3 ms·

is it me or does the committee seem lazy? their report is basically a collage of NYtimes articles, which they quote as evidence , even when it is speculative t

is it me or does the committee seem lazy? their report is basically a collage of NYtimes articles, which they quote as evidence , even when it is speculative their facebook emails 'evidence' isn t particularly related to their conclusions either. i mean facebook has been treating its small publishers unfairly since the age of zynga, just search facebook's forum to find developers actively calling them out. it's not really related to disinformation. i would expect a little more work based on their own secret services about the extent of russian trolling in their own referendum.most of all i would expect at least some evidence that these campaigns can change people's opinion. not liking an electoral outcome cannot be used as evidence that they were effective that said, i do hope they ban political advertising to death, because the ones who benefit from it are the politicians who write this report themselves. however, regulating the truth? i thought george orwell was british

pjc50 8y ago
> basically a collage of NYtimes articles This is such an inaccurate statement that I'm tempted to joke about it being fake news. This report is about as serious as it gets in terms of professional investigations. There's almost 100 pieces of written evidence and they called a number of witnesses to give primary evidence (famously including Zuckerberg who refused to show up). Where they have referred to the NYT, it is properly cited in the footnotes. Eight of the 349 footnotes refer to the NYT. Care to retract your accusation of laziness? > ban political advertising to death It largely is, in the UK. Certainly by American standards of "free speech". There's one huge exception: Facebook adverts were unregulated...
- buboard 8y ago
  i was actually expecting something more related to the UK and brexit. Particularly, evidence that misinformation can change or has changed the minds of people regarding the EU, or brexit in general . Instead this seems to be a hodgepodge of well know information about facebook and cambridge analytiuca and the US elections. they use some very speculative quotes from nytimes such as this > allegedly to spread anti-semitic information about George Soros and his campaigning activities, afer Mr Soros called Facebook “a menace to society” in early 2018. and some very spurious data such as this > is interesting to note that, as of 30 November 2018, the online Government response to our Report received a total of 1,290 unique page views and the PDF has been visited 396 unique times from the website.265 In the month following its publication, over 63% of views of the report online were from foreign IP addresses (whereas, on average, 80% of viewers of Reports are UK-based), and of these, over half were from Russia in which they seem to be downgrading russian interference to spam bots. Their own conclusion with regards to interference in UK elections is that "Te Government should be conducting analysis to understand the extent of Russian targeting of voters during elections". i.e. "we don't know" that said i m not disputing the accuracy of what is stated. it's just not enough, and not surprising at all
ImaCake 8y ago
I strongly disagree with your claim that the report is lazy and doesn't use many resources outside the NYTimes. A quick skim through sections on the report reveals extensive collaboration and referencing of material from other think tanks, committees, and companies. The sources are eclectic and varied, but I feel they are very relevant to this particular topic. I particularly note this comment from the report: "This Final Report is the accumulation of many months of collaboration with other countries, organisations, parliamentarians and individuals from around the world. In total, the Committee held 23 oral evidence sessions, received over 170 written submissions, heard evidence from 73 witnesses, asking over 4,350 questions at these hearings, and had many exchanges of public and private correspondence with individuals and organisations." This report strikes a serious and alarming tone, which is appropriate. We can only hope that our democracies can organise themselves to combat this threat effectively, and without destroying press freedom in the process.

pjc50 8y ago

> basically a collage of NYtimes articles This is such an inaccurate statement that I'm tempted to joke about it being fake news. This report is about as serious as it gets in terms of professional investigations. There's almost 100 pieces of written evidence and they called a number of witnesses to give primary evidence (famously including Zuckerberg who refused to show up). Where they have referred to the NYT, it is properly cited in the footnotes. Eight of the 349 footnotes refer to the NYT. Care to retract your accusation of laziness? > ban political advertising to death It largely is, in the UK. Certainly by American standards of "free speech". There's one huge exception: Facebook adverts were unregulated...

buboard 8y ago
i was actually expecting something more related to the UK and brexit. Particularly, evidence that misinformation can change or has changed the minds of people regarding the EU, or brexit in general . Instead this seems to be a hodgepodge of well know information about facebook and cambridge analytiuca and the US elections. they use some very speculative quotes from nytimes such as this > allegedly to spread anti-semitic information about George Soros and his campaigning activities, afer Mr Soros called Facebook “a menace to society” in early 2018. and some very spurious data such as this > is interesting to note that, as of 30 November 2018, the online Government response to our Report received a total of 1,290 unique page views and the PDF has been visited 396 unique times from the website.265 In the month following its publication, over 63% of views of the report online were from foreign IP addresses (whereas, on average, 80% of viewers of Reports are UK-based), and of these, over half were from Russia in which they seem to be downgrading russian interference to spam bots. Their own conclusion with regards to interference in UK elections is that "Te Government should be conducting analysis to understand the extent of Russian targeting of voters during elections". i.e. "we don't know" that said i m not disputing the accuracy of what is stated. it's just not enough, and not surprising at all

ImaCake 8y ago

I strongly disagree with your claim that the report is lazy and doesn't use many resources outside the NYTimes. A quick skim through sections on the report reveals extensive collaboration and referencing of material from other think tanks, committees, and companies. The sources are eclectic and varied, but I feel they are very relevant to this particular topic. I particularly note this comment from the report: "This Final Report is the accumulation of many months of collaboration with other countries, organisations, parliamentarians and individuals from around the world. In total, the Committee held 23 oral evidence sessions, received over 170 written submissions, heard evidence from 73 witnesses, asking over 4,350 questions at these hearings, and had many exchanges of public and private correspondence with individuals and organisations." This report strikes a serious and alarming tone, which is appropriate. We can only hope that our democracies can organise themselves to combat this threat effectively, and without destroying press freedom in the process.