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A UK Commons Committee Chair Says He's Seen Evidence a Facebook Engineer Flagged Russian Entities Pulling Billions of Points of Data Every Day in 2014 (buzzfeed.com)
A UK Commons committee chair claims a seized trove of Facebook documents reveals that a company engineer flagged Russian "entities" were using a Pinterest API to pull billions of points of Facebook data every day in 2014. From a report: Damian Collins appeared to use parliamentary privilege to outline the detail from the sealed documents, during a fiery session of questioning of Facebook executive Richard Allan before the first sitting of the "international grand committee on disinformation and fake news" in London on Tuesday. The most contentious moment came during an exchange between Allan and the chair of the committee over what's alleged to be in a set of documents that are subject to the protective order of a California court.
During the questioning of Allan on Tuesday, Collins said the emails would not be released. But he did outline details from an alleged incident which, if true, would raise further questions about how Facebook responded to learning about data being taken from the platform. "An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October 2014 that entities with Russian IP addresses have been using a Pinterest API key to pull over 3 billion data points a day," Collins said. "Now was that reported to any external body at the time?" Allan dismissed the claim by focusing on the source of the information, Six4Three, labelling it a "hostile litigant." Further reading: Facebook Exec Admits Zuckerberg Not Appearing Before UK Parliament Doesn't Look Great (CNBC); 'The Problem is Facebook,' Lawmakers From Nine Countries Tell Zuckerberg's Accountability Stand-in (TechCrunch); and "When You Get That Wealthy, You Start to Buy Your Own Bullshit": The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg (VanityFair).
During the questioning of Allan on Tuesday, Collins said the emails would not be released. But he did outline details from an alleged incident which, if true, would raise further questions about how Facebook responded to learning about data being taken from the platform. "An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October 2014 that entities with Russian IP addresses have been using a Pinterest API key to pull over 3 billion data points a day," Collins said. "Now was that reported to any external body at the time?" Allan dismissed the claim by focusing on the source of the information, Six4Three, labelling it a "hostile litigant." Further reading: Facebook Exec Admits Zuckerberg Not Appearing Before UK Parliament Doesn't Look Great (CNBC); 'The Problem is Facebook,' Lawmakers From Nine Countries Tell Zuckerberg's Accountability Stand-in (TechCrunch); and "When You Get That Wealthy, You Start to Buy Your Own Bullshit": The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg (VanityFair).
This Red Scare 2.0 is lit!
The unfortunate thing is, with all of the Kabuki theater going on about Russia, everyone is totally ignoring China pretty much...
I mean, if you want presidential ties to another country to examine there is all kinds of fun stuff on China, while there is hardly anything to do with Russia and most U.S. actions have been working directly against Russia so far (can you say hundreds of dead Russia mercenaries in Syria...).
Yes Russia got ahold of a lot of data but to no effect. What Russia was doing was like throwing a lit match into an already raging bonfire. The people that think they are stoking anything are delusional.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh will you fuck off on bashing President Trump already?
. JUST . FUCK . RIGHT . OFF .
Op has valid points that have Zero to do with your BS collusion agenda.
Here's what OP wrote again, since it's obviously not what you want people to read:
The only way to really stop Russia from using social media for their state interests is to crack down on free speech. We don't need more censorship, even when it appears to further our interests. People need to stop being so naive and start to understand that the content they consume is biased and sometimes outright false. If people were more skeptical of propaganda and could start to think for themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. Until then, society will be vulnerable to manipulation by malicious actors. No, Facebook cannot be trusted, and that should also be readily apparent to anyone with a clue.
Let's support free speech and focus on educating our citizens about propaganda and trolling by malicious actors rather than censoring free speech. Slashdot used to be a bastion of free speech, but it seems like that's being thrown out the window. Deletion of comments once amounted to sacrilege here, yet many threads have disappeared in recent days and have obviously been deleted. That's a damn shame.
Perhaps, instead of worrying about the Russian trolls, content distributors should change their AI-curated news feeds. Instead of showing users they will agree with to maximize "engagement", show content that represents a variety of views. If users aren't in echo chambers and get to see a variety of views, they will probably be less susceptible to manipulation by propaganda.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.