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Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interference (theverge.com) 218

Posted by BeauHD from the information-fiduciaries dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sheera Frankel and Mike Isaac [write from The New York Times]: "Sandwiched between Building 20 and Building 21 in the heart of Facebook's campus, an approximately 25-foot by 35-foot conference room is under construction. Thick cords of blue wiring hang from the ceiling, ready to be attached to window-size computer monitors on 16 desks. On one wall, a half dozen televisions will be tuned to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and other major cable networks. A small paper sign with orange lettering taped to the glass door describes what's being built: "War Room."

Set to open next week, the conference room is in keeping with Facebook's nick-of-time approach to midterm election preparedness. (It introduced a "pilot program" for candidate account security on Monday.) It's a big project. Samidh Chakrabarti, who oversees elections and civic engagement, told the Times: "We see this as probably the biggest companywide reorientation since our shift from desktops to mobile phones." Of course, the effort extends beyond the new conference room. Chakrabarti showed the Times a new internal tool "that helps track information flowing across the social network in real time," helping to identify misinformation as it goes viral or a surge in the creation of new (and likely fake) accounts.
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Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interference More

Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interference

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  • Just to clarify (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @10:32PM (#57352378)

    A War Room to monitor election interference that doesn't go their way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Vinegar Joe ( 998110 )

      Nailed it.

    • I'm not so sure (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      Facebook is a mega corporation, so odds are they're going to win the election either way. There's a few anti-corporation candidates, but not nearly enough that even something as tame as Liz Warren's current bill will pass (and Trump would just Veto it anyway). Basically, I don't think they have any particular agenda to push. They're not as left wing as everybody likes to make them out to be (they really only kicked Alex Jones off out of fear of a negligence lawsuit and they've left a lot of his hanger-ons a

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Bugger all happened in 2016, that is the actual evidence. Trolling advertisements, click bait got quite corruptly called political, when it fact it most definitely is not. It simply targets politics to get you to click it, to take you to the actual ad.

        The only corruption that occurred was at establishment level, primaries stolen, polling booths shut down queues long enough to stop people voting and then they are blamed, registered voters selectively de-registered to get rid of their vote, vote count tamper

        • Re:I'm not so sure (Score:5, Informative)

          by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @02:14AM (#57352888)

          Bugger all happened in 2016, that is the actual evidence. Trolling advertisements, click bait got quite corruptly called political, when it fact it most definitely is not. It simply targets politics to get you to click it, to take you to the actual ad.

          This is actually far from true. Here's some of what is known to have happened [wired.com], the political ads themselves are a minor part of the whole thing:

          The Mueller indictment permanently demolishes the idea that the scale of the Russian campaign was not significant enough to have any impact on the American public. We are no longer talking about approximately $100,000 (paid in rubles, no less) of advertising grudgingly disclosed by Facebook, but tens of millions of dollars spent over several years to build a broad, sophisticated system that can influence American opinion.

          The Russian efforts described in the indictment focused on establishing deep, authenticated, long-term identities for individuals and groups within specific communities. This was underlaid by the establishment of servers and VPNs based in the US to mask the location of the individuals involved. US-based email accounts linked to fake or stolen US identity documents (driver licenses, social security numbers, and more) were used to back the online identities. These identities were also used to launder payments through PayPal and cryptocurrency accounts. All of this deception was designed to make it appear that these activities were being carried out by Americans.

          Additionally, the indictment mentions that the IRA* had a department whose job was gaming algorithms. This is important because information warfare—the term used in the indictment itself—is not about "fake news" and “bots." It is about creating an information environment and a narrative—specific storytelling vehicles used to achieve goals of subversion and activation, amplified and promoted through a variety of means.

          2. What kind of content did it rely on?

          As the indictment lays out in thorough detail, the content pumped out by the Russians was not paid or promoted ads; it was so-called native content—including video, visual, memetic, and text elements designed to push narrative themes, conspiracies, and character attacks. All of it was designed to look like it was coming from authentic American voices and interest groups. And the IRA wasn’t just guessing about what worked. They used data-driven targeting and analysis to assess how the content was received, and they used that information to refine their messages and make them more effective.

          3. Who or what was the operation targeting, and what did it aim to achieve?

          The indictment mentions that the Russian accounts were meant to embed with and emulate “radical” groups. The content was not designed to persuade people to change their views, but to harden those views. Confirmation bias is powerful and commonly employed in these kinds of psychological operations (a related Soviet concept is “reflexive control”—applying pressure in ways to elicit a specific, known response). The intention of these campaigns was to activate—or suppress—target groups. Not to change their views, but to change their behavior.

          4. What impact did it have?

          We’re only at the beginning of having an answer to this question because we’ve only just begun to ask some of the right questions. But Mueller’s indictment shows that Russian accounts and agents accomplished more than just stoking divisions and tensions with sloppy propaganda memes. The messaging was more sophisticated, and some Americans took action. For example, the indictment recounts a number of instances where events and demonstrations were organized by Russians posing as Americans on social media. These accounts aimed to get people to do specific thing

          • Indictments mean shit (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            All an indictment is, is an accusation from a prosecutor. Ever hear the phrase that they could "indict a ham sandwich"? Grand juries are under the complete control of prosecutors, and they could indict just about anyone for anything if they wanted to.

            If Mueller had actual evidence of actual collusion, we would have seen it a year ago, instead of all this fucking around with Twitter trolls, Facebook ads placed after the election, and money laundering from ten years ago with zero connection to Trump (but pl

            • Re:Indictments mean shit (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Kiuas ( 1084567 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @02:42AM (#57352956)

              If Mueller had actual evidence of actual collusion, we would have seen it a year ago

              This statement is based on absolutely nothing, it's just an assertion you throw out about a large on-going investigation without anything to back it up. 'Because the investigation is taking so long it cannot lead to anything' is some of the worst logic possible.

              However you're missing the point I was making entirely. I'm not American, I'm Finnish. My point in the comment was not to take on side over the other as to the result of the investigation. Whether or not there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian information warfare campaign is another matter that remains to be seen once the investigation completes, but that was not my point. It may be that there was no collusion, but that does not negate the fact that the Russians are actively posing as western citizens and pumping out propaganda to influence elections and sow political discontent throughout the West and not just in the US. That was my point, and there's plenty of evidence of that that's not coming from Mueller & al, including from your own intelligence agencies as well as other non-governmental researchers (see for example the report about the interference in Europe).

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by Evtim ( 1022085 )

                Why are the Russians successful then (in sowing discord in the West)? This really bugs me....

                Could it be (in part) a result of the informational blackout in the West regarding the crimes of communism? How could it be that while Putin is revitalizing the nostalgia for the old regime and ramping up patriotic, religious and totalitarian schemes that are 1:1 copy of the methods used by the communists (sans religion), in the West people can declare themselves commies and Marxists without being punched in the fac

                • Comment removed based on user account deletion

              • Muller is a criminal (Score:1, Informative)

                by Anonymous Coward

                Muller indicted 17 Russians on no evidence. I am making that claim outright and have been looking for someone to prove me wrong. Muller IS a criminal abusing his position because of that.

                He based it on the DNC server being hacked and emails sent to WikiLeaks. There is not a SINGLE expert who has seen the DNC server and will claim in court that Russia hacked the DNC servers. The FBI has not seen the DNC servers. There is absolutely ZERO evidence Russia hacked the DNC servers, PERIOD. A company named Cr

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 )

                but that does not negate the fact that the Russians are actively posing as western citizens and pumping out propaganda to influence elections and sow political discontent throughout the West and not just in the US.

                And on the internet, I can actively pose as your sister.

                Seriously, if 100K of ludicrous FB ads actually decided the election, then it doesn't matter what we do.

              • Because the investigation is going so long means they do not have traction on the case....
                That a 'special prosecutor' had to be appointed is of no consequence to you? Why don't we have a 'super-special prosecutor' to investigate why the 'special prosecutor' is taking so long?

                >the fact that the Russians are actively posing as western citizens and pumping out propaganda
                According to who? Where is the evidence? Where are the examples? To what degree is this happening? Why is it important? Is it effective? Ho

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Uberbah ( 647458 )

                If Mueller had actual evidence of actual collusion, we would have seen it a year ago

                This statement is based on absolutely nothing

                Remedial logic + learning something from the lies told about Iraq (including those from Mueller) != "nothing". Either this investigation is a farce to control both Trump and the public sheep, or Mueller really does have solid evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to steal an election. Evidence Mueller is sitting on instead of sending articles of impeachment to the House, prote

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by mentil ( 1748130 )

            the content pumped out by the Russians was not paid or promoted ads; it was so-called native content

            This sounds interesting. 'Native content' as in supposedly-factual articles on CNN.com written by their journalists? Or 'native content' as in tweets from randos on Twitter? There's a big difference in terms of reach/credibility.

            I'm skeptical this 'view hardening' would actually make someone vote who otherwise wouldn't. Anyone who cares enough that confirmation bias would work on them (to this degree), is easily riled up enough that they were already gotten to vote by any other firebrand politician (who are

          • Quick synopsis. The paid ads were inconsequential. The real influence was the use of the Trolls of Olgino, the horde of employees of the Russian Government owned Internet Research Agency, trolling social media to influence the weak minded with false narratives.

            Quicker summary. The Russians trolled social media. That’s what some think had the most impact.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Google is a mega-corporation, but they are explicitly anti-Trump, or haven't you seen the internal videos? Management exhorting the engineers to make sure Google does its part to influence the election. You think Facebook or Twitter is any different?

        For whatever dumb reason, "get woke; go broke" is very real, and companies don't even blink at throwing profits overboard to go 110% for progressive causes.

        • It's almost as if conspiracy theories are real!
          Hopefully the denser sort like you realize that these things aren't just happening "for whatever dumb reason".

    • Re:Just to clarify (Score:5, Funny)

      by Time_Ngler ( 564671 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @11:16PM (#57352506)

      The title:

        "Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interface On Behalf Of Democrats"

      was strangely cut off in my browser to just:

        "Facebook Will Open a 'War Room' Next Week To Monitor Election Interface"

      The site admins should really work on fixing this.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They've been banning conservative, Republican, libertarian, and nationalist sources already. Facebook IS election interference. That is what they are.

    • EXACTLY!

      Facebook has been engaging in obvious and blatant suppression of conservative viewpoints and they were shocked by the 2016 election's results. I'm sure they'll be doing a lot of steering leading up to this mid-term.

      LK

      • Shocked? Please. Name one single law that came into existence that FB could possibly consider negative for them. Remember the goodwill show Sugarhill did in Congress?

        If you wanna see laws that really piss off Facebook, you gotta look over at Europe.

    • There's a Facebook Party in the United States?

      • There's a political party which caters to people who spend their readimg time on Facebook, and there is a party which caters to people who spend their reading time with the Washington Times or National Review.

      • One? There's even two.

        Granted, they're not exclusive to FB, they're general corporate hos that bend over for anyone stuffing money into them.

    • Exactly....if you dont believe this goes on, try searching for something controversial that goes against leftist propaganda and compare the results with another engine like DuckDuckGo. It's sadly very predictable.

  • 2008 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @10:46PM (#57352412)
    2012 election help for obama from Facebook: A Bold Model for our Tech infused Future. 2016 election generic 'help' for trump far less extensive than what Obama got and Hillary turned down: Dark tech invasion of privacy! Election manipulation! Birth of Fake News! Muh Russians!

    • *Foreign* (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      To be clear, it is a CRIME for a foreign country to interfere in US elections. It does not matter if that country supports your candidate or not.
      It's also a crime for agents in the US to do the bidding for that country without registering themselves as foreign agents.
      It is also a crime for that candidate to do deals with that country, where he's to receive tens of millions of dollars to rescue his overleveraged hotel business.

      Clear?

      You can do your "Hannity for President" shit all you like, but Putin cannot

      • Re:*Foreign* (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @02:13AM (#57352876)

        To be clear, it is a CRIME for a foreign country to interfere in US elections.

        Based on which international law? One that is consistent and thus makes the United States worse in this category than all other nations combined?

      • ahem... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Does that include a British spy named Steele and paid for by the Hillary campaign with cash laundered through the Perkins Coie law firm who bought a bunch or lies from Russian agents and then funneled that back into the FBI via agent Bruce Ohr whose wife is a democrat activist working at the firm Fusion GPS that Steele worked with on the "dossier"?

        Or would that foreign interference that's such a major CRIME (as you put it) include millions of illegal aliens from places like Mexico who have been admitted to

  • "Oops" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Sorry all those conservative posts got accidentally deleted on election night. There was a glitch in our AI that incorrectly flagged them as Russian bots. We promise this will be fixed in time for the next election. Maybe."

  • Fox in hen house (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday September 20, 2018 @10:54PM (#57352442)
    They want to make sure their interference is going smoothly

    • They just want to make sure we don't vote for the wrong candidates.

      • They want to make sure their interference is going smoothly

        They just want to make sure we don't vote for the wrong candidates.

        Well, naturally!

        Otherwise, the wrong lizards might get in.

        Even worse than a lizard in the "tolerant" Left's view, a conservative or libertarian might get in! Horrors!!!

        Strat

        • a conservative or libertarian might get in!

          Except there are no conservatives or libertarians running for anything. Not a single one, at least not at the national level.

    • I thought Fox was the fox in the hen house?

  • "If any Republican gets elected, we have failed and all your private photos get set to public".

  • too late (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Facebook still just doesn't get it. The international campaign to sow discord in America using propaganda made to appear as if it started within America goes back to at least shortly after 9/11, has never stopped, and is always getting more sophisticated as they discover more of what works. It heats up a bit around elections, but most of its effect is gained through small, constant, long-term pushes. It cannot be fought on an election by election basis and isn't even all about elections. It is about slowly

  • Leadership by example (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Max_W ( 812974 ) on Friday September 21, 2018 @01:09AM (#57352754)
    Corinthians 11:1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
  • Why is anyone still on facebook?
    • I've got my artwork on facebook. I collect limited edition screenprint posters and that's how I communicate with the collecting community. I've got a few friends from high school/college on there. I ignore all the political bullshit for the most part. Sometimes I have to call somebody out when they're being a complete moron though.
  • If the social media networks were really worried about foreign meddling, they'd be more concerned about illegal aliens voting, not this nonexistent Russia crap
  • Wasn't necessarily interference in the election. It was just interference in general. It was propaganda, through meme's, 4chan, etc they stoked the fire. They targeted angry young men and told them it was all women,black,brown's fault. It just so happens that's trump's MO also.

  • I really wish you folks wouldn't leave me with no option but conspiracy theories. I don't like conspiracy theories.

    But ... well, if the "oh noes Russia" thing were a false flag operation to cover Facebook going all in in helping Democrats and suppressing dissent, how would things look any different?

  • http://www.isdglobal.org/wp-co... [isdglobal.org]

    Facebook hired this company, ISD, to identify, monitor, and analyze it's users based the extent to which they are associated with right-wing beliefs ("extremism").
    They use algorithms to analyze the sentiment of a person's posts and flag them as an "extremist" (ie: some one who supports Donald Trump), and then target them with propaganda, including "trained experts" directly messaging them repeatedly to try to persuade them to believe otherwise.

    Note how in this report they ke

  • I have no reason to believe that Facebook, Google and many other outfits define 'election interference' as anything but 'not electing Democrats'.

    Change my mind. No, 'you're stupid' and variations thereof are not cogent arguments. Use your mind to change mine.

  • I don't trust Facebook as far as I can throw it, and in something like this they have to be absolutely pristine about it -- and in the current socio-political climate that's almost impossible. If you take pro-Trump messages off because you trace them back to fake accounts held by foreign operatives, the Trump supporters will scream that it's 'censorship'; if you leave them in, the anti-Trump groups will claim they're not doing their job properly. It would be better overall if Facebook removed ALL political

  • A communications corporation this large and influential that it could effect the national dialog to the point where this sort of precaution could ever be seen as needed, is also proof that allowing it to moderate and deplatform as they see fit is also a danger.

  • And people are still going to vote how they plan on. In my case it is vote against every incumbent.
  • Facebook is more of a threat to American democracy than Russia ever has been. Facebook has no business monitoring or censoring anything and we know damn well they're the last area you can expect to find any sort of objective moderation. This is nothing but facebook ensuring that their own political agenda is served and it represents a dangerous precedent if we allow them to dictate what speech should be allowed and what should be censored.

  • We are supposed to believe now that Facebook was merely the conduit of external forces and not attempting to pursue their own political agenda?

  • How to get a window sized monitor? Oh, we're going to monitor meddling, on facebook.
    Really? Bunch of people will have big frickin' monitors and do facebook all day long. Talk about an easy job.

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