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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!
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
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!
"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.
Corinthians 11:1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
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.
Nobody reads individual sentences from other books and then takes them (often out of context) as individual snacks of wisdom and truth.
Uh, yes they do. All they time. What is the modern news cycle but a collection of individual sentences (often out of context) from longer speeches or documents, then repackaged as eye catching headlines?
If you want to get more literary, I invite you to read the words of Shakespeare and find out just how many of his individual sentences have passed into common wisdom and truth .
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
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.
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.