7 ms·

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election. Facebook recen

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election. Facebook recently adopted an official policy that they will not remove political ads which are blatantly, demonstrably false. This policy was drafted by Katie Harbath, Facebook's Public Policy Director of Global Elections, who was previously Chief Digital Strategist for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Freedom of speech is a straw man. It only applies to government interference in the free speech of individuals. Facebook is a private platform, with no obligation to protect the free speech of its users. They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation. Yet another reason that Facebook is toxic.

cobweb2 7y ago
Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of your political ideas? You want a central authority to ban the spread of "blatantly false" ideas that you fear may cause plebians to vote the wrong way, yet you support affording plebians with the full right to vote? Would it not be simpler to bans plebians from voting, and therefore remove your worry entirely that they may vote the wrong way when hearing "blatantly false" ideas?
- lordnacho 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be the same authority. You could have an independent ombudsman.
  - balt_s 7y ago
    This is laughable; as well say "you could have an independent ruler".
  - peterhadlaw 7y ago
    Factcheck.net.fact.org/really-real is not that. I don't get why people can just take their own responsibility for themselves? Give users the tools to filter out the nonsense that floods most of the internet. There's no need for moral arbiters to decide for us what's "true" and "false". We've existed long enough without them, I think we can make it a little longer still.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  We are being attacked with foreign propaganda by our long-term enemies. They are succeeding in destroying our position on the world stage. It's not something that can be turned a blind eye to under the guise of free speech (which it isn't).
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    All governments push propaganda. Russia's miniscule ad spend on FB had no measurable effect (please provide proof if you think this is wrong). Clinton and Trump spent many order of magnitude more on political advertising than any foreign nation and even that didn't assure their win. People aren't mindless robots, they vote for who they want to vote for.
    - peterhadlaw 7y ago
      The funniest thing is, no one talks about this, but if the "goal" was to sew discord... My goodness someone "in the Kremlin" should be getting a promotion for their exceptionally well done job. I mean how many YEARS and millions of dollars has the US wasted chasing after this ghost of Russian interference? If you want to calculate the ROI from a few thousand dollars to how much hysteria followed suit, it's insane. The only question I have is, can anyone seriously take credit for it in Russia with a straight face. "No comrade, I only made meme of Hillary... The whole Mueller thing was the US all on its own."
      - malvosenior 7y ago
        Correct, this never had anything to do with Russia and it has everything to do with Trump. The political and media establishment couldn't handle an outsider winning the presidency so it was they that have gone full blast on propaganda for the past 3 years.
    - willis936 7y ago
      That is a naively optimistic statement. If marketing didn’t work then billions wouldn’t be spent on it.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of yours? Laws against defamation are exactly intended to prevent the spread of false ideas. Why not remove them, and let the plebeians figure things out themselves?
  - sparrish 7y ago
    No, defamation laws are to protect someone who is defamed (unjustly harms their reputation, and usually constitutes a tort or a crime). They are not intended to protect you from false ideas. Can you sue for defamation if I publish an essay saying there are aliens on Pluto? Is it false? Yes. Has it defamed anyone? No.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      Yes, any suit must be brought on behalf of someone who was damaged. “Defamation” is the word for someone being damaged by false ideas.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
malvosenior 7y ago
> They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation. I really don't think so. They want usage, period. They don't want to actively spread disinformation. They probably find that editorializing and censoring information annoys users. There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. Most people know this and reject larger narratives that push centralized manipulation of freely publishable information.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  > There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. This is false. Facebook themselves announced that Russia spent $100,000 on ads aimed at U.S. voters. Posts from six Russian propaganda accounts were shared hundreds of millions of times. [1] Effort doesn't equal impact, I suppose, but there's no way of proving the latter and the former is still extremely disturbing. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    I don't find $100k ad spend on FB disturbing at all, that's not even minuscule. As we both said, there was no measurable impact. To put things in perspective Clinton raised $1.2B for her campaign. I find that much more disturbing than $100k spent on memes. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      You are framing my words as if I'm saying that the impact of Russian advertising was so small as to be immeasurable, when I'm saying the opposite: it's not measurable so we don't know how large it is. And we're just going to skip over the Russian propaganda that wasn't use paid advertising?
    - dimator 7y ago
burtonator 7y ago
We need to target the executives of Facebook directly. Run false political ads targeting their family and friends. I imagine they won't like it when it's done against them directly.
- dang 7y ago
  You can't do personal attacks on HN. Calling for them is an abstract way of doing them. Not cool; please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sebow 7y ago
You're talking like Russia is the only government doing this. Are you this naive or just not informed? Every government tries to swing elections in countries that are in their interest.It would be abnormal if this wasn't the case. I'm neither from US nor russia(as an eastern european you can imagine our resentment towards russia and their imperialistic views). And FB(alongside google,twitter and other corporations that have social networks that allow -- public -- discourse) are not simple "private platforms/companies", they enjoy subsidies from the government,act as private companies(which they are) while also having the privilege of acting as a publisher(like outlets) meaning they are not directly responsible for the content on their platforms.Legally is is a very gray area due to US constitution, especially when your platforms hosts legally elected representatives of the government(this is why they can't just "shut down trump on twitter"). Facebook is toxic, Google is very toxic aswell as of late.The internet needs to be more open,decentralized and distributed if we ever want to have a chance of avoiding tyranny and suppression of thought. Sounds very "apocalyptic" but take a glimpse of what's happening in China,they're de facto using and indirectly cooperating with western corporations to implement very nasty social programs.
yousajoe 7y ago
>Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election As if a $100k ad buy [1] will sway voters. $100K is insignificant for social media ad spend and won't influence anything and marketers knows this, but the masses do not. Both candidates spent $81 Million on facebook ads [3] and $100K is a joke representing 0.05 of ad-spend. The media and democratic party knows people are clueless about advertising and has made this "russia hacked elections using FB", a talking point that helps their narrative. FB ads are not that effective. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russi... https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/
- malvosenior 7y ago
  If Russia was really able to have significant influence with $100k vs $81M the techniques they used could be studied and duplicated. Every startup would love to have marketing that effective. The truth is it had no measurable effect exactly as you’d expect.
  - yousajoe 7y ago
    this is not a popular opinion with people who's heard their political party and media outlets constantly repeat the same thing over and over for years.
  - deepakhj 7y ago
    You’re repeating the same thing in multiple threads. The fact is Russian interference had an effect on the election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/bipartisan-senate-report-calls-sweeping-effort-prevent-russian-interference-election/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/biparti...
    - deleted 7y ago

cobweb2 7y ago

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of your political ideas? You want a central authority to ban the spread of "blatantly false" ideas that you fear may cause plebians to vote the wrong way, yet you support affording plebians with the full right to vote? Would it not be simpler to bans plebians from voting, and therefore remove your worry entirely that they may vote the wrong way when hearing "blatantly false" ideas?

lordnacho 7y ago
It doesn't have to be the same authority. You could have an independent ombudsman.
- balt_s 7y ago
  This is laughable; as well say "you could have an independent ruler".
- peterhadlaw 7y ago
  Factcheck.net.fact.org/really-real is not that. I don't get why people can just take their own responsibility for themselves? Give users the tools to filter out the nonsense that floods most of the internet. There's no need for moral arbiters to decide for us what's "true" and "false". We've existed long enough without them, I think we can make it a little longer still.
CydeWeys 7y ago
We are being attacked with foreign propaganda by our long-term enemies. They are succeeding in destroying our position on the world stage. It's not something that can be turned a blind eye to under the guise of free speech (which it isn't).
- malvosenior 7y ago
  All governments push propaganda. Russia's miniscule ad spend on FB had no measurable effect (please provide proof if you think this is wrong). Clinton and Trump spent many order of magnitude more on political advertising than any foreign nation and even that didn't assure their win. People aren't mindless robots, they vote for who they want to vote for.
  - peterhadlaw 7y ago
    The funniest thing is, no one talks about this, but if the "goal" was to sew discord... My goodness someone "in the Kremlin" should be getting a promotion for their exceptionally well done job. I mean how many YEARS and millions of dollars has the US wasted chasing after this ghost of Russian interference? If you want to calculate the ROI from a few thousand dollars to how much hysteria followed suit, it's insane. The only question I have is, can anyone seriously take credit for it in Russia with a straight face. "No comrade, I only made meme of Hillary... The whole Mueller thing was the US all on its own."
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      Correct, this never had anything to do with Russia and it has everything to do with Trump. The political and media establishment couldn't handle an outsider winning the presidency so it was they that have gone full blast on propaganda for the past 3 years.
  - willis936 7y ago
    That is a naively optimistic statement. If marketing didn’t work then billions wouldn’t be spent on it.
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of yours? Laws against defamation are exactly intended to prevent the spread of false ideas. Why not remove them, and let the plebeians figure things out themselves?
- sparrish 7y ago
  No, defamation laws are to protect someone who is defamed (unjustly harms their reputation, and usually constitutes a tort or a crime). They are not intended to protect you from false ideas. Can you sue for defamation if I publish an essay saying there are aliens on Pluto? Is it false? Yes. Has it defamed anyone? No.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Yes, any suit must be brought on behalf of someone who was damaged. “Defamation” is the word for someone being damaged by false ideas.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

malvosenior 7y ago

> They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation. I really don't think so. They want usage, period. They don't want to actively spread disinformation. They probably find that editorializing and censoring information annoys users. There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. Most people know this and reject larger narratives that push centralized manipulation of freely publishable information.

jakelazaroff 7y ago
> There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. This is false. Facebook themselves announced that Russia spent $100,000 on ads aimed at U.S. voters. Posts from six Russian propaganda accounts were shared hundreds of millions of times. [1] Effort doesn't equal impact, I suppose, but there's no way of proving the latter and the former is still extremely disturbing. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I don't find $100k ad spend on FB disturbing at all, that's not even minuscule. As we both said, there was no measurable impact. To put things in perspective Clinton raised $1.2B for her campaign. I find that much more disturbing than $100k spent on memes. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    You are framing my words as if I'm saying that the impact of Russian advertising was so small as to be immeasurable, when I'm saying the opposite: it's not measurable so we don't know how large it is. And we're just going to skip over the Russian propaganda that wasn't use paid advertising?
  - dimator 7y ago

burtonator 7y ago

We need to target the executives of Facebook directly. Run false political ads targeting their family and friends. I imagine they won't like it when it's done against them directly.

dang 7y ago
You can't do personal attacks on HN. Calling for them is an abstract way of doing them. Not cool; please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sebow 7y ago

You're talking like Russia is the only government doing this. Are you this naive or just not informed? Every government tries to swing elections in countries that are in their interest.It would be abnormal if this wasn't the case. I'm neither from US nor russia(as an eastern european you can imagine our resentment towards russia and their imperialistic views). And FB(alongside google,twitter and other corporations that have social networks that allow -- public -- discourse) are not simple "private platforms/companies", they enjoy subsidies from the government,act as private companies(which they are) while also having the privilege of acting as a publisher(like outlets) meaning they are not directly responsible for the content on their platforms.Legally is is a very gray area due to US constitution, especially when your platforms hosts legally elected representatives of the government(this is why they can't just "shut down trump on twitter"). Facebook is toxic, Google is very toxic aswell as of late.The internet needs to be more open,decentralized and distributed if we ever want to have a chance of avoiding tyranny and suppression of thought. Sounds very "apocalyptic" but take a glimpse of what's happening in China,they're de facto using and indirectly cooperating with western corporations to implement very nasty social programs.

yousajoe 7y ago

>Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election As if a $100k ad buy [1] will sway voters. $100K is insignificant for social media ad spend and won't influence anything and marketers knows this, but the masses do not. Both candidates spent $81 Million on facebook ads [3] and $100K is a joke representing 0.05 of ad-spend. The media and democratic party knows people are clueless about advertising and has made this "russia hacked elections using FB", a talking point that helps their narrative. FB ads are not that effective. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russi... https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/

malvosenior 7y ago
If Russia was really able to have significant influence with $100k vs $81M the techniques they used could be studied and duplicated. Every startup would love to have marketing that effective. The truth is it had no measurable effect exactly as you’d expect.
- yousajoe 7y ago
  this is not a popular opinion with people who's heard their political party and media outlets constantly repeat the same thing over and over for years.
- deepakhj 7y ago
  You’re repeating the same thing in multiple threads. The fact is Russian interference had an effect on the election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/bipartisan-senate-report-calls-sweeping-effort-prevent-russian-interference-election/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/08/biparti...
  - deleted 7y ago