news. Now social media wants to stop all that discussion in the USA.
I guess since we can't do it on facebook, that means it's prohibited everywhere! Oh wait, no, nobody is stopping you from doing any of those things! It's almost like there are some Terms of Service that you have to abide by for certain platform! If there were some way people could put content on the internet without such things. Too bad nobody will ever figure out how to make a website or connect a server to the internet. Clearly facebook was the last site that ever figured that one out!
Your argument holds less water than aerogel.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Like it or not, there are objective facts.
The Donald didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd ever, there are no 'alternative facts'.
How people can say they want to be able to choose 'truthiness' as if it is equally valid with what is true.
Be careful because there is such a thing as not having ALL the facts. Especially in political theater, the omission of objective facts and cherry picking the disclosed facts to support one's desired narrative is an art form. Misleading use of facts is common. Being objectively true isn't enough. You need "The Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth" to get the full picture.
BTW... Trump is often just boasting to watch folks scurry around making weird noises. I think he enjoys watching folks go off the deep end about things that don't matter such as your inauguration crowd size thing. He made a stupid boast, he does that from time to time. Everybody knew he was that kind of guy when he got elected and he's getting better about this kind of thing. I suggest you let this specific thing go and go after him on things that actually matter..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Well, the Watergate investigation took a little over 2 years. The president has a lot of means to obstruct an investigation. Putting together a watertight case against a sitting president takes time. It might go faster if a certain person were to actually be honest with the investigators.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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!
Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
here, to wit:
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits. They didn't find any of this while it was going on, but later were able to identify the fake accounts.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Collectively, we are that stupid.
No, government censorship is by definition a government activity, but censorship can be private. There's even self-censorship.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Stopped using it entirely about a year ago. Haven't missed any of this crap.
People hate being called idiots and thats exactly what Facebook just did:
"You are an idiot because you believed into fabricated accounts distributing fabricated stories."
Now smart people could just shut up and swallow their hurt pride. But we are obviously not talking about smart people...
It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Thank you Facebook for being a fool spotlight.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
People simply don't understand one of the most basic properties of websites. They are not government controlled entities and have absolutely no rules regarding your free speech. They are free to censor, modify and repackage anything put on their site. Most of the legalese you blindly agree to signs away most of your rights to even content you create.
The most important property of a website to remember is: You are a guest in someone else's domain.
As a guest, you have no say, no rights, no recourse but to leave the site. You're free to create you own site to write all about your horrific experience with another site, but think again if you think you have any rights as a guest. The only right you have is to leave.
And these days, ugh, even that's a little questionable, some of these sites out there retain everything they know about you even if you tell them you're done and want to remove your account entirely.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
--George Orwell, 1984
Curiously, Facebook, Inc. owns the domain Faceboot.com, and it redirects to Facebook.com.
We almost need some kind of education program to identify legitimate sources of news. Using Google to search for "Fact Check title" often works, though care is required there as with anything else.
Which exactly what is happening in some other countries : France is having a few pilot program of teach media to kids (random example of a youtuber who's a teacher in real life and has published records of a classroom. Sorry it's in French. And sorry for the unfortunate implication if you translate the title in English, that wasn't intended in French).
The Herman Goering applies, and I fear it probably always will.
His assert about people getting used to (and eventually somewhat believing) a lie repeated enough might apply as well.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How predictable of you...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Trump has blocked sanctions at every turn. They were passed by the House with only 3 members voting no and passed by the Senate 98-2. Trump missed the first deadline, in October, to apply the sanctions and has now missed the second deadline, as of Monday of this week.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
This was a law that Trump himself signed because Congress had a veto-proof majority. He is in direct contravention of the law.
You are welcome on my lawn.