WhatsApp Faces Misinformation Problem in Nigeria, Reports Say (cnet.com)

Fake news is being spread on WhatsApp in some of Africa's most populous countries, according to two new reports, raising concerns over coming elections in Nigeria. From a report: Photoshopped images and false claims about politicians have been circulating on the Facebook-owned messaging service in Nigeria, which holds election in February next year, according to a report from The Poynter Institute on Friday. Many of the false claims are in local languages and exploit ethnic friction. One set of false claims focuses on how politicians will address clashes between a group of semi-nomadic herdsmen and farmers, Poynter said. Another rumor claimed a presidential candidate couldn't enter the US because of a corruption charge, Poynter reported.

Comments

how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[0xdeaddead]

Obviously only state approved media should be the only source of any and all messages.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Dutch Gun]

You know, the same sort of thing used to happen by e-mail. Anyone remember the ridiculous urban legends and scams propagated by e-mail? It occurs for at least two reasons, IMO: people love to gossip and spread rumors, and people were (are?) more naturally predicated to believing anything in print, as it seems more authoritative than someone saying "Hey, I heard from my cousin Frank that..."

And of course, it's not like it started there either. I've been reading WW2 history recently, and noticed many accounts at least touch on how rampant rumor-mongering was among both the homefront as well as on the battlefront. People gossip, and that likely goes back to the dawn of civilization.

It doesn't even go away under totalitarian authority, in which you can ban Winnie-the-Pooh, due to an unfortunately association with Dear Leader. That just pushes the rumors underground, and makes the authorities look trite and desperate (hello Streisand Effect).

I think people are also more apt to believe rumors from a new source, until they understand that source is just as fallible as any other, maybe moreso. Generally speaking, I think this problem will tend to partly mitigate itself over time (although never go away completely), as people learn a healthy skepticism for the new medium. I think eventually most people can only get burned by rumors so many times via a given source before they start looking at the source with a more jaded eye. Some idiots never learn, of course, but I think in general, many or even most eventually do.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anonymous Coward]

AHAHAH, ya, it's just fun and games, till it's YOUR turn! Stay edgy kid. #Karma

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the same sort of thing used to happen by e-mail.

Before that it was fax machines.

It was a bit before my time but I remember getting the rare "spam" (or whatever the equivalent is called by fax) on the fax machine where I worked while in university. One of the older members of the staff mentioned that this was far more common not all that long ago (as in not long before I worked there) but it fell out of use. As I recall government offices still use fax machines for a variety of (mostly legal) reasons. Office staff probably still send and receive crap this way quite often.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Hognoxious]

People will stop believing wild rumours on one medium when they start believing them on another.

Stupidity is like a balloon full of water. Squeeze it in one place and it bulges out in another.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Arzaboa]

People almost always do this to themselves. This is one of the reasons man came up with laws to regulate itself.

It seems the larger question at this point, is how do you properly moderate that? If the message board in the local town square was precipitating killings, it would be roped off until further notice.

I think the bigger question in all of this is "who is going to do something to help get this under control before society collapses under the weight of being afraid that regulating misinformation is a problem?" No doubt there has to be a balance, but this type of mass manipulation should not be at the fingertips of anyone with apple pay and an internet connection. Do Whatsapp and Facebook really need to be selling political advertising space?

--
One's greatest challenge is to control oneself. -- Kazi Shams

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anne Thwacks]

Do Whatsapp and Facebook really need to be selling political advertising space?

Do they even employ people who can read Hausa, Yoruba or Ibo? or any of the other 25 or so languages used in Nigeria?

America may be ok with "The Right to lie your head off" but it is hard to argue they have the right to force this on others who do not have a similar culture.

I personally had a Nigerian woman say to me "Did you know Michelle Obama is a man? It says so here on Youtube!" - which it did, with Photoshopped pictures as evidence. The woman who said this in in her 60's. has a degree in business administration in the UK, and speaks perfect English with no obvious accent. On looking at her Youtube "home", I could see she was being targetted with a continuous stream of propaganda against other Nigerian ethnic groups than hers while here in the UK. Yes, Youtube IS trying to incite genocide in Nigeria. Even if they are blaming it on "the algorithm", Putin or Trump - it is still shit stirring at the level of inciting murder.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You joke, but this is exactly what is being pushed. The media is putting a propagandist's touch on the whole situation, but this is where the ship is sailing.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the 1990s, if you didn't like a business, you would use *67 and call their fax line, and had on your fax a piece of black paper taped in a loop. This would burn most faxes out of ink in no time, if not the fax machine itself. After 95 or so, most faxes were handled by fax modems, which just stored the thing in JPEG format, so stuff like that did little to nothing but block the line, if that.

Re:how can we just ban people from communicating!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only problem Facebook sees here is that it does not get any money from misinformation, just as they got from eg. Cambridge Analytica.

Where's my sarcastic face?

[AndyKron]

I'm sure fake news never happened before the Internet was widely available. I can't find my sarcastic face. Maybe (/s|s\)

Re:Where's my sarcastic face?

[quenda]

I'm sure fake news never happened before the Internet was widely available. I can't find my sarcastic face. Maybe (/s|s\)

In 2010, I hear there were faxes and drums circulating around the country that Goodluck Jonathan (real name) was actually born in the Unites States, not Bayelsa.

(Nigeria is one of the few countries where a president has to be a citizen by birth.)

This a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Teach people not to believe anything without seeing/hearing it personally. Don't suppose the government would like that so much.. Oh well, fuc.. I mean, hug them!

There's no way around it.

[fredrated]

The problem is people. There is no technology that can keep us honest.

Re:There's no way around it.

[PopeRatzo]

The problem is people. There is no technology that can keep us honest.

I am an old man, and even though I'm inclined to cynicism, I still believe most people are honest. And gullible, unfortunately.

Re:There's no way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Nigerians are among the most dishonest people in Africa. Their country is synonymous with scams.

Re:There's no way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously gullible and have travelled little in Africa.

You should probably avoid the Internet entirely.

Re:There's no way around it.

[Can'tNot]

There certainly seems to be technology which can make fooling us easier and more effective, however. Maybe we could address that somehow.

Re:There's no way around it.

[AmiMoJo]

The problem here is lack of education. People don't learn to spot fake news or properly evaluate information they receive.

A few simple tools could really help fix this issue. Social media and chat apps could have a little button next to widely posted images that links to a reverse image search or fact checking site. They could use image analysis or AI to add warnings to photoshopped images (wouldn't that be great for airbrushed fashion models too).

Web browsers could add known fake images and fake news to a database of fake news, just like they have a database of malware sites.

People will now start screaming about censorship and putting companies in charge of determining the truth (because in the past newspapers were all non-commercial and totally unbiased), but it's worked pretty well for malware. There is the occasional false positive but 99.99% of the time malware protection is a net benefit to the user. Plus if it was going to be abused then political web sites would get added to the malware lists anyway.

Re: There's no way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you're consistently a liar, so fuck what you think or say.

Re: There's no way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course you, and people who agree with you, will be the final arbiters of "truth".

"Police are on the look out for a man with hair." is the type of narrative-bending that moral busybody assholes like you changed news reporting to when given the chance.

Re: There's no way around it.

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, but you're consistently a liar, so fuck what you think or say.

If someone is consistently a liar, you can always count on what they say.

Re:There's no way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are not enough fact-checking sites. And if you put too much trust in them, how can you know that a fact-checking site isn't just another part of someone's propaganda machine?

No, the solution is to teach scepticism. Learn the masses to see through lies. There are lies out there! You will be lied to! These are common techniques used in advertising, these are common techniques in politics. They want you to to buy stuff because your money is useful to them - not because the stuff might be useful for you.

You can't make everybody smart, some will always be gullible. But you can educate the masses. Learn to read, to count and to see through (hidden) advertising.

People seek out Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

Several years ago, The New York Times ran a story on the Obama administration that was perceived as negative. The paper lost a lot of democrat subscribers as a result of this story. Because of this incident, The New York Times swore off real news and they only produce Fake News since then. But people like msmash insist on consuming these Fake News because they reinforce their belief system and their hate-filled rage!

Same thing in Nigeria. If someone has negative feelings for a group of people, they seek out these fake news because they feel good and who cares if they are real or fake!

They can't help it their only

[Anonymous Coward]

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OZ on Q . Q . Q tot Q `Q tot Q `Q us are Q tot Q `Q tot Q `
Q Q . Q . Q . Q us are Q us are Q us are Q tot Q `Q us are
Q `Q `Q . Q . Q `BONA `Q `BONA `NOSEY on GREYER on NOSEY .
Q . Q Q . Q . Q tot Q `Q tot Q `Q us are Q . Q us are . Q `
Q on OZ . Q . Q tot Q `Q tot Q `Q us are Q on Q . Q tot Q `
Q tot Q `XVI . NOSEY on NOSEY . SMITTEN `Q tot Q . NOSEY .

Democracy and low-information voters

[bradley13]

Dunno what you can do about "low information voters". Allow me to digress...

Just recently I somehow came across an article from the US, where a biologist had discovered retroviruses in vaccines, and these viruses were responsible for everything from autism to dementia. Having angered the powerful pharma cartels, the researcher was in jail, and all of her data had been confiscated.

Curious, I did a bit of research. As always, there was a kernel of truth. The researcher had, indeed written a paper about retroviruses. She had been fired from her job, and had taken company data (apparently paper files) with her. The company charged her with theft. She handed the data back, and the charges were dropped.

So you get conspiracy theorists who read more into this, in support of their pet paranoia - in this case, clearly anti-vaxxers. They make use of technology - like WhatsApp - to spread their nonsense. In the US, this isn't a huge problem, because enough of the population has enough of an education, and the "low information voters" ultimately don't dominate the voting population.

So...Nigeria... A country where most of the population has little education, and hence few critical thinking skills. The West has given them high technology, but they lack the general level of education to go with it. So the fruits and nuts can spread their nonsense far and wide - and it has a massive influence.

Democratic institutions can only work, when the population has a minimal level of education. The purists pushing democracy as some sort of panacaea? They are indirectly responsible for a lot of death and misery. It's not PC to notice, but the continuous warfare in much of Africa has not been an improvement over colonialism.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[DNS-and-BIND]

This is the most nicely dressed up racist comment I've ever seen on Slashdot. The alt-right is getting better. Time to come down on them.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anne Thwacks]

A lot of what he says is actually reasonable. Nigeria probably has a similar proportion of illiterates to America, however, they are not evenly distributed among ethic groups - in some groups it is over 90% literate, while in others, probably less than 20%, and Boko Haram, are by definition, terrorist illiterates fighting for everyone else to be as illiterate as they are.

Illiterates may not lack critical thinking, but they certainly lack the tools to check on facts - in many cases, they probably do not understand the concept of checking.

There is a further problem: the concept of truth is connected with the concept of "one God" - they truth is what God sees. Nigeria has a significant proportion of people who believe in Many gods, and they do not have the concept of a constant truth that Christians and Muslims do. They are often taught the "truth" is what the oldest person present says (challenging an older person generally ends badly). If different elders report different stories, they may believe that the "truth" has changed.

Re: Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy baaaaaaaaaaaaahhhd! Democracy baaaaaaaaaaaaahhhd! Baaaaaaaah!

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nigeria probably has a similar proportion of illiterates to America" - That high? Wow. Shocking.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[bradley13]

I was talking about the poorly educated population in Nigeria. You're the one who brought race into it.

I've been in Africa, I've been involved in a couple of projects there. There are some really great people, but also a pile of problems. Yet, anytime someone tries to discuss those problems, people like you shut down the discussion with cries of "racism".

Who is the real racist, here?

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[DNS-and-BIND]

Black people can't think for themselves and things were better when they were ruled by whites. For someone who's not alt-right, you sure have a lot of alt-right opinions.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Rockoon]

The above soft racist sees hard racism everwhere... color me surprised.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think critical thinking comes from a state sponsored education, you know nothing about politics. Politicians and their owned Academics strive to eliminate critical thinking as widespread use would put them out of work. Of course, they learned this from Marketing...
Some people actually think that this aftershave or that phone will get them laid....including plenty who have supposedly been "educated". I refute you thus.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

you are literally putting words in his mouth for the sake of making this an argument about racism instead of an informed discussion about the actual issue.

So instead of talking about how education would solve this issue and how to promote critical thinking skills, you would rather us have a yelling match about race and how technology is supposed to solve it. Thus ignoring the fact that the power vacuum that existed after colonization ended promoted conflict and wars over power and resources that left the majority of the population under educated. I am glad that colonization ended but that does not make up for the fact that it has been replaced with warring factions that are often helped by our own government.
https://theintercept.com/2018/...

But, no, lets change the argument to racism so that nothing productive actually happens and distract from the people who are being murdered because of misinformation and people greedy for power and resources, which includes our own government and military. After-all if we keep the population under-educated they will never realize that when we say "we bring you freedom" we actually mean "we take your resources to keep the status quo"

Re: Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

You were being sarcastic, but you were absolutely right.

Demonstrably Africa was better off when ruled by whites.

The vast majority of their farm and industrial equipment is over 60 years old. Their public transportation is straight out of the 40s. What little modern technology they have was entirely purchased from whites and asians, mostly with money generated from wars and theft.

Re:Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off you god damn idiot

Re: Democracy and low-information voters

[Anonymous Coward]

You were being sarcastic, but you were absolutely right.

Demonstrably Africa was better off when ruled by whites.

If "farming output" is the only measure - yes. Whites set up farms and plantations. They worked on a larger scale than the locals, and used modern machinery (for their day.) Looks like improvement?

Of course, they had to claim the land first. Anyone disagreeing to such claims of ownership were gunned down - sometimes with a newfangled invention called 'the machine gun'. Usually by private armies. After ridding the land of excess population, and starving & scaring the rest into obedience - why , it was easy to set up nice profitable farms that worked well.

Then you had a few generations of mostly peace. The locals were illiterate before, so the millions gunned down (or starved after the best land was taken) were soon forgotten. Nowadays, Zimbabwe chased out some white farmers. Of course productivity went down - new owners weren't educated for that job. And why should they - they couldn't afford such a farm other than by taking the land by force anyway.

Dumbshit users are the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooo it's in an app it must be true!!

This is what you get when you lower the barrier for entry into anything nice!!

Navage nasal irrigator

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of those gadgets that they've been heavily advertising on TV this Christmas season. I'm not really interested in it, but the hacker in me was thinking intead of sticking it up my nose, I could stick it up my butt and get a good "roto root". What say guys? Think that would work? I guess this is what doctors call "off label use".

No it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like saying the mail faces a misinformation problem, or talking faces a misinformation problem.
It's not whatsapp, it's the people in nigeria that face this problem.
They are also the ones who should take responsibility.
You can blame the person sending the info, or the person originating, but not the medium.

Re:No it doesn't

[Anne Thwacks]

You can blame the person sending the info, or the person originating, but not the medium.

If someone poisons the water supply, the water company may not be to blame, but if they don't shut off the supply of poisonous water, they are to blame for that and the resulting deaths.

America IS to blame for assuming the rest of the world has a "right to spread lies" rather than a tradition of punishing rumour mongers - who are often inaccessible because they hide behind American corporations and their products. This is not something Americans can blame on others.

Re: No it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Except people like you are pretending the water supply is poisoned, but only some of it, so the supply can keep flowing to the "right" people who behave how you want.

Re:No it doesn't

[mi]

but if they don't shut off the supply of poisonous water, they are to blame for that and the resulting deaths.

Lies are words — equating them with deeds is where your analogy went wrong.

America IS to blame for assuming the rest of the world has a "right to spread lies"

America believes — and has that belief codified as the very first item in its Bill of Rights — that everybody, wherever in the world they are, has a right to spread lies.

punishing [false - assumption by -mi] rumour mongers

Here in America we've agreed centuries ago, that allowing government to judge, what is and what is not true, is more dangerous than an occasional falsehood slipping through. See also Ministry of Truth — which is what you'd like established to go after these "rumour mongers".

Re: No it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I have tested the water myself, and it is poisoned. I want the poison to stop.

You are promoting the idea that the difference between lies and truth is a matter of opinion - this would suggest you have little or no experience of the truth, and are unable to distinguish between them - strong evidence that anything you say is worthless.

Re:No it doesn't

[Anne Thwacks]

Here in America we've agreed centuries ago, that allowing government to judge, what is and what is not true, is more dangerous than an occasional falsehood slipping through.

Possibly, but consider:

• You in America may have this view, others do not share it.

• it is not the "occasional falsehood" it is torrents of the stuff sent for the purpose of inciting hatred

  Your government may be a pile of shit, other people's government may be better. The reason your government is likely a pile of shit may be connected to the fact that is elected on the basis of a ton of politically motivated lies.

See also Ministry of Truth [enotes.com] â" which is what you'd like established to go after these "rumour mongers".

No. I do not want a "Ministry of Truth", you are dishonestly misrepresenting me for the purposes of propaganda. There are ways to establish the truth (many countries have law courts for this very purpose). I would like to see a legal system with powers to punish people for deliberate and wanton lying for political purpose or financial gain. Yes, you would be convicted under such a system. You'd best stay in America. The rest of the world would prefer America stayed out of their business.

Re:No it doesn't

[mi]

No. I do not want a "Ministry of Truth"

But you do! You believe, someone — a government agency or official — should be allowed to shut down any source of (what he considers to be) a lie.

That's a recipe — and a very quick recipe — to government corruption. Trump may accuse CNN of spreading "fake news", for example, but he can neither shut them up, nor imprison them over it. You'd like your government to be able to do that...

You'd best stay in America.

Oh, I certainly have no interest in shitholes, worry not.

The rest of the world would prefer America stayed out of their business.

The better parts of the rest of the world tend to share our attitudes towards freedom of speech. The shitholes that do not — remain shitholes forever...

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating!

[astrofurter]

Yay censorship! Only state approved messages are GOOD messages! People are too stupid to think for ourselves! Down with freedom of speech! Big brother loves us all!

Re: Just like Trump, so misunderstood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good morning, Sasha! How's the weather in Kiev today?

Ignorant People

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem is ignorant people who don;t or can't exercise critical thought and distinguish between fact and utter non-sense.

I see an alarming and disturbing amount of it here on Slashdot. there seems to be a massive spike of misinformation comments, more than the just the old penis bird and GNNA trolls. Most bizarrely it appears to be a foreign state(Russia?) run misinformation program. It seems intense, organized, and is definitely forwarding an agenda. I sometimes dismiss it as nuvo trolling because Slashdot, with its declining and niche populace, seems an absurd place to launch such a campaign. But it sure quacks like a duck.

Re:Ignorant People

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked on you if you bought the idea that it's Russians...and not all is misinformation, it just disagrees with your confirmation bias.

Re: Ignorant People

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious that you see a Russian conspiracy behind the promulgation of conspiracies.

Have you considered that you are a fucking moron who fell for the Russian conspiracy meme?

The damage has already been done

[fbobraga]

in Brazil, India, and other countries...

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating!

[Kiuas]

Freedom of speech has never meant freedom to libel or incite violence towards others for example, nor does it cover things like false advertising.

Freedom of speech also does not mean that governments should be able to freely spread false information to their citizens. In Myanmar, it's gotten to the point that Facebook has been used to facilitate outright genocide by spreading altogether false claims about the local muslim minority, and this has been coming from the highest levels of authorities. Facebook recently banned a general of the army from the platform after it came to light that he had been publishing actual photos of dismembered children, claming them to have been killed by the Rohingya, a claim for which there is no supporting evidence.

Meanwhile, the Myanmar government and military have been among the most adept and sophisticated users of Facebook, using the platform to put out their own narrative of the Rohingya crisis. The office of the Commander-in-Chief in March posted photos of dismembered children and dead babies, claiming they were attacked by Rohingya terrorists, to counter British MPs, who were sharply critical of the country’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.

Keep in mind the international stance is that the Myanmarian army has been actively conducting what's basically ethnic cleansing by killing civilians and driving them into exodus. This is a military regime actively using the social network to spread their own propaganda to facilitate and justify genocide, and up until this point FB has done nothing about it, even though similar activities have been going on for a few years. A UN report found that the Myanmarian military has clear genocidal intent behind their actions and that Facebook and disinformation have been a part of this operation.

So this is case of the state using a popular social media network in the country to push their own genocidal narrative and propaganda. So what Facebook must do, and what it's now slowly starting do do is the opposite of what you're saying: not to allow the state to use its power to feed false propaganda to its citizenry to justify genocide.

Imagine if your own government started to do something similar, demonizing one group of individuals and pushing false information through the platforms to support their narrative: 'Look at what the jews/the muslims/the blacks have done, they must be interned to prevent further crime!" Would you still be screaming 'b.-b-but the state must be free to lie to its own citizenry because of freedom of speech!", because I doubt that. That's not what freedom of speech is about.

let's figure out where the real problem is

[cascadingstylesheet]

How can I put this? If someone just believes just any old message that comes at them, then the problem is not with the message ...

Re:let's figure out where the real problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is they have no way to fact-check. In many poorer countries, internet access to subsidized by Facebook (via Internet.org), so Whatsapp is zero-rated and they have to pay to access anything outside the approved set. The result is that no one uses any non-approved websites because they can't afford to (or, at least, it seems wasteful when they have free access to the websites they know about). So what we consider as the the normal option of "just Google it" isn't available. And since Facebook, Whapapp, and Internet.org are all run by the same organization, it really is partially their fault for setting up such an easily abused system.

Re:let's figure out where the real problem is

[eaglesrule]

Sure, let's figure out the real reason why people in sub-saharra Africa routinely get murdered for being penis thieving sorcerers or how the theat of vampires causes public panics. Got a flameproof suit?

There's environmental issues such as disease and pollution, and childhood malnutrition. There's the obvious lack of education leading to the %60 literacy rate, and then there's the lovely cultural habit of keeping marriage within the family. All of which contributes to an average IQ rate of about 70, which by western standards borders on mental retardation. Being borderline retarded makes one more susceptible to violent action by way of wild rumors, I would guess.

But where's the real problem? Nobel prize winner Dr.James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, got into real trouble for speculating on that. Since step one to resolving any problem is to acknowledge it exists, I'd lean towards the human propensity to sugar coat ugly realities being one of the issues.

Re:let's figure out where the real problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, let's figure out the real reason why people in sub-saharra Africa routinely get murdered for being penis thieving sorcerers or how the theat of vampires causes public panics. Got a flameproof suit?

There's environmental issues such as disease and pollution, and childhood malnutrition. There's the obvious lack of education leading to the %60 literacy rate, and then there's the lovely cultural habit of keeping marriage within the family. All of which contributes to an average IQ rate of about 70, which by western standards borders on mental retardation. Being borderline retarded makes one more susceptible to violent action by way of wild rumors, I would guess.

But where's the real problem? Nobel prize winner Dr.James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, got into real trouble for speculating on that. Since step one to resolving any problem is to acknowledge it exists, I'd lean towards the human propensity to sugar coat ugly realities being one of the issues.

No, he got in trouble for being a racist cunt. You are trying to misrepresent that because you are also a racist little fucking cunt. Other evidence includes the fact that you are posting on this website for racist cunts for the benefit of an audience of racist cunts.

Re:let's figure out where the real problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the plague of penis-thieving open-sourcerers, the murder level in sub-Saharan Africa is still only 10% of the murder rate in America, and the literacy rate is similar to America.

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if your own government started to do something similar, demonizing one group of individuals and pushing false information through the platforms to support their narrative: 'Look at what the jews/the muslims/the blacks have done, they must be interned to prevent further crime!"

Look what the white people have done! We must check their privilege, raise their taxes, use affirmative action to deny jobs to the more qualified candidates, lower their birthrate through conspiring economic disincentives of student debt and rising housing prices overlaid on a feminist/environmentalist disdain for reproduction!

Courts state that is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the Citizens United verdict, it shows that dollars == free speech, which makes bribery legal, and a 1A protected act.

Spain is the next...

[fbobraga]

... maybe

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating!

[Anonymous Coward]

So they're blaming Russia and Putin too, like American fake news? And covering up crooked deals like Uranium One?

Fake news like that needs to be censored! Heil Hitlary!

Do Enlighten US

[Anonymous Coward]

I don;t see where he bought the idea that it's Russians. He's said foreign state and questioned if it was Russian.

But, you allude to higher knowledge on the matter. So, please do enlighten us ignorant plebs. Or at least demonstrate some ability by posting a penis bird.

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe someone read a message on Facebook then ran outside to commit genocide because of it, you're a total fucking moron.

Their citizens were tired of being raped, mugged, and killed by Muslims, and were ready to defend their society with armed action against their abusers. Facebook didn't have anything to do with it.

Re: how can we just ban people from communicating!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now do the far left and their 180 on the freedom of human expression.

(You won't, because you're a dishonest lying piece of shit who only speaks in bad faith.)

the fake ones should be easy to identify

[Anonymous Coward]

the fake ones should be easy to identify, because they will be in UPPER CASE.