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From the study: 1) Troll farm = Professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content 2) Through internal Facebook research i

by p49k 5y ago

From the study: 1) Troll farm = Professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content 2) Through internal Facebook research in which documentation was leaked to journalists. 3) That's irrelevant to the story. The point is that the claimed motives behind the operators of the page are inauthentic and dishonest, and those claims could apply to either/both human and bot-generated content. 4) This question just makes your entire post sound like disingenuous trolling, but people of course expect honesty, and a page called "Kosovo engages with American Christians for profit" would not be criticized in the same way. 5) That's an obvious strawman - the people running the pages have shown to be dishonest in every way that their honesty can reasonably be measured. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21063547/oct-2019-facebook-troll-farms-report.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21063547/oct-2019-fac...

logicalmonster 5y ago
> 1) provocative content You know, defining "provocative content" is a subjective endeavor. What is viewed as normal conversation in the real world by most people might be viewed as extremely problematic, unmitigated, obvious hate-speech by some in a Silicon Valley thought-bubble. How do we really clarify this? > 2) internal Facebook research in which documentation was leaked to journalists. a) How do we know that some Facebook employees are not using their own biases to give incorrect subjective labels to some content based on their own activist viewpoints? Maybe, maybe not, but I would stress that we're relying on subjective interpretations here and just have to trust them. b) How do we know that the journalists who are interpreting this data and reporting on it are both willing and able to really do anything other than take the face-value interpretation of the data they were handed? I can count the number of journalists I've seen in my life who tried to dig into the nuanced details behind stories on one hand. > 3) the claimed motives behind the operators of the page are inauthentic and dishonest This is a hypothesis which may be (or likely is) reasonably supportable, but I would clarify that mind-reading has never been a thing. > 4) a page called "Kosovo engages with American Christians for profit" would not be criticized in the same way. Maybe. My goal isn't to necessarily defend these website operators. They might be, or even most likely are, creating random content to achieve fame and/or profit through social media. Ok, does that separate them from 99.9% of people/businesses/organizations on social media? > 5) the people running the pages have shown to be dishonest in every way that their honesty can reasonably be measured. My main goal in this set of comments isn't to necessarily defend the honor of these website operators. Maybe they're pure, manipulative scum? My main goal is to point out that Facebook (and the media) has shown to be dishonest in every way that their honesty can reasonably be measured. I do not understand how anybody can trust this interpretation of the facts at face value for many, many reasons here.
- jancsika 5y ago
  > I can count the number of journalists I've seen in my life who tried to dig into the nuanced details behind stories on one hand. Is that supposed to say something about journalism or your knowledge of journalism? 482b03a57155b5a44d80243383f9a22f

by p49k 5y ago

logicalmonster 5y ago

> 1) provocative content You know, defining "provocative content" is a subjective endeavor. What is viewed as normal conversation in the real world by most people might be viewed as extremely problematic, unmitigated, obvious hate-speech by some in a Silicon Valley thought-bubble. How do we really clarify this? > 2) internal Facebook research in which documentation was leaked to journalists. a) How do we know that some Facebook employees are not using their own biases to give incorrect subjective labels to some content based on their own activist viewpoints? Maybe, maybe not, but I would stress that we're relying on subjective interpretations here and just have to trust them. b) How do we know that the journalists who are interpreting this data and reporting on it are both willing and able to really do anything other than take the face-value interpretation of the data they were handed? I can count the number of journalists I've seen in my life who tried to dig into the nuanced details behind stories on one hand. > 3) the claimed motives behind the operators of the page are inauthentic and dishonest This is a hypothesis which may be (or likely is) reasonably supportable, but I would clarify that mind-reading has never been a thing. > 4) a page called "Kosovo engages with American Christians for profit" would not be criticized in the same way. Maybe. My goal isn't to necessarily defend these website operators. They might be, or even most likely are, creating random content to achieve fame and/or profit through social media. Ok, does that separate them from 99.9% of people/businesses/organizations on social media? > 5) the people running the pages have shown to be dishonest in every way that their honesty can reasonably be measured. My main goal in this set of comments isn't to necessarily defend the honor of these website operators. Maybe they're pure, manipulative scum? My main goal is to point out that Facebook (and the media) has shown to be dishonest in every way that their honesty can reasonably be measured. I do not understand how anybody can trust this interpretation of the facts at face value for many, many reasons here.

jancsika 5y ago
> I can count the number of journalists I've seen in my life who tried to dig into the nuanced details behind stories on one hand. Is that supposed to say something about journalism or your knowledge of journalism? 482b03a57155b5a44d80243383f9a22f