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Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interference (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sheera Frankel and Mike Isaac [write from The New York Times]: "Sandwiched between Building 20 and Building 21 in the heart of Facebook's campus, an approximately 25-foot by 35-foot conference room is under construction. Thick cords of blue wiring hang from the ceiling, ready to be attached to window-size computer monitors on 16 desks. On one wall, a half dozen televisions will be tuned to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other major cable networks. A small paper sign with orange lettering taped to the glass door describes what's being built: "War Room."
Set to open next week, the conference room is in keeping with Facebook's nick-of-time approach to midterm election preparedness. (It introduced a "pilot program" for candidate account security on Monday.) It's a big project. Samidh Chakrabarti, who oversees elections and civic engagement, told the Times: "We see this as probably the biggest companywide reorientation since our shift from desktops to mobile phones." Of course, the effort extends beyond the new conference room. Chakrabarti showed the Times a new internal tool "that helps track information flowing across the social network in real time," helping to identify misinformation as it goes viral or a surge in the creation of new (and likely fake) accounts.
Set to open next week, the conference room is in keeping with Facebook's nick-of-time approach to midterm election preparedness. (It introduced a "pilot program" for candidate account security on Monday.) It's a big project. Samidh Chakrabarti, who oversees elections and civic engagement, told the Times: "We see this as probably the biggest companywide reorientation since our shift from desktops to mobile phones." Of course, the effort extends beyond the new conference room. Chakrabarti showed the Times a new internal tool "that helps track information flowing across the social network in real time," helping to identify misinformation as it goes viral or a surge in the creation of new (and likely fake) accounts.
A War Room to monitor election interference that doesn't go their way.
2012 election help for obama from Facebook: A Bold Model for our Tech infused Future. 2016 election generic 'help' for trump far less extensive than what Obama got and Hillary turned down: Dark tech invasion of privacy! Election manipulation! Birth of Fake News! Muh Russians!
"Sorry all those conservative posts got accidentally deleted on election night. There was a glitch in our AI that incorrectly flagged them as Russian bots. We promise this will be fixed in time for the next election. Maybe."
Enough said.
Is your real name Alice Jones?
Facebook is a mega corporation, so odds are they're going to win the election either way. There's a few anti-corporation candidates, but not nearly enough that even something as tame as Liz Warren's current bill will pass (and Trump would just Veto it anyway). Basically, I don't think they have any particular agenda to push. They're not as left wing as everybody likes to make them out to be (they really only kicked Alex Jones off out of fear of a negligence lawsuit and they've left a lot of his hanger-ons alone).
OTOH if they keep ignoring election interference sooner or later somebody's gonna regulate. And if there's any sign of playing sides that'll hurt too. They've already got multiple Republicans talking about regulating or nationalizing them, and the Republicans are in power (and likely to continue to be). I suspect they're going to do everything in their power to shut both sides down from the kind of crap that happened in 2016.
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They want to make sure their interference is going smoothly
I wonder if they'll be any more accurate this time. Last election they (and other places) fell over themselves talking about how great their analytics were, making semi-early declarations, just to get it wrong.
Maybe they'll do it right this time.
"War Room"?
hosts files for the gay!!!!!
These quotes are retarded!
"If any Republican gets elected, we have failed and all your private photos get set to public".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Facebook VP: "The Majority Of Russian Ad Spend Happened AFTER The Election"
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/hard-questions-russian-ads-delivered-to-congress/
"many of these ads did not violate our content policies. That means that for most of them, if they had been run by authentic individuals, anywhere, they could have remained on the platform."
Shouldn't you stop foreigners from meddling in US social issues?
The right to speak out on global issues that cross borders is an important principle. Organizations such as UNICEF, Oxfam or religious organizations depend on the ability to communicate - and advertise - their views in a wide range of countries. While we may not always agree with the positions of those who would speak on issues here, we believe in their right to do so - just as we believe in the right of Americans to express opinions on issues in other countries.
- the ads were non-political in nature, and didn't feature or favour a political candidate
- 56% of the ads were run AFTER the 2016 US federal election
- 25% of the ads were never displayed to anyone due to Facebook's algorithms not finding them relevant to trending interests
- only 25% of the ads were geographically-targeted
- Facebook is not sure that the ads were part of an organized campaign
- Facebook is not sure that the accounts the ads were purchased with are associated with each other
- Facebook is not certain that the ads were purchased by Russians
- many of the ads were not purchased using Russia's currency
- huge numbers of actual political ads are bought and run on Facebook from all countries around the world, and that is normal and OK
- the "overwhelming majority" of ad-space purchases from Russia by Russians are normal and not suspicious in any way
So, after a year of investigations and debunked conspiracy / false claim after debunked conspiracy / false claim, the strongest argument for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US federal election is $100K of non-political or partisan Facebook ads - more than half of which ran after the election, and a quarter of which never ran at all. That's telling.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Righteous.
Oh no, the morally and monetarily bankrupt nations of the Old World have their panties in a twist because we're cutting off the welfare.
Sorry, but the future is East.
I mean, social engineering used to be considered a part of hacking. And KGB and friends used to be very good at social engineering back then.
Ezekiel 23:20
"Butthurt", that;s so cute...Jimmy got a new catch phrase.
I actually don't care very much what Facebook does, anyone who spends a lot of time there or believes what they see there is patently a moron.
The ridiculous pretense of actually trying to be fair, and concerned over the integrity of the election process. It's the absolutely unashamed and apparently oblivious hypocrisy that makes me laugh.
The best manipulation is always the most innocuous. I mean, if you get too overt, you will get called out. So the fact that things seem superficially innocuous might not necessarily tilt the scales to either option.
Ezekiel 23:20
Facebook still just doesn't get it. The international campaign to sow discord in America using propaganda made to appear as if it started within America goes back to at least shortly after 9/11, has never stopped, and is always getting more sophisticated as they discover more of what works. It heats up a bit around elections, but most of its effect is gained through small, constant, long-term pushes. It cannot be fought on an election by election basis and isn't even all about elections. It is about slowly pushing the social structure of the nation into a more polarized form in order to break our ability to act in a unified way.
This is a slow-burning war that must be fought continuously, not at the last minute. The opinions have already been shaped, the false beliefs already set in stone. It will take years of continuous work to undo the damage.
We all know there is no fighting allowed in the War Room.
It isn't about ads. 2016 was sort of like the coming out party for a campaign that had been going on for, at minimum, more than a decade. Perhaps they have been trying to use propaganda on us for several decades, but the digital age brought the tools of success to the table. What we saw in 2016 was the blunt force tools. The fine tools that make tiny cuts in carefully chosen spots that can easily be redirected and feed amplifiers are the problem that we need to figure out how to dig out.
Corinthians 11:1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
There's a political party which caters to people who spend their readimg time on Facebook, and there is a party which caters to people who spend their reading time with the Washington Times or National Review.
To be clear, it is a CRIME for a foreign country to interfere in US elections. It does not matter if that country supports your candidate or not.
It's also a crime for agents in the US to do the bidding for that country without registering themselves as foreign agents.
It is also a crime for that candidate to do deals with that country, where he's to receive tens of millions of dollars to rescue his overleveraged hotel business.
Clear?
You can do your "Hannity for President" shit all you like, but Putin cannot do his "Trump for President because it suits Russia" shit.
All an indictment is, is an accusation from a prosecutor. Ever hear the phrase that they could "indict a ham sandwich"? Grand juries are under the complete control of prosecutors, and they could indict just about anyone for anything if they wanted to.
If Mueller had actual evidence of actual collusion, we would have seen it a year ago, instead of all this fucking around with Twitter trolls, Facebook ads placed after the election, and money laundering from ten years ago with zero connection to Trump (but plenty to Hillary's campaign manager, John Podesta). More to the point, Mueller has never had the FBI investigate the DNC severs, the alleged hacking of which is the entire basis of Russiagate. Which either means Mueller is far too incompetent to be trusted to run the office Keurig machine by himself, or this was never a real investigation, only a puppet show for rubes who learned nothing from the lies told about Iraq. One of those liars being one Robert Mueller.
Pick one.
Sounds like treating dispositive evidence as proof that the conspiracy theory is correct. Like how any time Trump is confrontational with Russia - and he's far more confrontational than Obama ever was - Russiagaters say that's just him trying to prove he's not a puppet.
A thought process common to cults everywhere.
Does that include a British spy named Steele and paid for by the Hillary campaign with cash laundered through the Perkins Coie law firm who bought a bunch or lies from Russian agents and then funneled that back into the FBI via agent Bruce Ohr whose wife is a democrat activist working at the firm Fusion GPS that Steele worked with on the "dossier"?
Or would that foreign interference that's such a major CRIME (as you put it) include millions of illegal aliens from places like Mexico who have been admitted to the country by Democrats like Obama, and specifically told by Obama that they would not be prosecuted if they voted while he was in office? Does it matter that most are being in some way hidden or sheltered by Democrats (an actual federal offense)? Every single vote by an illegal, or by the legal kid of an illegal, cancels out the vote of a US citizen who did NOT violate the laws and thus has far more impact than some stupid click bait ad on Facebook. Do illegal aliens marching in our streets and waving Mexican flags as they intimidate little old ladies and gents constitute Mexico interfering in our elections?
Just asking, because you folks on the left have some mighty funny rules about standards and consistency, and every time I try to keep up and adapt to the new rules you have demanded, the rules change again.
Hopefully there will be no fighting in there. After all... it's... well...
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the WAR ROOM!"
NEVER read a Bible verse - that's the fave tactic of every bad cult. Nobody reads individual sentences from other books and then takes them (often out of context) as individual snacks of wisdom and truth.
The Christian Bible is a bound volume of books, letters, and poems. The first few books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus...) are the Jewish Torah. Later books like Corinthians are personal letters (in that case written to the members of a church at Corinth). Bible verses are SENTENCES of text or verses of song or poetry (depending on the book within the Bible that one is reading). They are numbered for a simple reason: scholarly navigation. When a book is going to be printed in lots of different physical shapes and with different type sizes, page numbers do not work as a navigation method. For the Bible, one navigates by book, chapter, and verse (sentence) number rather than page number. For example, "Acts 1:2" would be the 2nd sentence of the first chapter of the book of Acts and that bit of text might be on a certain page in a large-font book for elderly readers but a very different page# and line and column in a Braille edition or a pocket-sized book.
Truly literate people are quite easily able to read an entire Bible just as they can read any other book, and are best served by ignoring the verse numbers and focusing on the content in context.
You can tell.
Not so much now. Since the economy tanked they have to make do with gay sightseers trained on Keystone Kops and Mr Bean movies.
Just shows how much power they think they have.
Just down the corridor is the real war room where they will be attacking the election.
I'm more concerned about the media influencing elections - they have completely abandoned any pretense of reporting without bias. 'Social media' is a fancy word for 'publisher of user-generated content' and they've been exerting editorial control for years.
Funny how the media has still never shown one example of these 'meddling' Facebook posts, isn't it. Where are they all? What do they say? Why aren't they showing us them all, and telling us why they aren't true? Why haven't millions of people who voted for Clinton posted up examples of these 'meddling' Facebook posts on their own Facebook accounts, and rebutted them?
Another LIE from the Jewish media. Just like the 'Novichok' bollocks.
when their own government, corporations, media, and think-tanks are interfering. But if some guy from another country has an opinion on the American election, and posts his opinion on the internet, then it's INTERFERENCE BY A STATE ACTOR.
The Americans have turned into flippant paranoids. The sooner the world learns to ignore their wild accusations, the better.
the can shill for the Democrats while pretending to be referees. If their side doesn't win they will have the "proof" as usual. Fuck politics. Both sides are scum and FB is evil.
Not interfering means leaving the free exchange of ideas and opinions alone. Yes, everyone posting has an agenda. So what? That is kind of the point isn't it? Has it ever been different?
And don't start about "foreign forces". Ever since antiquity nations have tried exert influence over other nations, or destabilize other nations. Hell, the US is one of the champions at those games themselves.
The defense against that is good education and especially open debate. Anything that even remotely appears to be suppressing opinions and information, "fake-news", will be counterproductive and cause more dissent. You will only achieve what you claim to be trying to prevent.
Why is anyone still on facebook?
If the social media networks were really worried about foreign meddling, they'd be more concerned about illegal aliens voting, not this nonexistent Russia crap
I *Love* conspiracy charges.. They basically mean "We have 0 real evidence that you committed a crime, but were going to charge you anyways because you could have maybe *THOUGHT* about committing a crime" Thats what conspiracy is, thought crime. Think about it.
Muller indicted 17 Russians on no evidence. I am making that claim outright and have been looking for someone to prove me wrong. Muller IS a criminal abusing his position because of that.
He based it on the DNC server being hacked and emails sent to WikiLeaks. There is not a SINGLE expert who has seen the DNC server and will claim in court that Russia hacked the DNC servers. The FBI has not seen the DNC servers. There is absolutely ZERO evidence Russia hacked the DNC servers, PERIOD. A company named Crowdstrike, the only ones who have looked at the DNC servers said Russians hacked them. The began having legal trouble in Ukraine for lying about Russian hacking and have since RETRACTED their statements about Russia hacking the DNC server. Since they are the only ones who looked at it and aren't willing to say it now, that means NO ONE ON EARTH has evidence.
As for the indictments, Putin called Muller out. He offered to let the FBI question those people in Moscow. He offered to hand them over if Muller provided proof. Muller's answer was to refer it to counterintelligence, where a HEARING WILL NEVER HAPPEN. This is what a prosecutor does if he is sure he can't get a conviction.
Muller also earlier indicted a Russian company that didn't exist at the election time, a false accusation.
Muller also indicted another Russian company who came to fight the charge and Muller's response was to not let them see the evidence he was charging them with.
Muller IS the criminal here. It is called prosecutoral misconduct, and it IS A CRIME. Since the DOJ would be responsible for charging Muller, and they are corrupt, they will not likely charge him.
Free speech is interference.
Limiting yourself to mainstream media is freedom.
War room is peace.
Wasn't necessarily interference in the election. It was just interference in general. It was propaganda, through meme's, 4chan, etc they stoked the fire. They targeted angry young men and told them it was all women,black,brown's fault. It just so happens that's trump's MO also.
Last general election was too close for comfort for the US oligarchs: That pseudo-socialist guy, Bernie Sanders, nearly won the Democrat nomination and might have won the presidency. The DNC had to pull out all the stops to prevent him from winning. Now, more than ever, they need tighter controls over who's allowed to be nominated. Perhaps Facebook can help prevent any real democracy from happening.
Are they watching other's interfere, or monitoring how well their own interference is going?
Video of Obama saying the election CAN'T be hacked.
Sorry you are a snowflake and can't accept that the election wasn't hacked, even in Obama's words. Lets get a short history...
1980 - Regan won only because Bush flew on secret jet to France to rig the election
2000 - Bush only won because SCOTUS picked him, not because he got more electoral votes
2016 - Trump only won because of Russian interference.
Notice a pattern? When the DNC loses an election it can't POSSIBLY be because they suck. Its ALWAYS outside interference.
You are a perma-snowflake. Even your great hero says you are a liar.
As for wrecking the country, I hear your dog whistle of Trump is letting blacks get jobs and out of poverty and you need to get it back to "put them in their place". Yea, we know you are a bigot, you don't need to keep reminding us.
I really wish you folks wouldn't leave me with no option but conspiracy theories. I don't like conspiracy theories.
But ... well, if the "oh noes Russia" thing were a false flag operation to cover Facebook going all in in helping Democrats and suppressing dissent, how would things look any different?
The right to speak out on global issues that cross borders is an important principle. Organizations such as UNICEF, Oxfam or religious organizations depend on the ability to communicate - and advertise - their views in a wide range of countries. While we may not always agree with the positions of those who would speak on issues here, we believe in their right to do so - just as we believe in the right of Americans to express opinions on issues in other countries.
Precisely.
You know perfectly well that if in late October, say, some French group bought Facebook ads admonishing Americans to "stop being racist, take action, vote, etc. you know who we're talking about, wink wink" that FB would have not the slightest problem with it. Nor would the media or the permanent bureaucracy that is so worried about "foreign meddling".
Some foreign meddling is more equal than others.
...to help filter more conservative posts and stuff?
They will censor anything and everything that doesn't fit their narrative and agenda. I didn't trust Facebook with my email address, trusting them with this is beyond the pale. They think veeeery highly of themselves. Anyone that is legitimately 'influenced' by ANY online ad needs to get their head checked. That used to be web 101.
vagina
A war room, so they have obviously chosen a side to be on for the war? A better title would be neutral observer to be like unbiased in tagging fake or untrue stories or ads. Maybe the best choice would be to do nothing and let users decide for themselves. I too would like to see better journalism with fact based stories not ones based on anonymous sources, or opinion pieces. But let's face it, people gravitate to what reinforces there belief system and don't want the truth.
I mean really - this just makes Facebook look small.
Don't want any of those chickens to go missing.
http://www.isdglobal.org/wp-co...
Facebook hired this company, ISD, to identify, monitor, and analyze it's users based the extent to which they are associated with right-wing beliefs ("extremism").
They use algorithms to analyze the sentiment of a person's posts and flag them as an "extremist" (ie: some one who supports Donald Trump), and then target them with propaganda, including "trained experts" directly messaging them repeatedly to try to persuade them to believe otherwise.
Note how in this report they keep using the term "extremism" without ever defining it. This is the 'deep state'. This is their culture. They speak and think in newspeak, where everyone different than them is fundamentally wrong for reasons they can't define.
Another noteworthy term is "counter-speech". I.e.: stop using your freedom in a way that isn't good for us.
There's a lot, lot more in here that I don't have time to go over right now.
But this report should absolutely blow you away. The establishment/'deep state' is going totally crazy to quell the uprising Donald Trump threatens to foster.
This is an absolutely dire situation. You probably didn't make much of a stink at the mass surveillance revelations. Now look what you have. It's only going to get worse. Take the opportunity that Donald Trump presents to take up your voice and seek a peaceful solution to these assaults against your society and personal freedom, because civil war is around the corner.
...just trying to make everyone angry, honestly, on all sides.
Even then, it was a relatively puny AD spend.
Anybody that thinks the zuck fuck gives a rats ass about anything besides feeding his bottomless greed pit is a true mor(m)on.
n i g g e r s love facebook and politics. If you love both, you are a SUPER n i g g e r
I have no reason to believe that Facebook, Google and many other outfits define 'election interference' as anything but 'not electing Democrats'.
Change my mind. No, 'you're stupid' and variations thereof are not cogent arguments. Use your mind to change mine.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I don't trust Facebook as far as I can throw it, and in something like this they have to be absolutely pristine about it -- and in the current socio-political climate that's almost impossible. If you take pro-Trump messages off because you trace them back to fake accounts held by foreign operatives, the Trump supporters will scream that it's 'censorship'; if you leave them in, the anti-Trump groups will claim they're not doing their job properly. It would be better overall if Facebook removed ALL political speech than to prune any part of it, but that won't work either. Overall I'd just as soon that Facebook closed it's doors and went away, it's cancerous all around and should just die.
Except he didn't just think about it. He talked about it and paid people. If I say to you "I'll pay you $100 to shoot my neighbor" that's not a thought crime. And it's especially not a thought crime after I've already paid the $100. If you have a recording of me saying that the $100 is intended for a shooting, I could be in real trouble.
Trump's not just a criminal. He's a dumb criminal. Ok, dumb as in he got elected president; that was pretty damn flashy and I'll give him props for that. (I know how he beat Clinton and Johnson but I still can't figure out how the Republicans didn't have any serious candidates to run against him.) But he's dumb when it comes to not-getting-caught. And super-dumb in tweeting about everything instead of stonewalling. (WTF, he didn't even pass Crime 101.) I think that even goes beyond dumb, into some kind of wants-to-get-caught situation. Dementia?
"I don't care about my society being comprised of morons, they make me laugh"
Says the fucking moron
A communications corporation this large and influential that it could effect the national dialog to the point where this sort of precaution could ever be seen as needed, is also proof that allowing it to moderate and deplatform as they see fit is also a danger.
And people are still going to vote how they plan on. In my case it is vote against every incumbent.
So please stop touching me, it's getting creepy
Let the censorship begin!!
Under a guise of doing a good thing, Facebook now has a plausible "reason" for oppressing political opposition; albeit complete fabrication.
#facebook
#nazi
#evil
#democrat
#liberal
#thisishowitends
My name is Tom and I live in California. I'm a US Navy vet who spent part of the Cold War pointing weapons at Russian commies, you jerk.
YOU on the other hand are probably a millenial snowflake in Mommy's basement who has no argument (you offered NONE in response to my post) but who has all the Obama-era DNC talking points down pat. When losing an argument, or an election, you nutbag clones all have a singular response: point a finger at your opponent and shriek "Russian! Homophobe! RAYCIST! Islamophobe! Mysogynist!... oh, and your side's really creative geniuses show up in costumes or with giant puppets and do street theater.
You've got NOTHING. You lose.
You do not even understand US election law. It's illegal to launder money to buy oppo research through a law firm as "legal fees" and not report that campaign expenditure to the FEC as what it really was - something team Hillary has been caught doing. While it is perfectly legal to have a foreigner come to the US and speak on political issues, it is explicitly ILLEGAL to pay foreigners to get involved in the campaign (which team Hillary was caught doing with Steele, who made clear to his paymasters that he hated Donald Trump and wanted to block his election). Oh, and incidentally, there is no crime of "collusion" on the books in regard to presidential election campaigns (which is why Democrat hero Teddy Kennedy never went to jail for asking the Soviets to help him defeat Reagan in 1984), so even if Mueller could find some Trump-Russia collusion, there'd still be no crime.
Sucks to be an angry, ornery, confused, desperate, hate-filled, lefty these days doesn't it?
I was thinking about serious books (Secular, technical, historical, classical, Darwin, Dawkins, Sagan, you pick) rather than flowery, or inspirational, entertainment fiction like the Bard's stuff, and I was saying BOOKS (rather than speeches or other documents) BUT I will concede the point that as a society people are getting pretty fast-and-loose with nearly all words, and becoming very selective about how many words in ANY document or conversation they are willing to read/hear/quote/digest.
In any event, I give you credit for apparently reading more than 3 or 4 for the word I typed and thinking about a response. Bravo.
Facebook is more of a threat to American democracy than Russia ever has been. Facebook has no business monitoring or censoring anything and we know damn well they're the last area you can expect to find any sort of objective moderation. This is nothing but facebook ensuring that their own political agenda is served and it represents a dangerous precedent if we allow them to dictate what speech should be allowed and what should be censored.
I do not want Facebook meddling in politics, government, and sensorship.
We are supposed to believe now that Facebook was merely the conduit of external forces and not attempting to pursue their own political agenda?
Bill Gates is a communist -- he's just more equal than the rest of us.
How to get a window sized monitor? Oh, we're going to monitor meddling, on facebook.
Really? Bunch of people will have big frickin' monitors and do facebook all day long. Talk about an easy job.
That's one of my big gripes with the political correctness crowd - using words like 'racism' differently. It's not that they never have a point, but that it's disingenuous to use the same word for a different analysis
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.