6 ms·

Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Russia

50 points by ccnafr 8y ago

atemerev 8y ago
Facebook carefully guards its monopoly on coordinating inauthentic behavior! :)
- setquk 8y ago
  Yep. It’s ok when SCL, AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Data Propria etc do it of course!
ddebernardy 8y ago
In case anyone from the FB team behind this is reading: Was stealth banning the relevant accounts considered? If so, curious to know why it was rejected.
- atemerev 8y ago
  In such coordinated operations, the impact is usually verified via independent accounts which are not participating in spreading, which are nearly impossible to distinguish from actual victims. So stealthban is not particularly effective. As a part-time consultant on countermeasures for opinion manipulation in social networks, I can say that passive defenses are usually not reliable enough.
Artemis2 8y ago
“Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” is a nice euphemism!
- Udik 8y ago
  Sounds like a good definition to me. Better than the widely used "troll", which used to mean a different thing, before being appropriated by the mainstream media. Trolls used to mean people provoking emotional reactions with the intent of disrupting communities and ridiculing their members. And unless Putin is doing this for the laugh...
walrus01 8y ago
I'd be very interested in seeing if there's a similarly worded vkontakte or livejournal post from their admins, about removing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" from american sources. Edit: I'm not alleging the US is doing such a thing in an organized manner, as the Russian "internet research agency" does, what I'm asking is whether the knee jerk response from Russian Facebook competitors (or state media like RT, Sputnik) will be to make the same allegations but in reverse. And if so, what form that will take.
- pjc50 8y ago
  It does beg the question of whether Facebook will, or will be even allowed to, combat covert Western influence operations. (I'm OK with overt influence operations that are clearly labelled, like the BBC World Service)
  - walrus01 8y ago
    In my past experience the US' foreign language government run media operations are pretty transparent. The BBG, broadcasting board of governors, is part of the federal budget and is regularly audited, is subject to FOIA requests, etc. BBG is the parent entity of Voice of America, etc. The US runs a lot of foreign language media which people might not know exists, if they aren't a native speaker of the target language/culture. For example Radio Azadi, which is the VOA/RFE for Dari speakers in Afghanistan. It also produces Pashto content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi And Farda for Iranian Farsi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda
    - pjc50 8y ago
      The transparent ones are visible, but what about the deniable ones we can't see?
      - walrus01 8y ago
        Totally personal opinion, but they're more likely funded by private corporations that want to influence society to buy more of their product, or slush funds of lobbying money similar to how the Kochs fund PACs in the USA. Mercer family funds, etc. People who have vested interests in organizations such as Saudi Aramco maintaining the status quo.
sudoaza 8y ago
What about "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" from elsewhere? FB is just feeding the coordinated desinformation spread by the US. Billions in ADs, targeted manipulation, phone bots, media monopolies spreading bullshit round the year, but don't worry about that, look Russia...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- protonfish 8y ago
  Only "good" propaganda is allowed.
- notjonmadden 8y ago
  Much easier to just ignore the US government's documented programs to manipulate social media and pretend only Evil Russia does it.
- pergadad 8y ago
  Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a surprise - basic propaganda tactics. The things the Russian propaganda machine is spreading are just intense. Misinformation on repeat, with real life consequences. That big US corps manipulate too is another story, but what Russia is doing is clearly at another scale and state sponsored with clear foreign policy aims, most importantly to undermine trust in institutions and the actual news media and secondly to try different alternate narratives and see which ones stick. The key aim of these many sites is to disseminate and diffuse the disinformation to come from 'many sources' at once, to make it more convincing (what we hear often enough we believe). This series of bans is a very good initiative, although I'd say far too little too late. Sputnik and co are not media, they are propaganda machines that happen to intersperse some true stories and occasional facts in their package of lies. If you don't believe me- look at the site. Solid news mixed with outlandish conspiracy theories, and all that 100% state sponsored. For context I very much recommend anyone interested to take a look at Oxford's excellent computational propaganda research: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/ https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/ This official EU initiative is similar, taking apart individual pieces of disinformation: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
rocqua 8y ago
Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads. How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? If this is the extent of 'Coordinated inauthentic behavior' I'm rather unimpressed with the capabilities of Russia.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tapoxi 8y ago
  790,000 followers
  - mensetmanusman 8y ago
    What % of them do you think get feeds from these russian actors that make it to their main feed. FB has said they filter 99% of the 1000’s of posts happening that you could be following due to overload, so that would be a couple hundred people.
  - richardknop 8y ago
    How many of them are real? If most followers are fake then the impact was really minuscule if any.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads. > How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? It's the tip of the iceberg. You're ignoring second order effects. The people those accounts influence will influence others. Russian agents might have written the first few disinformation articles claiming the US Government created AIDS to attack blacks and gays [1], but once they got the ball rolling on that meme, others did the rest of the work to spread it for them. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo
  - rocqua 8y ago
    Would Russia really have so few influential accounts that a loss of 75 could hurt them? I don't doubt the effect 75 accounts could have. I do doubt the effect reducing Russian inventory of fake accounts by 75 could have.
notjonmadden 8y ago
> 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 Right, as long as you don't count American political content and advertising!
- jmvoodoo 8y ago
  I had a similar reaction... It seems that's the entire point of the platform. Perhaps more accurate would be "we don't want our service to be used to manipulate people in ways we disagree with/could get in trouble for"
spamlord 8y ago
Does Facebook have the same amount of concern for massive "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" campaigns originating from Israel/JIDF and US Intelligence Agencies that dwarf the Russian ones pointed out in this post?
prewett 8y ago
By calling it “coordinated inauthentic behavior” FB is themselves being inauthentic. Authentic would be to describe actually what it is and what the problem is. Is the problem that it was coordinated? That it was not true to the poster’s personal belief (inauthentic)? Not actually true assertions (not authentic)? Maybe the behavior is the problem? Or some combination? So if the Russian state clearly put out content saying “This is Russia and we think you should vote for X” is that okay (coordinated authentic behavior)? What about all the “CIB” originating from inside the US? Or, how about FB’s own “CIB”, like the link in question?
- repolfx 8y ago
  I don't understand their claim it was inauthentic either. Their writeup says the pages claimed to be independent, but were actually linked to employees of Sputnik News. OK, but all the screenshots they showed (in the first batch) had the word "sputnik news" in the URL. That doesn't look very surreptitious to me, let alone inauthentic. If Sputnik employees are linking to stories they worked on or their employer published, how is that different to journalists tweeting stories from their news outlets on their personal Twitter accounts? Is there some formal rule now that all employees of news agencies have to loudly identify themselves as such before re-sharing content from their employer? If so, where did Facebook announce that? The odd way Facebook are describing this action also makes me wonder about their claim the accounts were "linked to" employees of Sputnik. What does that mean exactly? Not owned, if they were owned presumably Facebook would have said so. Rather they are "linked to". This could mean many things.

50 points by ccnafr 8y ago

atemerev 8y ago

Facebook carefully guards its monopoly on coordinating inauthentic behavior! :)

setquk 8y ago
Yep. It’s ok when SCL, AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Data Propria etc do it of course!

ddebernardy 8y ago

In case anyone from the FB team behind this is reading: Was stealth banning the relevant accounts considered? If so, curious to know why it was rejected.

atemerev 8y ago
In such coordinated operations, the impact is usually verified via independent accounts which are not participating in spreading, which are nearly impossible to distinguish from actual victims. So stealthban is not particularly effective. As a part-time consultant on countermeasures for opinion manipulation in social networks, I can say that passive defenses are usually not reliable enough.

Artemis2 8y ago

“Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” is a nice euphemism!

Udik 8y ago
Sounds like a good definition to me. Better than the widely used "troll", which used to mean a different thing, before being appropriated by the mainstream media. Trolls used to mean people provoking emotional reactions with the intent of disrupting communities and ridiculing their members. And unless Putin is doing this for the laugh...

walrus01 8y ago

I'd be very interested in seeing if there's a similarly worded vkontakte or livejournal post from their admins, about removing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" from american sources. Edit: I'm not alleging the US is doing such a thing in an organized manner, as the Russian "internet research agency" does, what I'm asking is whether the knee jerk response from Russian Facebook competitors (or state media like RT, Sputnik) will be to make the same allegations but in reverse. And if so, what form that will take.

pjc50 8y ago
It does beg the question of whether Facebook will, or will be even allowed to, combat covert Western influence operations. (I'm OK with overt influence operations that are clearly labelled, like the BBC World Service)
- walrus01 8y ago
  In my past experience the US' foreign language government run media operations are pretty transparent. The BBG, broadcasting board of governors, is part of the federal budget and is regularly audited, is subject to FOIA requests, etc. BBG is the parent entity of Voice of America, etc. The US runs a lot of foreign language media which people might not know exists, if they aren't a native speaker of the target language/culture. For example Radio Azadi, which is the VOA/RFE for Dari speakers in Afghanistan. It also produces Pashto content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi And Farda for Iranian Farsi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda
  - pjc50 8y ago
    The transparent ones are visible, but what about the deniable ones we can't see?
    - walrus01 8y ago
      Totally personal opinion, but they're more likely funded by private corporations that want to influence society to buy more of their product, or slush funds of lobbying money similar to how the Kochs fund PACs in the USA. Mercer family funds, etc. People who have vested interests in organizations such as Saudi Aramco maintaining the status quo.

sudoaza 8y ago

What about "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" from elsewhere? FB is just feeding the coordinated desinformation spread by the US. Billions in ADs, targeted manipulation, phone bots, media monopolies spreading bullshit round the year, but don't worry about that, look Russia...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
protonfish 8y ago
Only "good" propaganda is allowed.
notjonmadden 8y ago
Much easier to just ignore the US government's documented programs to manipulate social media and pretend only Evil Russia does it.
pergadad 8y ago
Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a surprise - basic propaganda tactics. The things the Russian propaganda machine is spreading are just intense. Misinformation on repeat, with real life consequences. That big US corps manipulate too is another story, but what Russia is doing is clearly at another scale and state sponsored with clear foreign policy aims, most importantly to undermine trust in institutions and the actual news media and secondly to try different alternate narratives and see which ones stick. The key aim of these many sites is to disseminate and diffuse the disinformation to come from 'many sources' at once, to make it more convincing (what we hear often enough we believe). This series of bans is a very good initiative, although I'd say far too little too late. Sputnik and co are not media, they are propaganda machines that happen to intersperse some true stories and occasional facts in their package of lies. If you don't believe me- look at the site. Solid news mixed with outlandish conspiracy theories, and all that 100% state sponsored. For context I very much recommend anyone interested to take a look at Oxford's excellent computational propaganda research: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/ https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/ This official EU initiative is similar, taking apart individual pieces of disinformation: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/

rocqua 8y ago

Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads. How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? If this is the extent of 'Coordinated inauthentic behavior' I'm rather unimpressed with the capabilities of Russia.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tapoxi 8y ago
790,000 followers
- mensetmanusman 8y ago
  What % of them do you think get feeds from these russian actors that make it to their main feed. FB has said they filter 99% of the 1000’s of posts happening that you could be following due to overload, so that would be a couple hundred people.
- richardknop 8y ago
  How many of them are real? If most followers are fake then the impact was really minuscule if any.
ardy42 8y ago
> Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads. > How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? It's the tip of the iceberg. You're ignoring second order effects. The people those accounts influence will influence others. Russian agents might have written the first few disinformation articles claiming the US Government created AIDS to attack blacks and gays [1], but once they got the ball rolling on that meme, others did the rest of the work to spread it for them. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo
- rocqua 8y ago
  Would Russia really have so few influential accounts that a loss of 75 could hurt them? I don't doubt the effect 75 accounts could have. I do doubt the effect reducing Russian inventory of fake accounts by 75 could have.

notjonmadden 8y ago

> 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 Right, as long as you don't count American political content and advertising!

jmvoodoo 8y ago
I had a similar reaction... It seems that's the entire point of the platform. Perhaps more accurate would be "we don't want our service to be used to manipulate people in ways we disagree with/could get in trouble for"

spamlord 8y ago

Does Facebook have the same amount of concern for massive "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" campaigns originating from Israel/JIDF and US Intelligence Agencies that dwarf the Russian ones pointed out in this post?

prewett 8y ago

By calling it “coordinated inauthentic behavior” FB is themselves being inauthentic. Authentic would be to describe actually what it is and what the problem is. Is the problem that it was coordinated? That it was not true to the poster’s personal belief (inauthentic)? Not actually true assertions (not authentic)? Maybe the behavior is the problem? Or some combination? So if the Russian state clearly put out content saying “This is Russia and we think you should vote for X” is that okay (coordinated authentic behavior)? What about all the “CIB” originating from inside the US? Or, how about FB’s own “CIB”, like the link in question?

repolfx 8y ago
I don't understand their claim it was inauthentic either. Their writeup says the pages claimed to be independent, but were actually linked to employees of Sputnik News. OK, but all the screenshots they showed (in the first batch) had the word "sputnik news" in the URL. That doesn't look very surreptitious to me, let alone inauthentic. If Sputnik employees are linking to stories they worked on or their employer published, how is that different to journalists tweeting stories from their news outlets on their personal Twitter accounts? Is there some formal rule now that all employees of news agencies have to loudly identify themselves as such before re-sharing content from their employer? If so, where did Facebook announce that? The odd way Facebook are describing this action also makes me wonder about their claim the accounts were "linked to" employees of Sputnik. What does that mean exactly? Not owned, if they were owned presumably Facebook would have said so. Rather they are "linked to". This could mean many things.