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Facebook Betrayed America
- diogenescynic 8y agoProfits over country.
- claydavisss 8y agoConfirming what sane people already knew - that the reflex answer of "Russian hackers" has always been bogus.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- phyller 8y agoHow did you get that from the article? Seems like the point was Facebook wasn't trying to get rid of Russian agents on it's site as much as it was trying to bolster it's image. I think most of us have experienced the Russian "trolls" in one way or another, and there is very strong evidence that they have been, and continue to be, sponsored by the Russian state.
- beaconstudios 8y agoeveryone has experienced trolls, but most of the time it's 4chan people trying to upset you for laughs.
- phyller 8y agohttps://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/politics/russian-troll-instructions/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/politics/russian-troll-instru... Also, below is a recent article about professional Iranian trolls, but mentions that the same cybersecurity company has been tracking Russian disinformation campaigns for years. There are thousands of people in Russia, in Iran, in other countries who go into the office every day and earn their paycheck by trying to move opinion in the USA and elsewhere in a certain direction, or spread FUD. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/technology/fireeye-facebook-disinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/technology/fireeye-facebo... > FireEye’s information operations analysis team was formed in 2016, when hacked emails from several political figures were beginning to appear on the site DCLeaks. “All through that period, we were tracking the Russian effort to influence U.S. elections,” Mr. Foster said. “Obviously, social media is a very important kind of medium by which these campaigns are undertaken.”
- beaconstudios 8y agoyeah absolutely those people exist, I'm not denying it. But they're likely not the ones you've interacted with on twitter. Do you think Russia pays people to post inflammatory content on twitter, or to advocate for the Russian perspective like RT do? My money's on the latter.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Do you think Russia pays people to post inflammatory content on twitter, or to advocate for the Russian perspective like RT do? Yes. Oh, wait, did you imagine those were mutually exclusive?
- beaconstudios 8y agohow on earth does it benefit Russia to pay people to perform the actions that 4chan people do? I can't imagine posting edgy memes and attempting to "trigger the libs" is a national marketing/propaganda/outreach strategy.
- BoiledCabbage 8y agoBecause "trolls" is a horrible term for it. It's propaganda and sow discord. Inflame the far-left and far-right, get people to distrust traditionally more objective sources of information. Repeat lies on social media to reinforce desired narratives. Influence trending topics to direct discussion. All of this is fairly well known at this point. There are even cases of "troll" accounts being accounted and coming clean and sharing their twitter engagement numbers for particularly effective "fake news" tweets before deciding their exposed account. This isn't a few people in a basement it's a professionally run tech shop.
- beaconstudios 8y agoFrom what I've seen, the far-left have been inflamed since the late Obama years and the far-right have been inflamed by the actions and words of the far-left. All this goes back to Gamergate and further, and seems to just be spilling over more and more into the mainstream as the sides get more aggressive (though the severity does seem to have peaked in 2016/17 in my opinion). The Russian agents/bots I suspect I've seen are just adding fuel to the existing fire, though I question the effectiveness of their efforts. Overall the whole political division seems to predate the election and Russian involvement by quite a few years. It just seems to have been snowballing since. I mean, I remember seeing stuff about "feminazis" and "MRAs" like 10 years ago. I keep hearing that fake news and lies are being propagated but as a Brit I haven't really seen that outside the usual political propaganda around the referendum, and Trump's usual crass blathering that occasionally pops up in the news.
- Tagbert 8y agoI guess you didn't read the article, then. The whole point was Facebook's dishonest reaction to Russian disinformation activity.
- travisoneill1 8y agoOptions: 1. I will decide for myself what is reliable and what is not 2. FB will decide for me Why would anybody want option 2?
- phyller 8y agoOption 3: I just want to see my friends and family on my feed. It's sometimes hard to tell what else is reliable or not, but I don't want Facebook curating my life.
- EADGBE 8y agoWhat kinds of things do your friends and family share, though? Any articles that got them riled up?
- JacobJans 8y agoIf there were only friends and family on Facebook, there would be far fewer news articles shared. Get rid of Pages, and Facebook would be pleasant again. Of course, Facebook would also be broke.
- phyller 8y agoPlus, I already know that Uncle Al is a conservative nut, and cousin Fred is a liberal nut, and interpret their content accordingly.
- JacobJans 8y agoOption 3: Strangers you never interact with will decide, based on extremely competent propaganda, and their decisions will determine: -- The outcome of elections -- Whether to commit genocide -- ???
- beaconstudios 8y agoI don't think anyone "decides" as such. It's just the incentives within the system promote whatever content people engage with most. As it turns out, negativity bias wins out.
- bitrrrate 8y agoBut where can I post pictures of my baby so granny can see them? Sure I’ll have to wade through the Russian misinformation to do it and have my entire data file stolen by a shady right wing political entity but I refuse to send baby pics via email.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoHow about creating a Flickr account? You can store up to 1000 pictures of your baby and even granny should be capable to click on an URL you supply by email.
- bitrrrate 8y agoIt was sarcastic. It’s one of the excuses my family gives for not deleting their FB.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoSorry then, Sarcasm is sometimes hard to decipher on-line. Add to that one of my pet peeves: Folks claiming that they can't quit Facebook because how should they stay in touch with their 600 friends and family members without relying on this truely evil company. For the record: I "deleted" my account some 5 years ago, when it became obvious how despicable this company actually is.
- bitrrrate 8y agoNo worries. I deleted FB long ago and most recently fully weaned myself off Google. The reality is Gmail, Facebook, et al are ploys to get people to store their data on an ad companies servers. No thanks!
- jacknews 8y agoI'm no fan of facebook, and obviously there's a lot we need to examine regarding social media impact on society at large, etc, but I wonder to what extent this recent demonisation is a result of the existing press powers flexing their muscles. For example, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-threatened-mark-zuckerberg-in-2016-with-a-war.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre...
- jakegarelick 8y agoThis seems super click-baity. I'm going to draw my own conclusions from the original NYT report.
- mkirklions 8y agoQuestion about PR, when an event like this happens, why not be transparent? Unless facebook is actively working to help one side, this could be resolved by telling everyone what they know, and any new information... What I'm most concerned about is that they knew it was happening and were okay with it.
- esotericn 8y agoThis all seems to have gotten utterly out of hand and gone a bit crazy. I stopped using Facebook when my friends started to express political views more than social content. I wanted a place to hang out with friends, not rage. People don't do that in real life. Not that much, anyway. Somehow it seems like over the next five years or so it all descended into madness and everyone became a politician. What went wrong? How can Facebook even be used to 'spread a narrative' if it's just my friends? Why are my friends posting this nonsense rather than stuff about their lives? Something just doesn't add up to me. I don't understand what other people want from a social platform. The same seems to apply to Twitter. Everyday, normal people, seem to be spending their lives raging at each other. What gives? I want a pint now. Damn. The real world is stranger than fiction.
- venantius 8y agoI think the relatively simple answer is that it turns out most people are far more subject to simple tribalism than we previously wanted to admit. Memes are incredibly powerful mind viruses and we (collectively) have done a really great job of weaponizing them over the past 30 years. I don't think this is Facebook's "fault" in isolation since we see the same trend across most social networks, but I do think it suggests that social networks ought to be regulated, if for no other reason than that it's pretty clear that the default behaviors we're already seeing emerge en masse are not good for society or for us on an individual basis.
- titzer 8y agoBetrayal implies loyalty to something. Companies have zero loyalty to anything except their stock price.
- xiaolingxiao 8y agoSerious question, is someone bombing facebook in the press for some reason. I have seen no less four discussions bashing facebook on HN in the last day. Not defending or attacking FB in anyway, but the sheer coincidence warrants suspision.
- anonuser123456 8y agoMaybe it's George Soros and the illuminati. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/416779-facebook-paid-firm-linked-company-critics-to-soros-report https://thehill.com/policy/technology/416779-facebook-paid-f...
- buboard 8y agoIt's easy to write about and insanely popular. Anti-facebook press is the equivalent of UK royal gossip.
- MentallyRetired 8y agoI was hoping to come to the comments and find links to alternative social sites that aren't Mastodon or Diaspora.
- nemo44x 8y agoI'm not going to defend Facebook but one of the problems with media criticism of Facebook (and Google) is that Facebook (and Google) has crushed a lot of media. They have become vassals of Facebook (and Google) in order to harvest the clicks they desperately need. They have very little control of their advertising and distribution model now. This has also driven Madison Ave. nuts. Anecdotal but friends I have working in that space have no lost love for Facebook (and Google). My point is there is incentive for media to criticize Facebook and we just don't seem to see this disclosure.
- gerbilly 8y ago> They have become vassals of Facebook (and Google) in order to harvest the clicks they desperately need. I know a lot of people in the newspaper and magazine industry, and this comment is spot on.
- kodablah 8y ago> My point is there is incentive for media to criticize Facebook and we just don't seem to see this disclosure. There's also hypocrisy afoot as these news organizations publish anti-FB opinions under the guise of their news organization domains which muddies fact and opinion much more than the print days. They leverage visitor trust to inject thought.
- jacknews 8y agoI agree, have an upvote. But I got downvoted for making the same argument.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoThat may be true, but what does this add to or remove from the criticism itself?
- nemo44x 8y agoI agree but full disclosure on how they rely on Facebook may be in order. This gives the reader a fair chance to assess if the article or authors may have a bias in how they report the story. For instance, could Facebook begin to offer these publishers and/or authors incentive to not publish these things in the future? Either with stick or carrot. Could that influence how and what they publish?
- quotemstr 8y agoI like how you can tell the specific kind of criticism that a MSM article on FB will contain by looking at the unflattering stock photo of Zuck appears in the masthead. Here, the photo says "incompetent bureaucrat". This sort of attack is nothing new. Did FB have any obligation to do anything other than follow the law? No. There's no betrayal here. You have to keep in mind that outlets like The New Republic are dying, paying writers peanuts, and attracting a contributor group that has the same sort of uniformly authoritarian and strident political philosophy that's damaged the freedom of expression on college campuses and in larger tech companies. They see disagreement with their worldview as morally repugnant and they demand that institutions use their power to censor this disagreement and punish the critics. It's a philosophy I reject. To be smeared by The New Republic as "betray[ing] America" is kind of an honor.