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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.

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Just to clarify by Brett+Buck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A War Room to monitor election interference that doesn't go their way.

  2. 2008 by Jarwulf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

  3. Fox in hen house by AndyKron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They want to make sure their interference is going smoothly

  4. Leadership by example by Max_W · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Corinthians 11:1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

  5. Re:*Foreign* by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To be clear, it is a CRIME for a foreign country to interfere in US elections.

    Based on which international law? One that is consistent and thus makes the United States worse in this category than all other nations combined?

  6. Indictments mean shit by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Indictments mean shit by Kiuas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If Mueller had actual evidence of actual collusion, we would have seen it a year ago

      This statement is based on absolutely nothing, it's just an assertion you throw out about a large on-going investigation without anything to back it up. 'Because the investigation is taking so long it cannot lead to anything' is some of the worst logic possible.

      However you're missing the point I was making entirely. I'm not American, I'm Finnish. My point in the comment was not to take on side over the other as to the result of the investigation. Whether or not there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian information warfare campaign is another matter that remains to be seen once the investigation completes, but that was not my point. It may be that there was no collusion, but that does not negate the fact that the Russians are actively posing as western citizens and pumping out propaganda to influence elections and sow political discontent throughout the West and not just in the US. That was my point, and there's plenty of evidence of that that's not coming from Mueller & al, including from your own intelligence agencies as well as other non-governmental researchers (see for example the report about the interference in Europe).

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead