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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.
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.
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.
"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.