4 ms·

Facebook accused of introducing extremists to one another via suggested friends

36 points by ahiknsr 8y ago

cscotti 8y ago
Restaurant accused of feeding criminals?
- abenedic 8y ago
  Yeah, in some sense this is the system working as expected.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    As intended? Because intentionally introducing terrorists to each other is a serious criminal offence in a lot of places. I can see how this kind of thing comes about; it's very silicon valley to assume that 'murder' and, say 'gardening' are just rows in a database and it would be inappropriate bias to declare one to be better than the other.
    - abenedic 8y ago
      Intended and expected are two different things. A person may intend to be a good person, but others may expect them to fail.
    - sitepodmatt 8y ago
      More interesting is how Facebook classifies these traits automatically? I can see someone specifying gardening as an interest but even one of those asswipes presumably have enough intelligence not to specify terrorism as a hobby
      - pjc50 8y ago
        It'll be like the Netflix tens of thousands of micro-genres. A statistical clustering of words and liked pages. (Also, if it's anything like western rightwing extremism, it's surprising how little euphemism a page needs to evade banning)
    - jcims 8y ago
      It seems highly unlikely that there's a person at Facebook that's intentionally recruiting terrorists by linking them to other radicalized folks. This is almost certainly just blind algorithm that links people found dawdling in the same corners of the social graph.
bdcravens 8y ago
Doesn't the government do this on a regular basis via incarceration?
- untog 8y ago
  "well yes officer, I was stealing from the store. But did you see the other guy who stole from the store five minutes before me? It seems unfair to single me out"
saudioger 8y ago
“Over a period of six months the [US based user] went from having no clear religion to becoming a radicalised Muslim supporting Isil.” That certainly escalated quickly.
quotemstr 8y ago
Don't feed the trolls. This article is outrage bait. As someone said below, it's hyperventilating because a restaurant served a criminal.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Facebook is not a restaurant, it's a news and ideology aggregator.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    So are restaurants, actually, if you count bars.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      Or old-fashioned diners. I was in one and some old guys at the counter were talking about the conspiracies that control everything.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
So, if it's possible to be a Facebook user and a supporter of a known terrorist organisation ... Should the rest of us really be worried about what we reveal to Facebook?
borplk 8y ago
Garbage outrage bait. For more than a decade these same people cheered and clapped for every benefit of the web and algorithms and software and automation and social media and all of that. Now it's becoming fashionable to turn around and point fingers at completely obvious and trivial consequences of it and act as if the citizens are helpless infants and the corporations are the babysitters responsible for anything and everything. "OMG lies found on the internet" "Facebook accused of allowing people to lie" "children allowed to view slightly creepy animations on YouTube ... oh wont somebody think of the children" "Public information shared on the internet was scraped and sold to 10 companies ... everybody go nuts" I'm happy that these concerns have finally reached the mainstream but there's an alarming "brain dead" theme to these waves of news articles. Like just a particular flavor of news articles becomes fashionable and then every journalist pushes out every possible variation of that topic at all cost just to stay relevant? How do you go for more than a decade not caring at all about any of these concerns and being so dismissive to suddenly turning around in such extreme way? If it was more of a balanced transition from not caring to caring I'd understand better. But this pendulum swing makes me think that not many people are thinking for themselves anymore. They just go with the group-think mindset of the year.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I get the feeling there's been a persistent campaign to attack whatever is deemed the current symbol of American hegemony, for quite a while, but every now and then people move on in a coordinated way. I distinctly remember when there was a constant focus on fracking for a while. Fracking is still around and the US is still one of the top oil producers in the world, but it's as if someone decided attacking it wasn't fruitful, and everybody moved on in more or less unison. This is conspiratorial thinking, but I can't seem to shake it. It was recently reported that the Jade Helm conspiracy theories of a few years ago were encouraged, if not originated, by a Russian disinformation campaign: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/cia/386156-ex-cia-chief-says-russian-bots-fueled-jade-helm-conspiracy http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/cia/386156-ex-ci... That's not the same thing as the majority of the media being controlled by a single entity though, so I still have no idea what is happening. But it doesn't feel natural or spontaneous.

36 points by ahiknsr 8y ago

cscotti 8y ago

Restaurant accused of feeding criminals?

abenedic 8y ago
Yeah, in some sense this is the system working as expected.
- pjc50 8y ago
  As intended? Because intentionally introducing terrorists to each other is a serious criminal offence in a lot of places. I can see how this kind of thing comes about; it's very silicon valley to assume that 'murder' and, say 'gardening' are just rows in a database and it would be inappropriate bias to declare one to be better than the other.
  - abenedic 8y ago
    Intended and expected are two different things. A person may intend to be a good person, but others may expect them to fail.
  - sitepodmatt 8y ago
    More interesting is how Facebook classifies these traits automatically? I can see someone specifying gardening as an interest but even one of those asswipes presumably have enough intelligence not to specify terrorism as a hobby
    - pjc50 8y ago
      It'll be like the Netflix tens of thousands of micro-genres. A statistical clustering of words and liked pages. (Also, if it's anything like western rightwing extremism, it's surprising how little euphemism a page needs to evade banning)
  - jcims 8y ago
    It seems highly unlikely that there's a person at Facebook that's intentionally recruiting terrorists by linking them to other radicalized folks. This is almost certainly just blind algorithm that links people found dawdling in the same corners of the social graph.

bdcravens 8y ago

Doesn't the government do this on a regular basis via incarceration?

untog 8y ago
"well yes officer, I was stealing from the store. But did you see the other guy who stole from the store five minutes before me? It seems unfair to single me out"

saudioger 8y ago

“Over a period of six months the [US based user] went from having no clear religion to becoming a radicalised Muslim supporting Isil.” That certainly escalated quickly.

quotemstr 8y ago

Don't feed the trolls. This article is outrage bait. As someone said below, it's hyperventilating because a restaurant served a criminal.

pjc50 8y ago
Facebook is not a restaurant, it's a news and ideology aggregator.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  So are restaurants, actually, if you count bars.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Or old-fashioned diners. I was in one and some old guys at the counter were talking about the conspiracies that control everything.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

So, if it's possible to be a Facebook user and a supporter of a known terrorist organisation ... Should the rest of us really be worried about what we reveal to Facebook?

borplk 8y ago

Garbage outrage bait. For more than a decade these same people cheered and clapped for every benefit of the web and algorithms and software and automation and social media and all of that. Now it's becoming fashionable to turn around and point fingers at completely obvious and trivial consequences of it and act as if the citizens are helpless infants and the corporations are the babysitters responsible for anything and everything. "OMG lies found on the internet" "Facebook accused of allowing people to lie" "children allowed to view slightly creepy animations on YouTube ... oh wont somebody think of the children" "Public information shared on the internet was scraped and sold to 10 companies ... everybody go nuts" I'm happy that these concerns have finally reached the mainstream but there's an alarming "brain dead" theme to these waves of news articles. Like just a particular flavor of news articles becomes fashionable and then every journalist pushes out every possible variation of that topic at all cost just to stay relevant? How do you go for more than a decade not caring at all about any of these concerns and being so dismissive to suddenly turning around in such extreme way? If it was more of a balanced transition from not caring to caring I'd understand better. But this pendulum swing makes me think that not many people are thinking for themselves anymore. They just go with the group-think mindset of the year.

perl4ever 8y ago
I get the feeling there's been a persistent campaign to attack whatever is deemed the current symbol of American hegemony, for quite a while, but every now and then people move on in a coordinated way. I distinctly remember when there was a constant focus on fracking for a while. Fracking is still around and the US is still one of the top oil producers in the world, but it's as if someone decided attacking it wasn't fruitful, and everybody moved on in more or less unison. This is conspiratorial thinking, but I can't seem to shake it. It was recently reported that the Jade Helm conspiracy theories of a few years ago were encouraged, if not originated, by a Russian disinformation campaign: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/cia/386156-ex-cia-chief-says-russian-bots-fueled-jade-helm-conspiracy http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/cia/386156-ex-ci... That's not the same thing as the majority of the media being controlled by a single entity though, so I still have no idea what is happening. But it doesn't feel natural or spontaneous.