12 ms·

Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from China

396 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

wzy 7y ago
"We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted." Hmm...
- azinman2 7y ago
  FB doesn't want to be a content police, behind the principal of freedom of speech. They're instead looking at metadata that reveals that it's fake and attempting to pursue an agenda. I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    The phrase is so vague as to be meaningless. They may as well have said “organized opinion setting”. I miss the time when there was a massive debate over the legality of removing the video Innocence of Muslims, to the extent there were op-eds suggesting that Youtube pursue an advisory opinion before removing it. Now it is all but certain that FAANG has the right to remove whatever, without question, without appeal. And in most EULAs, certain categories of dispute go to arbitration.
    - ziddoap 7y ago
      They have always had the right to remove whatever they want from the platforms that they own. Whether or not you like that is obviously a different story. The loud ones used to be the ones against censorship, now the loud ones are the ones for censorship. The pendulum swings again.
      - ryacko 7y ago
        That is not actually true. The loud ones are always the ones with the bullhorn, allowed to them by the powerful. I would be for censorship as well, if successful libel suits against publications meant they would be removed from the internet for fake news. Sadly egregious errors in editorial judgment are to be protected over someone saying an incomplete set of truths that result in an erroneous conclusion.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        Which part of what I said isn't true?
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Well, is "organized opinion setting" something they should allow? What if it pretends to not be organized? What if it's organized by a government? What if the "opinions" are that the government organizing the opinions would be right to oppress those with differing opinions? Is there anywhere in there that you think a line should be drawn?
      - ryacko 7y ago
        Are we going to be arguing about reductionist philosophy? People are autonomic agents, yes. People share opinions, yes. Governments are comprised of people, yes. The line was quite eloquently drawn during World War One when it was illegal to protest the draft. Or the Civil War. There is no real answer to the question of whether is this immoral or moral, and thus I must voice my opinions.
  - toss1 7y ago
    It is not so much about FB/TWTR/GOOG, etc. supporting freedom of speech. It is about evading being subject to responsibility for the content on their site -- they want to be regulated as 'nuetral' content carriers, not editors.
  - vkou 7y ago
    FB is quite happy to be policing pornography and ISIS propaganda. So it is doing content policing, as long as that content is sufficiently outside the Overton window.
  - ReptileMan 7y ago
    > I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem. This also defines well online outrage mobs. But I doubt they would crack down on them.
eganist 7y ago
Interesting seeing this response from both Facebook and Twitter on the exact same day. Guessing from this: > Based on a tip shared by Twitter about activity they found on their platform, we conducted an internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and identified this activity. We will continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. We’ve shared our analysis with law enforcement and industry partners. that the simultaneous response was coordinated by both platforms... I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  It's likely due to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar. Which organized a widely popular anti-protest campaign about 2 days ago, the online community had about 30 million members. Members proceeded to use VPN to spam anti-HK protest posts/comments on FB/instagram/twitter. This is consistent with the behavior of this community in the past (mass trolling, mostly apolitical but sometimes political, this community is pretty nationalist to begin with).
  - justicezyx 7y ago
    No, Li Yi Bar is more of trolling group from self-organized netizens. They do share comfroming ideology as Chines government. What's banned here is government organized activity. If this is indeed from Li Yi Bar, then it should not be called government organized activity.
    - Aperocky 7y ago
      And the line is very blurred, how do you know there isn't Chinese government affiliated person acting on either government or their own behalf within the Li Yi Bar? The US government employs about 20% of US workers, the Chinese government employs slightly more, and when you say this individual is affiliated with Chinese government, that's not a small likelihood if you just picked up a random working Chinese person.
mschuster91 7y ago
I wonder when the US and other Western countries finally start cracking down on China and Russia with harsh sanctions for all the manipulation they're doing. Oh wait, they can't, as all manufacturing was outsourced to China and that would be the first thing China cuts off... Sarcasm aside: how can the West possibly react on the events of the last years?! There's not many options available any more.
- thefounder 7y ago
  War?
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    China is a nuclear power plus any open US-China/Russia war would immediately extend to South Korea and Taiwan (in case of China) or Eastern Europe (in case of Russia). I highly doubt that even the hardest falcons in the DoD would advocate for war...
    - NicoJuicy 7y ago
      Europe is closer to Moscow than ever in history, since Russia breaks in pieces that want more democracy. All of them have a pretty harsh stand against Russia. Crimea ( Ukraine) almost made Russia's entire naval fleet useless. Russia is still getting punished for it economically and Putin has never seen these low approval rates. There are also a lot of protests there. China thinks they can possess the world, but they are even having severe problems in their own country. We just need to wait, China's plan was smart, but they forgot the will for freedom in every execution/plan they had and are doomed to fail. Sooner or later. Depends on how you look at things :)
    - chadmeister 7y ago
      Hawks* not falcons
      - braythwayt 7y ago
        Correct. Policy Hawks are people who want F-16 Falcons deployed into action.
nodesocket 7y ago
While this is not going to be a popular opinion, you have to give credit where credit is due to Trump. Without his campaign to crack down on Chinese practices (including Huawei) and bringing massive attention to China via the active trade war and tariffs I doubt social media such as FB and Twitter would in-acting these policies. He brought political pressure onto China where there was little to none by previous administrations.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but I see the exact opposite: there are a lot of people who believe that “coordinated, inauthentic behavior” on social media platforms allowed Trump to win the 2016 election, and that a crackdown on anything perceived to be “coordinated and inauthentic” will prevent him from doing so again in 2020. To me, this just feels like a cynically convenient excuse to get ready to remove content arbitrarily in advance of next year’s election cycle.
  - nodesocket 7y ago
    I actually argue that the social media campaigns were much more negative against him. Google literally had a all-hands (leaked video) after the election where Brin and C-level executives were activists against Trump and conservative news outlets. Brin called the election results “offensive”.
    - metalliqaz 7y ago
      He did many offensive things, it's not really in dispute. It isn't a secret that he thrives on controversy. It's also not in dispute that foreign actors took advantage of the social media structure to stoke animosity and resentment ahead of the elections (at least, not in dispute among anyone serious). Execs in silicon valley would be correct to be horrified at what their infrastructure was used for and the results. The FBI has posted many examples of the propaganda. It was not "much more negative" against Trump. That's a falsehood.
- avocado4 7y ago
AlexCoventry 7y ago
They've been doing that more transparently on r/Sino, too.
- thepangolino 7y ago
  Part of Reddit is essentially owned by the Chinese government.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    Really? Where's that documented?
    - hokumguru 7y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/
      - AlexCoventry 7y ago
        Thanks, I'd forgotten about that.
- agdpf 7y ago
  Slightly related--it was amusing the first time I went to /r/China to find it completely full of anti-China posts. I mean, it makes sense since Reddit is an American website, but it would be like going to /r/potato and finding dozens of posts on how people hate potatoes.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    /r/China isn’t so much anti China as it is a bunch of expats in China venting on issues facing them in China. It would be like going to /r/potato and finding dozens of posts griping about the challenge of working with potatoes. Or going to /r/fortnite and seeing dozens of posts about players complaining about that damn mech. /r/sino is the China-fan subreddit, but in the same way as /r/Pyongyang is pro Kim jong un.
moosey 7y ago
> We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. As with all of these takedowns, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action. To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people. This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups. In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.
lawnchair_larry 7y ago
People are complaining a lot about how FB are enforcing things, and why they are explicit about their decision to remove these things was not based on the content, but the patterns of inauthentic activity and fake accounts. Look what happened with Matthew Prince of Cloudflare. Relentless harassment from people who believe he should be more active in censoring his customers, especially after that last shooting. Even when he has reluctantly stepped in on some extreme cases, they still gave him no credit. Defining wrongthink is a slippery slope, and you’ll never make ideologues happy. If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right? And where does it end? “Sprint are ‘literally Nazis’ for allowing David Duke to have a cell phone?” It’s no wonder everyone is deathly afraid of policing based on content. The PR consequences are bad enough, but it’s also likely to lead into legal problems as well.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  I dunno, FB does a pretty good job keeping ISIS recruitment and child porn off its products and I don’t see them getting harangued for that.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - daodedickinson 7y ago
    I see FB, Twitter, and YouTube accused frequently of not doing enough to take down pedophilia.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Lots of American culture skates very close to pedophilia. At the extreme, there's porn that's only legal because the actors are documented adults. But there are also some hugely popular actors and musicians, who leverage child-like sexuality. And then the pervasive style for girls to dress like prostitutes. And no, I'm not a prude. I just find it amusing. And, I admit, very sexy. Edit: If I didn't care about this account, I'd link examples. But I do, so I won't.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Shouldn't they replace all the content with, at least, a short note saying what was formerly here was part of a "coordinated inauthentic behavior" and that the individuals representing themselves here were not real?
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  Hard to say if they would want those remnants on their platform, but it would be really great if these things were funneled to the FBI who published reports of state-sponsored misinformation activities so we could cite them as examples later on.
trhway 7y ago
Algorithms to detect algorithms. The latter have to become more and more genuine and authentic in order to fool the former which are forced to become better and better ... Soon the genuineness, authenticity and complexity of the latter will exceed Shakespeare writing his plays (some say even that was a fake - in this case i subscribe to Marlowe theory) and we, regular humans, will be left in the dust... Too stupid a post - yea, that is a real human, let it through :)
buttholesurfer 7y ago
Just a dry run for 2020! Gotta shut down everyone who doesnt think like we do!
gaze 7y ago
"We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think advertising is?
- jachee 7y ago
  The "politically" seems to be implied.
  - uniformlyrandom 7y ago
    More like 'without paying us first'.
    - jachee 7y ago
      Oh, I doubt that. I imagine they don't want paid propaganda, either, since that'll make them appear complicit, politically.
  - gaze 7y ago
    This rhymes with when people say “it’s just politics.” What does that even mean?
    - jachee 7y ago
      Facebook is totally okay with people being influenced to buy things, but doesn't want to be seen to sway their non-consumption-related opinions.
- tzs 7y ago
  Most advertising is attempting persuasion, not manipulation.
  - gaze 7y ago
    There’s a wide spectrum between “eat oat bran it’s good for colon health” and “diamonds are forever,” and I see what foreign governments do these days as being somewhere in the middle.
tehjoker 7y ago
Lol if they ever do this because of US interference.
weq 7y ago
Like every other Conservative party in the world doesnt do the same? This is my problem with these actions. They are selective based on political affiliation. I dont care if they are communists, socialists, or the run of the mill capitalists. The only reason twitter and facebook still exist in their current form, is because the poltical establishments all over the world have worked out to leverage them for their advantage. Politics has not escaped the disruption that other industries have suffered. Its like any other targetting advertising campaign. How are mining companies who put out poltical properganda too undermine environmental movements any different? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/08/national-disgrace-glencore-coal-campaign-revelations-prompt-calls-for-reform https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/08/natio...
MikeGale 7y ago
I find the obvious propaganda (like this) both amusing and useful (well in this case not very useful). It exercises the immune system against the ever flowing rubbish that is so much of the Internet, Press, Politician bit dribble... In this case it was so very obvious that it wasn't that useful. I'd be happy to see it still there to give me a laugh. Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  The point of propaganda isn't actually to promulgate a lie that obscures the truth. It's to promulgate a lie that people will repeat. It may eventually reach a scale where it can eclipse the truth, but by then it's generally done its job. You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.
  - liability 7y ago
    There are many purposes of propaganda, a term which is not synonymous with falsehoods. Some propaganda tells the truth, and some lies. Some propaganda merely conveys a sentiment that is neither true nor false. Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      > Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood. I agree with this and these are good examples of what I was talking about. I was responding specifically to the propaganda at hand and MikeGale's comment, "Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense."
  - 7y ago
hker 7y ago
To understand the bigger picture of this propaganda campaign on Hong Kong’s protest, check out an allegedly leaked instruction on how China controls the media (picture in Chinese and translation to English [1], transcribed in Chinese [2]). [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_propaganda_strategy_for_the_hong_kong/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_pro... [2]: https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote. [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  > Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote. Yes, it's almost as if different people -- with different opinions -- read and reacted to two comments posted 5 hours apart on separate threads.

396 points by lawrenceyan 7y ago

wzy 7y ago

"We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted." Hmm...

azinman2 7y ago
FB doesn't want to be a content police, behind the principal of freedom of speech. They're instead looking at metadata that reveals that it's fake and attempting to pursue an agenda. I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem.
- ryacko 7y ago
  The phrase is so vague as to be meaningless. They may as well have said “organized opinion setting”. I miss the time when there was a massive debate over the legality of removing the video Innocence of Muslims, to the extent there were op-eds suggesting that Youtube pursue an advisory opinion before removing it. Now it is all but certain that FAANG has the right to remove whatever, without question, without appeal. And in most EULAs, certain categories of dispute go to arbitration.
  - ziddoap 7y ago
    They have always had the right to remove whatever they want from the platforms that they own. Whether or not you like that is obviously a different story. The loud ones used to be the ones against censorship, now the loud ones are the ones for censorship. The pendulum swings again.
    - ryacko 7y ago
      That is not actually true. The loud ones are always the ones with the bullhorn, allowed to them by the powerful. I would be for censorship as well, if successful libel suits against publications meant they would be removed from the internet for fake news. Sadly egregious errors in editorial judgment are to be protected over someone saying an incomplete set of truths that result in an erroneous conclusion.
      - ziddoap 7y ago
        Which part of what I said isn't true?
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Well, is "organized opinion setting" something they should allow? What if it pretends to not be organized? What if it's organized by a government? What if the "opinions" are that the government organizing the opinions would be right to oppress those with differing opinions? Is there anywhere in there that you think a line should be drawn?
    - ryacko 7y ago
      Are we going to be arguing about reductionist philosophy? People are autonomic agents, yes. People share opinions, yes. Governments are comprised of people, yes. The line was quite eloquently drawn during World War One when it was illegal to protest the draft. Or the Civil War. There is no real answer to the question of whether is this immoral or moral, and thus I must voice my opinions.
- toss1 7y ago
  It is not so much about FB/TWTR/GOOG, etc. supporting freedom of speech. It is about evading being subject to responsibility for the content on their site -- they want to be regulated as 'nuetral' content carriers, not editors.
- vkou 7y ago
  FB is quite happy to be policing pornography and ISIS propaganda. So it is doing content policing, as long as that content is sufficiently outside the Overton window.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  > I am certainly no FB apologist, but I think the language of 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' is a really smart one that well defines the problem. This also defines well online outrage mobs. But I doubt they would crack down on them.

eganist 7y ago

Interesting seeing this response from both Facebook and Twitter on the exact same day. Guessing from this: > Based on a tip shared by Twitter about activity they found on their platform, we conducted an internal investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior in the region and identified this activity. We will continue monitoring and will take action if we find additional violations. We’ve shared our analysis with law enforcement and industry partners. that the simultaneous response was coordinated by both platforms... I'd go so far as to say that it was coordinated in order to demonstrate the capability to self-moderate ahead of the 2020 US elections.

Aperocky 7y ago
It's likely due to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Yi_Bar. Which organized a widely popular anti-protest campaign about 2 days ago, the online community had about 30 million members. Members proceeded to use VPN to spam anti-HK protest posts/comments on FB/instagram/twitter. This is consistent with the behavior of this community in the past (mass trolling, mostly apolitical but sometimes political, this community is pretty nationalist to begin with).
- justicezyx 7y ago
  No, Li Yi Bar is more of trolling group from self-organized netizens. They do share comfroming ideology as Chines government. What's banned here is government organized activity. If this is indeed from Li Yi Bar, then it should not be called government organized activity.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    And the line is very blurred, how do you know there isn't Chinese government affiliated person acting on either government or their own behalf within the Li Yi Bar? The US government employs about 20% of US workers, the Chinese government employs slightly more, and when you say this individual is affiliated with Chinese government, that's not a small likelihood if you just picked up a random working Chinese person.

mschuster91 7y ago

I wonder when the US and other Western countries finally start cracking down on China and Russia with harsh sanctions for all the manipulation they're doing. Oh wait, they can't, as all manufacturing was outsourced to China and that would be the first thing China cuts off... Sarcasm aside: how can the West possibly react on the events of the last years?! There's not many options available any more.

thefounder 7y ago
War?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  China is a nuclear power plus any open US-China/Russia war would immediately extend to South Korea and Taiwan (in case of China) or Eastern Europe (in case of Russia). I highly doubt that even the hardest falcons in the DoD would advocate for war...
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Europe is closer to Moscow than ever in history, since Russia breaks in pieces that want more democracy. All of them have a pretty harsh stand against Russia. Crimea ( Ukraine) almost made Russia's entire naval fleet useless. Russia is still getting punished for it economically and Putin has never seen these low approval rates. There are also a lot of protests there. China thinks they can possess the world, but they are even having severe problems in their own country. We just need to wait, China's plan was smart, but they forgot the will for freedom in every execution/plan they had and are doomed to fail. Sooner or later. Depends on how you look at things :)
  - chadmeister 7y ago
    Hawks* not falcons
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      Correct. Policy Hawks are people who want F-16 Falcons deployed into action.

nodesocket 7y ago

While this is not going to be a popular opinion, you have to give credit where credit is due to Trump. Without his campaign to crack down on Chinese practices (including Huawei) and bringing massive attention to China via the active trade war and tariffs I doubt social media such as FB and Twitter would in-acting these policies. He brought political pressure onto China where there was little to none by previous administrations.

commandlinefan 7y ago
Maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but I see the exact opposite: there are a lot of people who believe that “coordinated, inauthentic behavior” on social media platforms allowed Trump to win the 2016 election, and that a crackdown on anything perceived to be “coordinated and inauthentic” will prevent him from doing so again in 2020. To me, this just feels like a cynically convenient excuse to get ready to remove content arbitrarily in advance of next year’s election cycle.
- nodesocket 7y ago
  I actually argue that the social media campaigns were much more negative against him. Google literally had a all-hands (leaked video) after the election where Brin and C-level executives were activists against Trump and conservative news outlets. Brin called the election results “offensive”.
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    He did many offensive things, it's not really in dispute. It isn't a secret that he thrives on controversy. It's also not in dispute that foreign actors took advantage of the social media structure to stoke animosity and resentment ahead of the elections (at least, not in dispute among anyone serious). Execs in silicon valley would be correct to be horrified at what their infrastructure was used for and the results. The FBI has posted many examples of the propaganda. It was not "much more negative" against Trump. That's a falsehood.
avocado4 7y ago

AlexCoventry 7y ago

They've been doing that more transparently on r/Sino, too.

thepangolino 7y ago
Part of Reddit is essentially owned by the Chinese government.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Really? Where's that documented?
  - hokumguru 7y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/
    - AlexCoventry 7y ago
      Thanks, I'd forgotten about that.
agdpf 7y ago
Slightly related--it was amusing the first time I went to /r/China to find it completely full of anti-China posts. I mean, it makes sense since Reddit is an American website, but it would be like going to /r/potato and finding dozens of posts on how people hate potatoes.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  /r/China isn’t so much anti China as it is a bunch of expats in China venting on issues facing them in China. It would be like going to /r/potato and finding dozens of posts griping about the challenge of working with potatoes. Or going to /r/fortnite and seeing dozens of posts about players complaining about that damn mech. /r/sino is the China-fan subreddit, but in the same way as /r/Pyongyang is pro Kim jong un.

moosey 7y ago

> We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. As with all of these takedowns, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action. To suggest that the practices of facebook in general - likes, the activity feed, and various experiments that facebook has in its history - is not itself an attempt by a coordinated group to manipulate people, is itself disingenuous at best. In order to correct this to honesty, they would have to clarify that they don't care for external groups - other than those who pay for advertising services - to be permitted to manipulate people. This take down of a few pages being followed by 15k people and its subsequent information release is itself a manipulation, to make it appear as if facebook is doing something about the glaring problems that I personally think it represents. It seems to me that in the halls of power today, there are few good actors, and this tiny morsel doesn't make facebook one of them, and does nothing about the manipulators on their platforms that are beyond their ability to take down, despite self-serving dishonesty from so many groups. In other words, what a skillfully crafted news release from facebook, give that marketer a raise.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago

People are complaining a lot about how FB are enforcing things, and why they are explicit about their decision to remove these things was not based on the content, but the patterns of inauthentic activity and fake accounts. Look what happened with Matthew Prince of Cloudflare. Relentless harassment from people who believe he should be more active in censoring his customers, especially after that last shooting. Even when he has reluctantly stepped in on some extreme cases, they still gave him no credit. Defining wrongthink is a slippery slope, and you’ll never make ideologues happy. If you even try, then next thing you know, you’re somehow culpable for everything you didn’t remove, or didn’t remove quickly enough. Then you get accusations of endorsing it, because you removed X but not Y, so you must approve of Y, right? And where does it end? “Sprint are ‘literally Nazis’ for allowing David Duke to have a cell phone?” It’s no wonder everyone is deathly afraid of policing based on content. The PR consequences are bad enough, but it’s also likely to lead into legal problems as well.

0xB31B1B 7y ago
I dunno, FB does a pretty good job keeping ISIS recruitment and child porn off its products and I don’t see them getting harangued for that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- daodedickinson 7y ago
  I see FB, Twitter, and YouTube accused frequently of not doing enough to take down pedophilia.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Lots of American culture skates very close to pedophilia. At the extreme, there's porn that's only legal because the actors are documented adults. But there are also some hugely popular actors and musicians, who leverage child-like sexuality. And then the pervasive style for girls to dress like prostitutes. And no, I'm not a prude. I just find it amusing. And, I admit, very sexy. Edit: If I didn't care about this account, I'd link examples. But I do, so I won't.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Shouldn't they replace all the content with, at least, a short note saying what was formerly here was part of a "coordinated inauthentic behavior" and that the individuals representing themselves here were not real?

metalliqaz 7y ago
Hard to say if they would want those remnants on their platform, but it would be really great if these things were funneled to the FBI who published reports of state-sponsored misinformation activities so we could cite them as examples later on.

trhway 7y ago

Algorithms to detect algorithms. The latter have to become more and more genuine and authentic in order to fool the former which are forced to become better and better ... Soon the genuineness, authenticity and complexity of the latter will exceed Shakespeare writing his plays (some say even that was a fake - in this case i subscribe to Marlowe theory) and we, regular humans, will be left in the dust... Too stupid a post - yea, that is a real human, let it through :)

buttholesurfer 7y ago

Just a dry run for 2020! Gotta shut down everyone who doesnt think like we do!

gaze 7y ago

"We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people." What do they think advertising is?

jachee 7y ago
The "politically" seems to be implied.
- uniformlyrandom 7y ago
  More like 'without paying us first'.
  - jachee 7y ago
    Oh, I doubt that. I imagine they don't want paid propaganda, either, since that'll make them appear complicit, politically.
- gaze 7y ago
  This rhymes with when people say “it’s just politics.” What does that even mean?
  - jachee 7y ago
    Facebook is totally okay with people being influenced to buy things, but doesn't want to be seen to sway their non-consumption-related opinions.
tzs 7y ago
Most advertising is attempting persuasion, not manipulation.
- gaze 7y ago
  There’s a wide spectrum between “eat oat bran it’s good for colon health” and “diamonds are forever,” and I see what foreign governments do these days as being somewhere in the middle.

tehjoker 7y ago

Lol if they ever do this because of US interference.

weq 7y ago

Like every other Conservative party in the world doesnt do the same? This is my problem with these actions. They are selective based on political affiliation. I dont care if they are communists, socialists, or the run of the mill capitalists. The only reason twitter and facebook still exist in their current form, is because the poltical establishments all over the world have worked out to leverage them for their advantage. Politics has not escaped the disruption that other industries have suffered. Its like any other targetting advertising campaign. How are mining companies who put out poltical properganda too undermine environmental movements any different? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/08/national-disgrace-glencore-coal-campaign-revelations-prompt-calls-for-reform https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/08/natio...

MikeGale 7y ago

I find the obvious propaganda (like this) both amusing and useful (well in this case not very useful). It exercises the immune system against the ever flowing rubbish that is so much of the Internet, Press, Politician bit dribble... In this case it was so very obvious that it wasn't that useful. I'd be happy to see it still there to give me a laugh. Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense.

KirinDave 7y ago
The point of propaganda isn't actually to promulgate a lie that obscures the truth. It's to promulgate a lie that people will repeat. It may eventually reach a scale where it can eclipse the truth, but by then it's generally done its job. You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.
- liability 7y ago
  There are many purposes of propaganda, a term which is not synonymous with falsehoods. Some propaganda tells the truth, and some lies. Some propaganda merely conveys a sentiment that is neither true nor false. Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    > Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood. I agree with this and these are good examples of what I was talking about. I was responding specifically to the propaganda at hand and MikeGale's comment, "Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense."
- 7y ago

hker 7y ago

To understand the bigger picture of this propaganda campaign on Hong Kong’s protest, check out an allegedly leaked instruction on how China controls the media (picture in Chinese and translation to English [1], transcribed in Chinese [2]). [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_propaganda_strategy_for_the_hong_kong/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_pro... [2]: https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote. [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20742525

jlgaddis 7y ago
> Edit: it is interesting to see that a sibling comment of mine [3] on another thread on Twitter’s reaction got overwhelming upvotes, while this comment on FB’s reaction got a downvote. Yes, it's almost as if different people -- with different opinions -- read and reacted to two comments posted 5 hours apart on separate threads.