Facebook Takes Down Fake Account Network Used To Spread Hate In UK (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Facebook has removed a network of more than 100 accounts and pages for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" on its social networks -- the first time it has done so for UK-based operations seeking to influence British citizens. The operation was spread over Facebook and Instagram and used a network of fake accounts to pose as both far-right activists and their opponents. It ran pages and groups whose names frequently changed in order to drum up more followers and operated fake accounts to engage in hate speech and spread divisive comments on both sides of UK political debate, Facebook says.

The pages, with names like "Anti Far Right Extremists", "Atheists Research Centre", and "Politicalized", attracted about 175,000 followers on Facebook, and a further 4,500 on Instagram, according to the company's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. The pages shared content from mainstream news sources, such as the BBC and the New York Times, but also shared original content, even including administrators actively engaging in debate with users. "We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people," Gleicher said. "We're taking down these pages and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.

Comments

Key wording

[Anonymous Coward]

"we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people"

Facebook prefers to keep that power to themselves.

  "We're taking down these pages and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted."

90% of the article is focused on the message of 'spreading hate', even though Facebook apparently doesn't care about the content they posted. This still doesn't explain the countless other political voices that DO get blocked and censored despite not breaking any technical rules.

PS: Yes, Liberals. We all know already that Facebook is a private company that has the legal right to do what they want. Of course that right only applies to companies that Liberals like, and not cake designers. It's funny how you can make any NPC Socialist suddenly LOVE their giant trillion dollar corrupt corporations, just so long as they're censoring people Liberals don't like.

Re:Key wording

[Anonymous Coward]

The article actually says that the fake accounts were promoting both pro-hate and anti-hate views, so I'm not sure where the diatribe against liberals comes from.

But yeah, the right wing does seem to host a small but unfortunately disproportionately disruptive toxic element at the moment, which most organizations want nothing to do with. Oh and being conservative (or liberal) is not a protected class, while most people outside of a small band of religious nuts would agree that sexual orientation is not a reasonable reason to discriminate, especially given the historical discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Regardless, this is about fake accounts. Nothing wrong with banning fake accounts.

Re: Key wording

[astrofurter]

Actually in California, where Faceboot is headquartered, people with political opinions _are_ a protected class. It is illegal to discriminate against a person for employment or use of public facilities, on the basis of their political views

Re:Key wording

[mapkinase]

It's not about fake accounts. It''s about accounts of certain political persuasion. There are plenty pro-violence antifa accounts that nobody touches, from organizations like BLM.

Look at the video of MAGA children from province visiting Washington. In the beginning you see the black activists openly declaring their racist views for years in the vicinity of the white house.

Nothing happens to the account of these.

Re:Key wording

[DNS-and-BIND]

You are not talking about liberals, you are talking about leftists. Liberals believe in free speech. They might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it. Leftists, on the other hand, will happily censor and we see this every day on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Quick question, how many offices, government and corporate, are held by these toxic rightists? How many people do they censor every day? Now compare this to the toxic left, which has real power. One need only look at the Covington kids to see how things turn out. The leftist view was "our reaction was factually wrong but morally right."

Re:Key wording

[Anonymous Coward]

while most people outside of a small band of religious nuts would agree that sexual orientation is not a reasonable reason to discriminate

Can Muslims be categorised as a "small band"?

Re:Key wording

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question, how many offices, government and corporate, are held by these toxic rightists?

POTUS, at least 1 SCOTUS seat, several Congressional seats, numerous positions in the White House Executive staff, several Secretary positions, multiple state Governors, too many state Reps/Senators to count, etc.

Re:Key wording

[mjwx]

Regardless, this is about fake accounts. Nothing wrong with banning fake accounts.

Its worse than that. The banned accounts weren't simply spewing hate, after all being a hateful little twat is FREEZE PEACH.

Their big problem is that they created tamer pages to begin with then when they'd reached enough users they changed the name and ramped up the hateful content. Ultimately that was the reason they were banned.

I.E. If you created a page called "British Military Humour" (despite never having even been within 5 miles of a British military installation, making you what we call a "Walt") and started off with a few risky but relatively harmless memes... When you've got enough followers you change it to "British people for the death of all Arabs and Jews" and started flooding it with InfoWars-esque conspiracy theories, then you cross the line and get your account deleted. That is pretty much what happened here.

I do not mean to imply, good sir, that you are a bigot or a Walt. It's just an example.

Hate groups in the UK use this kind of bait and switch because we're generally not bigots. So hate groups find it hard to recruit and need to try to lure people in by pretending they aren't hate groups, then closing the trap when it's too late.

Re:Key wording

[gotan]

So they classify/rate political views/standpoints on a "pro-hate" "anti-hate" scale?

And who decides how to define "hate", and decides what falls into which category?

"Hate speech" is just a label, depending on who uses it it means different things and is applied with different intentions. There are laws defining what speech should be restricted, and often it's a difficult task for legal experts to determine how they apply to a specific case. Also this legislation was crafted very carefully to restrict free speech as little as possible. Instead Facebook applies some woolly "hate-spech" category based on statistics, intransparent algorithms and decisions of underpaid workers that probably have to decide several instances a minute, and how they are trained and what qualifies them only facebook knows.

Combine that with the knowledge that facebook is "located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place." to put it in Zuckerbergs own words, and that "hate-speech" is often used to ostracize specific political views (e.g. on immigration), and it should be obvious, that this hate-speech categorization can be abused for political censorship and suspicions of this being the case are not unfounded.

Even if it isn't abused for political censorship now it opens the door wide to do so, and invites future abuse.

How Many More to Go

[rtb61]

Facebook deletes 100 accounts, only 999,999,900 to go or thereabouts. I'll bet there is an internal rating system for this, approved fake accounts and unapproved fake accounts, you pay, you can have all the fake accounts you want, you don't pay and they might eventually kick you off.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway? At least in the EU, Facebook has got no formal right to ask you, citizen, for your papers when you create an account, which makes pretty much all their accounts from EU "fake".

There are no transparent, open and reasonable criteria from Facebook on what various transgressions constitute "policy violation", they are all arbitrary and whimsical and depend heavily on third party reporting.

There were people I know who valued the service and (the sorry fucks) built a life or a business around it have been fucked beyond measure by hateful and false reporting, which lead to disabled and closed accounts.

Playing the facebook game is like playing with that nuclear war computer - there is no way to win.

The only way to win is to shun the Zucker.

And I am uncomfortable to say it out loud, but hosts file works well enough for that, no even need for apks to edit it.

Use it :)

Re:How Many More to Go

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook deletes 100 accounts, only 999,999,900 to go or thereabouts. I'll bet there is an internal rating system for this, approved fake accounts and unapproved fake accounts, you pay, you can have all the fake accounts you want, you don't pay and they might eventually kick you off.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." An eponymous law, probably named after a Robert J. Hanlon, it is a philosophical razor which suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior.

Then again, the ultimate question is not good or evil, it is which choice makes Facebook more money, so your explanation probably fits better. It's not malice. That is a different form of evil. No, this is pure capitalism unfettered by any chains of morality. In essence it is the dream child prayed for by the religious right. Sure they have so called moral goals. They just don't particularly care how they get there, which puts a lie to their underlying claim of being extra moral.

This is the world of today. It has perhaps a majority of people that believe in winning, and don't count the costs, unless it is the other side losing. In that case they increase their own score and smile.

The people ultimately paying for the fake accounts are probably much like that. As long as it works, its fine. Trump himself has flat out admitted he is like this. Think of his words about that judge, or more recently about his wanting the democrats to run on what he says he believes is a horrible plan, just because he could beat them. A patriot, who really thought the other sides plan was bad would try to convince them they were wrong, just in case they won. A Trump is not a patriot.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only way to win is to shun the Zucker." Why does Facebook get blamed for how people use or misuse the social platform he created? Facebook is being blamed because they are not doing a perfect job censoring the content posted by others. Facebook is basically being told they need to protect the stupid and gullible? People who are to stupid to recognize that finding truthful information on the Internet is almost impossible unless you are willing to track down multiple sources. Even the major media outlets tailor their content to manipulate certain groups and use the most dangerous tools in mass media today. "lies of omission" and "anonymous" sources. The first protects them from being called out right liars and keeps the number of defamation court cases to a minimum. The second means they can make shit up that cannot be verified without naming the source.

Maybe Facebook should go ask the Chinese how they are capable of censoring and tracking every aspect of their 1.3 billion citizens lives?

Re:How Many More to Go

[religionofpeas]

It is almost like they could use their criterion for "fake account" to their own advantage.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway? At least in the EU, Facebook has got no formal right to ask you, citizen, for your papers when you create an account, which makes pretty much all their accounts from EU "fake".

Sure. All EU accounts are "fake"...right up to the point where that "fake" account owner submits a GDPR request.

Ironically, the very privacy EU citizens demanded will also be the very tool used to specifically identify them.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Yeah. Or to cover their asses, whatever works in a given situation.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Why does Facebook get blamed

Dunno, really. Could it be because they are a bunch of sleazy fucktards, who collect information that the Stazi would not without telling the users what exactly they have on them? Or because they hire experts to help them play the human psychology so that using FB becomes addictive? Or because they habitually lie about what they do with the collected information? Could it be because they keep shadow profiles for people who are not interested in their services? Perhaps because they pay the likes of Samsung to get their spyware preinstalled on phones in unremovable ways?

Who knows... It is hard to imagine why people don't like them.

Re:How Many More to Go

[AmiMoJo]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway?

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

There are no transparent, open and reasonable criteria from Facebook on what various transgressions constitute "policy violation", they are all arbitrary and whimsical and depend heavily on third party reporting.

Indeed, and Facebook makes very minimal effort to even follow up reports from third parties.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Ironically, the very privacy EU citizens demanded will also be the very tool used to specifically identify them.

Not at all. When I submit a GDPR request to the authorities for violations of my privacy by a website that the website has refused to rectify, I may have to identify myself to the authorities to show that I am a side in that particular case. But I need to file a GDPR request like this only if that particular website is not in compliance, and it isn't the company that will receive my personal information.

Re:How Many More to Go

[The1stImmortal]

What is a "fake" accunt anyway?

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

Or a PR/marketing firm in New York or London or LA. Hell, most web marketing firms do this. Not to mention personal PR, business marketing agencies, ad companies propping up their own stats for clients, and of course political marketing people. It's basically par for the course. Common practice. I'd not be surprised if there were more such accounts than real humans on FB. Twitter certainly seems that way.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

Ah, we're back at the "Russian trolls" excuse. I recall a few months ago Twitter banned a bunch of Bulgarian accounts for the sole reason that they wrote in Cyrillic alphabet, were from the capital city of Bulgaria and were active roughly during the daytime over there, thereby fulfilling all your criteria.

The irony was most of those blocked were the exact opposite of a troll farm - they were genuine accounts and of people who were mostly pro-western and quite liberal at that.

It is impossible to ascertain any of the things you propose with any certainty just by the online activity of an account, especially in the absence of clear policies.

Re:How Many More to Go

[AmiMoJo]

Why would they bother? It's their platform, they can ban anyone they like for any or no reason. Generic "TOS violation" has been a thing forever.

Re:How Many More to Go

[AmiMoJo]

Hay, I never said they were competent.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Chris Mattern]

it isn't the company that will receive my personal information.

But don't the authorities then have to give that information to the website owners?

"Remove this person from your website."
"What person?"
"We can't tell you. That's private."

Re:How Many More to Go

[edis]

You don't pay Facebook for having an account - so, that much for it.

Sure, they have had very articulated filtering of at least top 100, if not all-mutually-related-100, that there is.

Most interesting in this story to me is WHO IS WELL FUNDING EFFORT OF KEEPING WESTERN SOCIETIES DISINTEGRATED?
Not that it was well or even vaguely answered.

Re:How Many More to Go

[Type44Q]

One run by the Internet Research Agency out of St. Petersberg during office hours, acting in unison with the other 99 accounts being run from the same room.

That was actually far more logical and articulate than usual for you; are you sure you're not 99 different shills running your account from the same room? ;)

Re:How Many More to Go

[dunkelfalke]

Petersburg, not Petersberg.
Both burg and berg are germanic words, they might even sound alike when spoken with an English pronounciation, yet they mean two completely different things.

A burg is a castle, a berg is a mountain.

Re:How Many More to Go

[walterbyrd]

> Why does Facebook get blamed for how people use or misuse the social platform he created?

Because Facebook is a publisher, not a platform, and should be treated as such.

If Facebook were a platform, they would have no business censoring content that disagrees with.

If Facebook is a publisher (which they clearly are) then Face is responsible for anything and everything that is posted.

Re:How Many More to Go

[walterbyrd]

> It's their platform, they can ban anyone they like for any or no reason

No. If Facebook can ban anyone they like for any or no reason, then Facebook is a publisher, not a platform.

Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[rsilvergun]

with the Atheists? It's bizarre, because you'd think the last folks who would be buddy buddy with the right are the Atheists, what with the right usually getting in bed with Evangelicals. Not that there aren't plenty of left wing Atheists (Aronra comes to mind. And Genetic Skeptic) but still.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[bestweasel]

It is bizarre because atheism is mainstream and popular in the UK and evangelicals and religion in general have little influence. If this is Putin's mob trying to stir up enmity again, then they might have been wasting their time.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[meglon]

The operation was spread over Facebook and Instagram and used a network of fake accounts to pose as both far-right activists and their opponents

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[meglon]

Atheists acknowledge the reality that there is not, and never has been, any evidence for any "god/goddess/gods" throughout the entire history of humanity, and refuse to live in a delusion/fantasy where a "god/goddess/gods" is considered "real" despite that complete lack of evidence.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[serviscope_minor]

It is bizarre because atheism is mainstream and popular in the UK

It is: it's the normal sort of atheism where people simply don't believe in god and get on with their lives. Not the internet atheism which seems to revolve around being as loud and obnoxious as possible about it.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

Atheism is not a political position but one of sanity. So, by definition, not a political position...

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

Really? Thanks for defining what I believe. I honestly didn't know I do believe that.

Atheism means exactly one thing, and one thing only: Not believing in deities. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, that means that you are not required to "believe" in the Big Bang Theory to be an atheist (or watch the show for that matter). And it doesn't keep you from thinking the universe was created by aliens from planet Zrbit outside our universe.

In other words, just because you're atheist doesn't mean you're rational. You just have a chance to be rational.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

Same question to you: Do you know more than the article says? All the article says is that an organization with "atheist" in the name got banned. That doesn't make it an atheist organization. Organizations can pick their own name, even if their believes, plans and actions have nothing to do with their name.

For reference, see NSDAP.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling us the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not really Korean?

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[dunkelfalke]

Exactly. And given that the "European Research Group" is staunchly anti-European, it is probably just as likely that the "Atheists Research Centre" is an organisation for religious nutjobs.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ever since #elevatorgate atheists were cast out of the SJW left. Remember that? A dork made an artless pass at a woman in an elevator and she claimed victim status. Instead of falling in line, the atheist community mocked her for being a fragile snowflake. Bad move, after elevatorgate they were finished as a movement.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

That's the part that is actually true.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[AbRASiON]

Iâ(TM)m sorry to say this to you, but I strongly suspect youâ(TM)re from the far far left / crazy SJW crowd (yes, dismiss my post for using the pejorative SJW, sorry but itâ(TM)s the simplest description)

The extreme left, appear to take issue with *anyone* who isnâ(TM)t also, extreme left.

What this has caused, is that previously, quite normal lefties, have become either unchanged but now defined as âfar right!â(TM) Because they dare disagree with the extreme left, or theyâ(TM)ve genuinely been pushed to the centre, baffled now at where they stand, because extreme left loony types have labelled them all kinds of nasty things and threatened to dox them and fire them for not agreeing with some bafflingly extreme stance, you know something simple like âoeALL MEN ARE SCUMâ or something as benign as that,....

I may be calling this incorrectly but this is a wild guess! Iâ(TM)ve never seen anyone make the observation you just made, but I certainly suspect a lot of the previously left / rational left (ie: atheists) are probably the people you THINK are âfar rightâ(TM)

No, Iâ(TM)m not far right, but Iâ(TM)m sure Iâ(TM)ll be accused of it.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[AbRASiON]

Another day, another âoeRussian Boogeyman!!!â Post.
At this point, itâ(TM)s more scary that people actually believe thereâ(TM)s *that many* Russian bots infiltrating us here, than the actual thought of the Russians doing it.

For a start if we need to worry about a country, it ainâ(TM)t Russia. Itâ(TM)s big and itâ(TM)s red and we buy EVERYTHING from them.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's bizarre, because you'd think the last folks who would be buddy buddy with the right are the Atheists, what with the right usually getting in bed with Evangelicals.

The far right is purely opportunistic/utilitarian, they'll (pretend to) be anything that they think will further their goal. In this particular example they are even on both sides of the argument (right vs left).

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Type44Q]

In other words, just because you're atheist doesn't mean you're rational.

In a nutshell, denying the existence of God is no more rational than insisting on it.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[hey!]

Hitler, as is commonly known, was a vegetarian. What is somewhat less known is that despite that he regularly ate meat. While he was big on rules, he wasn't big on following them himself. Note he was also the head of a "socialist" party that privatized state industries and courted the support of powerful capitalists at the expense of small businesses.

Don't try to make sense of what these people *say*, because it makes no sense. What they *do*, however, is worth paying attention to. A tiny fringe group needs allies. I don't doubt Christian (-ist) white supremacist will make alliances with neo-pagans, but they won't be the type of neopagans that pay much attention to the qualifying clause in the Wiccan Rede ("An it harm no one..."). Likewise if Christian political fanatics could well make common cause with atheists, but those atheists won't be Richard Dawkins.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Opportunist]

Not believing something is basically the default position for any rational being. When you're trying to find out what is and what is not, there are essentially two points where you can start. Either by requiring positive proof, i.e. assuming nothing is until its existence is proven, or by requiring negative proof, i.e. assuming everything is until clearly shown to be not. Now, the latter is not only fairly impossible to do, it's also pretty inconvenient. Especially for those who want to believe. Because if we assume everything is until falsified, we'll have to assume that all gods exist, and it's on you now to show that yours is the only "true" one.

Religions are usually defined as mutually exclusive, i.e. you believe in one you cannot believe in another, or at the very least, that the god(s) of one religion get really angry if you believe in other god(s). Which in turn also make it the most sensible position to not believe in any until shown which one is the correct one because it's the least effort position, since worshiping all of them is not only impossible due to time constraints, some creeds have quite conflicting tenets, for example it's really hard to align the ideals of Sikhism with the demands that Xipe Totec puts on his followers.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Cederic]

I only read the summary and the group names looked like Atheists, people against far right extremists and some neutral people, so fuck knows where the person to whom you replied got the impression atheists and people on the far right are somehow aligned.

So I guess the answer to their stupid question is simple: No, I haven't noticed.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[Jzanu]

Yeah, it was a mostly wasteful exercise except for training for future interventions. Vladimir Putin is a demon with no soul who hates humanity and sows destruction whenever possible.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[UnknownSoldier]

Technically, everyone is an atheist -- as there are two definitions for atheism: a person who does not believe in the existence of

1. a god, or
2. any gods.

Bold emphasis added.

By the first definition a Christian who doesn't believe in the existence of Zeus is an atheist. :-)

Atheism has nothing to do with Rationalism. A lack of belief, and therefore a lack of knowledge, doesn't imply, or diminish, rationality.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[RockDoctor]

it is probably just as likely that the "Atheists Research Centre" is an organisation for religious nutjobs.

My first interaction with something resembling the Internet was through Compuserve's forums a 1200bps modem and a £0.05/min phone line. Which was clunky enough. I go nosing around - "Is there anything interesting here?"

It mush have been shortly after some USian massacre by a gun-nut - which could be any random week - because I saw a forum called "Gun Control" and thought "That may be interesting." P>It wasn't. They were absolute nutters. Quite educational, but not in the way they intended.

Re:Anyone notice the far right getting cozy

[dunkelfalke]

Haha too true

Unfair Competition

[GrBear]

We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people

Of course they don't want that.. it would hurt their ludicrous business model of manipulating people.. and people might be manipulated from dumping Facebook.

Oh dear

[bestweasel]

Is it those pesky Russians at the Internet Research Agency again? I bet it is. If only our bare-chested comrade would do something to improve his own people's lot instead of stealing from them, cutting their pensions and trying to bring other countries down to his crooked level.

Re:Athiest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Atheism is anti-muslim. In an Islamic state such as the UK, that is not allowed.

Information theory says: Only duckspeak allowed.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... we don't want our services to be used to manipulate people ...

The information-theoretical definition of "reception of information" is that the receiver's behavior changes as a result.

So if their services "don't manipulate people", they're not sending any information that the people actually receive.

This corresponds to "duckspeak" - both Big Brother's and Donald Duck's, in two different but related ways:

  * Like 1984's it consists only of the inner party's approved messages (which the listeners already know and don't change their behavior as a result of hearing the latest artistic rendering of a standard rant).

  * Like Donald Duck's tantrums, It is all incoherent sound and fury, which the character at whom it's directed ignores (if he can even mange to parse it.)

"coordinated inauthentic behavior"

[Anonymous Coward]

that just means "without prior busine$$ partnership agreement"

Re: We all know

[astrofurter]

Shut up you NAZI!!!!!!

Better Headline Facebook Censors Speech

[Crashmarik]

Prompted by unnamed aggrieved parties with an agenda.

Oh well at least this time it seems to be a mostly left leaning bunch of groups. Normal people would reflect that maybe censorship is a bad thing for everyone, I expect the people behind this will just try harder to make certain they're the ones that get to censor.

Re:Better Headline Facebook Censors Speech

[meglon]

The groups were designed to look like sides.... both right and left.... being at odds with each other. The people behind the groups... which is what is important... were neither, they were simply trying to sow discord by controlling groups purporting to be from both sides.

Re:Better Headline Facebook Censors Speech

[PPH]

they were simply trying to sow discord by controlling groups purporting to be from both sides.

No, they were not.

Yes, they were.

No, they were not.

Yes, they were.

No, they were not.

Yes, they were.

.
.
.

Re:Apple Music only listing female artists today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man it's the end of the world - the feminists and SJWs have dealt a mortal blow to American manliness with this despicable act. I hope you're OK a/c and not too distraught but I do expect a lot of neckbeard suicides today.

Too late the hero

[It's the tripnaut!]

Had Facebook worked on this shit a lot earlier, the current global political trend of far-right populism would probably have been prevented. Now, you have people like Duterte, Trump, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Modi, et al, running a significant portion of the world.

Re:Athiest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Athiest=The most athe

"fake account network"

[Anonymous Coward]

I literally have a spare account for both Twitter and Facebook.

I would call neither a fake account nor a hate account, I do post my actual opinion on several topics which the regressive, hypocritical far left would gladly dox me for though and fire me.

I try my best to not be hateful, I do end up speaking with some nasty people, sure. But in our current world, if you say "I think our immigration rate is too high and unsustainable, leading to wage stagnation and difficulty finding work" to the wrong people, it could result in job termination against a determined enough person.

I also feel that blindly open immigration from /some regions/ is out stupidity. We in Australia here have imported people from several bad locations and they are now videos representing a MASSIVE disproportionate balance of car jacking, home invasion, mugging. Stats are factual and recorded, but frequently suppressed in the paper and taboo to discuss.

  That particular one goes down very poor with them, so sadly yes anonymous

P.s before you "put me in a box"

Agnostic
Extremely pro choice (!)
Anti circumcision
Very Pro gay marriage
Zero issue with trans people.
No issues with women's rights IF everything is equal. (Very sick of "not enough women in cushy technology Jobs" but ZERO comments regarding garbage collector, oil rig worker, etc) equally is equality. Can't have one thing and not the other. Fair is genuinely fair)

Ling story short, some of us want to speak our minds with anonymity, without retribution.

Posting anon for obvious reasons.

Re:"fake account network"

[Narcocide]

Just so you know, however benign your motivations, that's still in direct violation of Facebook's TOS which actually requires your personal information to be complete and accurate.

They could kick all of your accounts off their platform at any time for this, but they probably won't. The accounts in question that they did kick off were kicked off because excessive spam-botting (automated software controlling literally thousands of "puppet" accounts) was being abusively and obviously used to manipulate public discourse in an inorganic way. Your one anonymous sock-puppet is unlikely to be a relevant comparison unless you've fundamentally misrepresented yourself here.

Re:"fake account network"

[Narcocide]

(Oh yea, and the detectable botting really shoots holes in the advertising revenue stream, so I'm sure that is a big motivation for Facebook too.)

Re:"fake account network"

[edis]

Thing is, it was used to manipulate public discourse in very organic way of polarization, albeit, using intensifying manipulation.

This is hybrid war, set by one eternal KGB officer, to my guess.

Re:So, atheism is now "hate speech"?

[Opportunist]

Do you know more than the article or do you go by name? Li'l hint: The "German Democratic Republic" was ... well, at least part of Germany. The rest was bunk.

Re: Wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you see "fake account", and assume it must be right wing?

That's not what TFS or TFA say. Yet you immediately jumped to that conclusion.

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Re:So, atheism is now "hate speech"?

[Opportunist]

Well, the GDR at least really existed, so...

Re:So, atheism is now "hate speech"?

[Opportunist]

Erh... the people who lived in the GDR? I kinda doubt they're all paid shills for the western governments...

I notice something else though

[poity]

Skeptics are now more often cast as "far right".
Call out Christian BS 15 years ago? Cool dude.
Call out Muslim BS now? FAR RIGHT RACIST BIGOT.
Don't believe three-letter government agencies 15 years ago? Smart independent thinking dude.
Don't believe three-letter government agencies now? FAR RIGHT RUSSIAN BOT.
Resisting the constant shifting of definitions 15 years ago? Haha George Carlin is pretty badass.
Resisting the constant shifting of definitions now? YOU ARE BAD AND AN ASS AND FAR RIGHT.

Re:I notice something else though

[dunkelfalke]

Only if that scepticism is not consistent.

Re:I notice something else though

[AbRASiON]

Thank you and EXACTLY what I was attempting to say.

This this and this. The left has changed, a lot. Extremist group now.

Re:I notice something else though

[malkavian]

I'm a skeptic, and pretty consistent. I've spent years combing through the published papers, and working out which ones are based on evidence, and which are based on pseudoscience and opinion.
While not a guarantee I'm right in things, it sets the bar pretty high in most of the things I'd debate on (always open to being swayed by good evidence, but it rarely appears).
Stating what the evidence shows often gets me the label of 'far right' or so on, despite being fairly oriented with the moderate left (US political surveys always peg me as a Democrat).
Quite simply, people use these 'tags' so that they can first set you up as "the enemy", and once that's done, dehumanise you, or pathologise you (those two are endemic on the left), and once they've done that, they have you framed such that anything you say isn't worth listening to because you're "other".
It's one of those mental "short cuts" that stop people having to think critically, or undergo the discomfort of having to work through cognitive dissonance, and perhaps change their stances. Because, you know, every opinion is equal, and evidence is irrelevant, because opinion and rights!
Both political wings are guilty of this kind of behaviour, but I find the left leaning to be far more threatening in their responses and readiness to pathologise.

Re:I notice something else though

[RockDoctor]

gets me the label of 'far right' or so on, despite being fairly oriented with the moderate left (US political surveys always peg me as a Democrat).

That would be about right. By the standards of the Rest of The World, the 95% that isn't American, then a fairly left wing person (by American standards) would be counted as a ravening right winger. But for some peculiar reason, Americans don't see themselves for the small and peculiar minority that they are.

Re:So, atheism is now "hate speech"?

[gotan]

The problem is, that the label "hate speech" may be (and in many cases is) also misleading.

Yawn

[jbmartin6]

attracted about 175,000 followers on Facebook, and a further 4,500 on Instagram

In other words, an open communication 'marketplace' was working as expected and almost no one was paying attention to their crap factory. Those numbers are pathetically low, and still provide no data at all on whether any of this vanishingly small percentage of accounts even paid attention to any of the crap.

I think that's because their YouTube channels

[rsilvergun]

pivoted to a lot far right, mostly anti-SJW stuff. Part of that is that the anti-SJW stuff gets clicks. Also there's a lot of right wing think tanks and they've been helping signal boost the right wing skeptic pundits and provided them with valuable consulting advice on how to grow communities.

That said none of that would matter if there wasn't a community receptive of their message. The SJW stuff is super popular, as is the gamer gate and anti-feminism stuff. But it's weird and a little disheartening that any concerns they had regarding evangelicals seemed to have vanished. It's not even like the Bernie Bros and the Corporate Dems, where one is trying to change the other. The skeptic community's just dropped most of the skepticism. Heck, a bunch are down playing the Atheism.

Re:I think that's because their YouTube channels

[DNS-and-BIND]

Anti-SJW and anti-feminist are not "far right". They are center-moderate and liberal positions. Only the left and the far left think that SJW and feminist ideas are good ones. LGBT Magazine Says It's 'Racist' For Trump To Demand Iran Stop Killing Gay People

Not unless you're a nutcase irrational theist

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, not believing in a god is as rational as not believing in Santa Clause or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or a Teapot Orbiting between Jupiter and Mars.

If you believe in a god and claim it is "rational" because "well we don't know it ISN'T real!", then you have to really believe in all the other gods too, and the FSM, monsters under the bed, etc.

Note that if you claim that god is real, then you are lying, since Shiva is god, according to the believers of Shiva. If you don't accept that Shiva is real, then you should not believe YOUR god is real either. Both have 100% identically valid "evidences", so if you believe in one god, you HAVE to believe in them all.

Or accept YOUR belief in YOUR god is irrational.

Why is it so hard for you theist idiots to accept your belief is irrational? We can't refute your belief, but we CAN refute your logic for your believe BECAUSE you claim your belief is rational. Stop claiming it is rational and suddenly we don't have a leg to stand on to change your belief.

Of course you have no basis to convert anyone, so you can't bother others over your belief, but which is more important to you: your god or annoying the shit out of other people?

The word "satire" is used here in Brazil...

[fbobraga]

... to "justify" the creation of media social profiles that spread misinformation: for the mainteiners, it's only "a joke" (tell that to my grandma [and several other people], that believes it...)

Re:Learn your history, kid.

[hey!]

Learn to read, sonny.

Re:No, much simpler than that.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Speak for yourself. I've never had any warm feelings for FB or its owners.

Re:Except that "far left" IS popular.

[malkavian]

Both of those (taxes and healthcare as infrastructure) are moderate left. There's a lot of capitalist sense to having free healthcare (as in, you have a ready pool of _healthy_ workers to pull from at any point, increasing flexibility).
Increased bands of tax for the very rich is moderate in that it doesn't prevent anyone from becoming super rich, and doesn't in any way stigmatise that. It merely states that above a certain threshold, you can afford to pay more from your income to support the infrastructure that lets people efficiently go about their business, and maintains infrastructure that you would use in your business dealings to make more money.

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Re:No, much simpler than that.

[walterbyrd]

> Facebook only got hated when the RWNJs no longer found themselves able to use it for their insanity and FB banned them.

Who determines what is "insanity?" You? Me? Facebook?

Whatever happened to freedom of speech? What is wrong with countering bad ideas with good ideas? If something is "insanity" than expose it as such with evidence and logic.

If Facebook is to determine what is acceptable, and what is a thought crime, then Facebook is a publisher, and should be treated as such.