Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Removes Hundreds of Accounts Spamming Political Info (theverge.com)
Facebook is purging hundreds of accounts and pages in the U.S., many of which spread political misinformation, for breaking the company's terms against "inauthentic" content and spam. The Verge reports: The company said in a blog post that 559 pages and 251 accounts would be removed. While the accounts used "sensational political content," Facebook did not say that was the reason for the purge. Instead, the accounts and pages will be taken down after they had "consistently broken" the company's rules against gaming its platform. Facebook noted that many used strategies like posting on fake or multiple accounts to generate traffic, or to inflate their popularity. Still, Facebook noted the proximity to the U.S. midterm elections, and said that networks like the ones it removed today are "increasingly" promoting political content that is "often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate." The company said this was the reason it has turned to "behavior" instead of "content" when searching for bad actors.
Way too late now. Damage is done. Most people already think those were real US citizens and will now cry "censorship."
Facebook does not appear to be having much trouble taking down and banning accounts that are guilty of wrongthink. But that's easy. On the other hand, trying to ban all the robo-posted spamcrap that's flooding the remaining pages is apparently too difficult for them.
I'm not kidding. I'm watching one thread after another thread that gets posted on some of their popular pages immediately get flooded with obviously robo-posted make-money-fast-work-from-home spam. The posting pattern is laughably easy to spot: first post a dummy "asdfasdf" comment, and five minutes later "Edit" it and replace it with canned boilerplate.
Apparently, the rocket scientists at Facebook are spam filtering only the initial comments that get posted in threads. So, the only thing that needs to be done to completely bypass Facebook crap spam filters is to robo-edit an existing comment.
I've been watching these spam floods turning Facebook pages to utter crap for several months now. Reporting them to Facebook does absolutely nothing. But, that's ok. Because Facebook just got rid of all the wrong-thinking fake-newsy (in Facebook's opinion, of course) pages.
History has shown the more you racist liberal monsters suppress the people, the more they will rebel against you. Trying to suppress conservative voices just makes then vote in greater numbers...
I saw that as a dispassionate Libertarian who does not have a dog in that hunt, I just enjoy observing tactical mistakes both sides make.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How exactly is spamming Facebook using fake accounts a way of "petitioning the government"? I'm not being flip, I'm sincerely trying to understand the connection as you see it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So freedom of speech is now "sensational political content".
Not in the least. If you look at the tabloid-esque content that was being pushed through multiple accounts, you will see it was in fact maximally sensational.
Here's a more complete article that explains the type of content that was removed.
No freedom after speech as the account is removed.
You are one of these many misguided people that seems to think you can say anything you want and people have to just put up and listen to you. However, the truth is you are simply not being jailed for saying things. A site owner has zero obligation to keep your content on their site, especially when it just points to your own website which you make money off from.
Remember, the freedom of speech means you stay out of jail but does nothing to force people to listen to you.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There is a better and more complete article on The Washington Post that describes the type of crap Facebook purged. Spoiler: it's clickbait that leads to other profit driven sites. Don't assume it's all conservative media either because it's not. They got crazy shit for folks of all types.
Bottom line: this is good for all (even slightly) rational actors.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
democrats aren't generally dumb enough to fall for FB spambot trolls, which is why you don't really see any.
Actually, the reason Democrats don't troll is that, thanks to Poe's Law, they don't need to. Actual authentic right-wing posts already go far beyond any trolling or parody that the Democrats could come up with.
Have you seen what passes for news on Donald Trump? Did you watch the disconnect between the news and the actual Kavanaugh hearings?
The left just lost the midterms with their radicalism and denial of reality. At least one registered democrat can admit to it. The foot has been shot straight through and now our dinghy in a sea of red is sinking.
"often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate." - ie Legitimate political debate, but not what they agree with?
Don't be a useful idiot - of course WashPo is going to highlight the sketchy pages and not not the anti-authoritarian pages. There were dozens of police accountability pages that were taken down - Copblock and the like. They had some opinion pieces, sure, and authority didn't like them, obviously, but most all of the content in the groups I saw disappeared was links to police brutality pieces. All gone, thanks for using Facebook.
The revolution will not be carried on corporate hosting platforms.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I used to visit Facebook to catch up with what friends are doing and to see what events were in my area.
Once Facebook went IPO it opened the floodgates on political garbage and commercial spam to the point which diminished what it used to be and what attracted people to it in the first place.
Clearing out all the political garbage and sorting out their privacy and scam issues needs to be at the fore to fix their issues.
On the one hand people may say âoecensorshipâ, but on the other hand a line needs to be drawn to kick people out who pee in the pool at the pool party.
Facebook needs to go further and purge ALL the garbage that ruins the experience IMHO.
Use twitter for political chatter.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Here's a more complete article that explains the type of content that was removed.
Even the WaPo semi-official propaganda story you linked makes it obvious that Facebook censored legitimate American political activists.
Why do you hate freedom of speech? Do you suppose that your faction will always be in power?
You say Democratic Trolls do not exist. Might I introduce you to Correct The Record?
https://www.factcheck.org/2016...
No solid evidence, but a number of anecdotal incidents that could be construed as such.
Anytime a popular website removes accounts and content and doesn't have clearly objective criteria for doing it, they are going to be accused of censorship by one side or the other. They will be accused of being subjective in their judgments and partisan in their actions regardless.
Facebook's problem is they have been subjective in their judgments in the past and have a sordid history of political activity that is not clearly bipartisan. For instance they had a internal dust up over one of their executives appearing behind Brett Kavanaugh during the now infamous and partisan Ford hearing. The guy had to apologize to his coworkers for this, even though he didn't represent Facebook but was there on his own time. Fair or not, Stories like these call into question Facebook's bias as they clearly show the bias of their employees and corporate culture.
Facebook needs to step back a bit here and start making clearly objective judgments in each individual case and saying what they are. They need to also have an objective process which allows the individual users to appeal Facebook's decisions. But that would be expensive and take time, so I'm guessing that won't happen any time soon.
At the very least, Facebook needs to have clearly objective criteria for taking action on any of its users. They also must clearly communicate to the community exactly what rules are being violated and what actions they are taking and how that is consistent with the objective policy. They will still be accused of being subjective by some, but at that point one could actually review Facebook's policy and decisions and actually decide if the rules are objective and if Facebook is actually following them.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101