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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).
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.
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
"Facebook Exec Admits Zuckerberg Not Appearing Before UK Parliament Doesn't Look Great (CNBC);"
The link is broken
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
If you want to get away with cybercrime in 2018, VPN out through Russia and nobody will want to dig any deeper.
Kill it. Kill it with fire. From space.
So they knew and didn't care for many years. It is clear to me that Facebook deserves corporate death penalty. Break it up and sell off assets.
here is how the business execs heard the conversation Engineer: A customer is using the services we sold to them. Exec: Great!
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
If anything, it may be a violation of the TOS and FB would have otherwise been paid for commercial access to the same data.
But you know... The $bad_guys did it!! In this case, $bad_guys = Russians.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
If Russia wants to plaster its name all over Facebook ads disturbingly similar to Moscow Donald's talking points that's one thing.
That's free speech. It's treason that Donald Trump colluded with Russian influence operations, but still it's free speech.
What Russia is doing is writing comments pretending to be American citizens, and intentionally downing out debate on our social networks with bot generated attacks.
Diverting discussion away from the topic?
It's still the same topic - meddling in U.S. Affairs, in fact the main slant of the supposed meddling is Russia having some kind of ties to Trump - but in fact as I said if you want to look for meddling, and presidential ties, there is a lot more evidence you should consider China...
Look at both if you want, I just think Russia is in fact the one meant to drive discussion away from the topic - after all it worked on you so strongly that if any mention is made of China, you hard-push back to Russia. Now why would that be I wonder... hmm!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you saying there is evidence of China meddling that is being ignored? Give me a source.
I'm so sorry about that accident that chopped off your legs and arms so you don't even have a stump left to access Google with!
Otherwise you would have been about to find this in about two seconds.
My sympathies go with you, Torso-Boy. If you need any more info please have your caretaker look it up, that's what they are paid for - I have a job and can't just paste URL's for you all day long.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nobody thinks they are communists
That is a laugh! You heard it here first folks, not ever RUSSIA is True Communism, which has Never Been Tried.
it just makes you pro-Russia.
How am I pro-Russia? I'm the only reliable Anti-Russian around as far as I can see, most people use Russia to bash Trump and then ignore everything else Russia is actually doing. Ukraine perhaps? You didn't say a word about that you clever bastard, while you try to get us all worried about elections and data lifting.
Not going to say you are paid by Russia, but it seems pretty likely.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If us political PAC's right or left do this, that is ok, but not Russia? I think some people think the interweb belongs only to the U.S.A. I bet there was at least one British and one Chinese organization that tried to influence the election, probably an Israeli 1 as well. I think you kind of need to expect that.
Groups ( or individuals) who can pretend to be 100's of people is a bit disquieting, but I'm not sure how to solve that problem. Maybe people should learn to research facts and be realistic about sources before forming opinions, but that is probably too much to ask.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
It was defined by Marx.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
An engineer at Facebook notified the company in October
People (and companies!) tend to treat companies as cohesive wholes, instead of say ants with a queen or cells and nerves in a human going to the unconscious then conscious brain. There's a lag-time between something sensed and transmitted to "management", and even then it might not be "upper management" if something along the way NAKed the transfer. And even if it makes it, it still might be accidentally corrupted along the way. (Double-takes, anyone?)
There is a joke I cannot find: An engineer look at a product and says, This is the largest pile of BS I've even worked on. His manager reported upwards about the s$*t problem. It went upwards talking about the c&@p. Upwards talking about the smelly excrement, and then the strong fertilizer. It kept going up until finally the CEO gave an announcement: This single project is the best and strongest one we've ever built and will power the company for years to come!
Paraphrasing. This was also back before the internet, so reports were copied and staples together with the current synopsis on top. Anybody have the original joke?
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Communism is an economic system, not a government system. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian government. Here are some links, at least read them before accidentally saying something stupid again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You didn't even read my links, as I expected you wouldn't.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The question that no one in the comments here is asking, and the one we need the answer to before asking any others, is, "And how many data points were typically pulled by other entities every day in 2014? Was there anything unusual about an entity pulling that much data?"
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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The fact they let Leave lie about £350m was proof of that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion