Facebook Removes Hundreds of Accounts Spamming Political Info (theverge.com) 171
Facebook is purging hundreds of accounts and pages in the U.S., many of which spread political misinformation, for breaking the company's terms against "inauthentic" content and spam. The Verge reports: The company said in a blog post that 559 pages and 251 accounts would be removed. While the accounts used "sensational political content," Facebook did not say that was the reason for the purge. Instead, the accounts and pages will be taken down after they had "consistently broken" the company's rules against gaming its platform. Facebook noted that many used strategies like posting on fake or multiple accounts to generate traffic, or to inflate their popularity. Still, Facebook noted the proximity to the U.S. midterm elections, and said that networks like the ones it removed today are "increasingly" promoting political content that is "often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate." The company said this was the reason it has turned to "behavior" instead of "content" when searching for bad actors.
Come on... (Score:1, Insightful)
Fuck the Zuck!
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Business as usual.
ie. Making sure the tools used to cheat in the previous election aren't available for the opposition to use in the next one.
Too late. (Score:2)
Way too late now. Damage is done. Most people already think those were real US citizens and will now cry "censorship."
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censorship is censorship, regardless of whether or not the people targeted are citizens or not. welcome to marxist usa.
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welcome to marxist usa.
Left-wing political pages of people who are citizens, such as Reverb Press [facebook.com] (main site [reverbpress.news]); Reasonable People Unite [facebook.com] and The Resistance [facebook.com] getting censored by billionaire owner of a huge corporation is "marxism" now?
Yes, of course right-wing sites were hit too, but this ain't Marxism. This is what happens when people hand over the public square to unanswerable corporations. Censorship is one thing, but censorship for which no democratic or legal redress exists is quite another. We've bee
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Yup. "Progressive"/identitarian != socialist (and DEFINITELY != communist).
Imho the whole bogus right/left divide is a false dichotomy that does nothing but stultify public discussion.
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Now, one of the comments I seen on facebook was a question to the percentage of right/left political sites that was deleted.
I would love to see that also
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I don't read spam, I don't watch ads on TV, I block ads on web sites and I don't answer calls from telemarketers.
If my spam filtering is censorship then I can live with that.
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If my spam filtering is censorship then I can live with that.
YOUR spam filter is choice. FACEBOOK'S bans are censorship. The difference is one consists of ignoring a message, and the other consists of preventing it.
In any sane system, you are free to ignore whoever you choose. Your ignoring someone does not mean others cannot choose to listen,
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Do you really think that requiring every Facebook user to set up their own custom spam filter is a viable business model? We people be happy if their email service just let the flood of spam in until they manually created an advanced beynesian filter and DNSRBL to stop it?
Even Gab has kicked spammers off the service. Even 4chan blocks crapflooding.
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It's a shame Facebook didn't delete the 2007 fake John Edwards Affair story peddled by the notorious National Enquirer. Just think, John Edwards would possibly have been elected vice-president and maybe even have run and been elected president in 2016!!!! Damn you Facebook!!!!
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Fake affair? It was very real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Do you have any solid reason to believe Faceboot didn't censor US citizens on a partisan political basis? I don't know either way - but that claim is fully consistent with everything that's publicly known about how Faceboot operates.
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No solid evidence, but a number of anecdotal incidents that could be construed as such.
Anytime a popular website removes accounts and content and doesn't have clearly objective criteria for doing it, they are going to be accused of censorship by one side or the other. They will be accused of being subjective in their judgments and partisan in their actions regardless.
Facebook's problem is they have been subjective in their judgments in the past and have a sordid history of political activity that is not
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democrats aren't generally dumb enough to fall for FB spambot trolls, which is why you don't really see any.
Actually, the reason Democrats don't troll is that, thanks to Poe's Law [wikipedia.org], they don't need to. Actual authentic right-wing posts already go far beyond any trolling or parody that the Democrats could come up with.
Have you seen what passes for news on Donald Trump? Did you watch the disconnect between the news and the actual Kavanaugh hearings?
The left just lost the midterms with their radicalism and denial of reality. At least one registered democrat can admit to it. The foot has been shot straight through and now our dinghy in a sea of red is sinking.
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Nobody falls for facebook trolls beyond clicking a link that takes you to something other than was advertised. People will largely only believe what they want to believe and will congregate in their little social clusters and what Facebook does or does not do, has little bearing, beyond sucker retention.
What they are doing is most likely IP address matching for normal users, normal users not having a whole bunch of accounts going to the one IP address and 'liking' each others content. Getting rid of hundre
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You say Democratic Trolls do not exist. Might I introduce you to Correct The Record?
https://www.factcheck.org/2016... [factcheck.org]
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Democrat trolls spend most of the time attacking those from their pretend side, the far right Democrats attacking progressives routinely. Going so far, togethor with US corporate media, to paint the left, as some weird genetically confused bunch of SJW freaks, rather than labour, the workers, fighting for an even break and of course doing this on purpose as they were paid to do by the corporations. Democrats == far right vs Republicans == even further right, The Greens are the only party on the left in the
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Dumpster fire (Score:2, Interesting)
Facebook does not appear to be having much trouble taking down and banning accounts that are guilty of wrongthink. But that's easy. On the other hand, trying to ban all the robo-posted spamcrap that's flooding the remaining pages is apparently too difficult for them.
I'm not kidding. I'm watching one thread after another thread that gets posted on some of their popular pages immediately get flooded with obviously robo-posted make-money-fast-work-from-home spam. The posting pattern is laughably easy to spot:
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They're just getting rid of the ones that aren't associated with the accounts of paying advertisers.
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The only solution when you don't have enough manpower to scrutinise all posts is to disable edits of posted items. One of two discussion boards I'm associated with gives you 10 minutes to make any corrections. The other has got rid of edits altogether.
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Facebook does not appear to be having much trouble taking down and banning accounts that are guilty of wrongthink. But that's easy. On the other hand, trying to ban all the robo-posted spamcrap that's flooding the remaining pages is apparently too difficult for them.
No, it's the exact opposite.
People are complaining all the time that extreme political content isn't being removed. Take this investigation, for example: https://www.channel4.com/info/... [channel4.com]
Note this finding in particular:
"Pages belonging to far-right groups, with large numbers of followers, allowed to exceed deletion threshold, and subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to governments and news organisations."
The documentary explores the reasons for this, basically Facebook thin
Good luck with the jackboots Zuck (Score:2, Insightful)
History has shown the more you racist liberal monsters suppress the people, the more they will rebel against you. Trying to suppress conservative voices just makes then vote in greater numbers...
I saw that as a dispassionate Libertarian who does not have a dog in that hunt, I just enjoy observing tactical mistakes both sides make.
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CNN [youtube.com] appears to be the racist ones lately. They don't support conservatives or Trump, but do support liberals and are with Her.
Sad thing is CNN is not apologizing for their comments, nothing is happening to commentator and they probably celebrated that their racist comments are accepted and encouraged by idiots like you. I suggest you go back to your Klan meetings and work on your statue of Robert Byrd.
Re:Good luck with the jackboots Zuck (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't even understand what "leftist" means; you've assigned your own (highly subjective and variable) definition to it and expect the rest of us to play along. Fuck that noise.
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They think the Brett Kavanaugh hearings helped them, but polls are showing the opposite
Lately Democrat partisans have been taking an odd approach to politics: screaming incoherent profanity and flailing their arms wildly. That approach works great if your goal is to be a deranged crackhead living in the public park. It is, however, rather less effective at getting people to vote you into office.
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Screaming incoherently and flailing his arms about seems to have worked pretty well for The Donald...
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Democrats fail to understand right-wing anger. They think the Brett Kavanaugh hearings helped them, but polls are showing the opposite: it is the right that is riled up and angry, because ... umm ... their guy won again.
No, they're riled up because of the underhanded way the Democrats--especially Dianne Feinstein--handled the entire debacle. There was ample time to investigate the claims during the confirmation hearings, but they decided to wait until the very end to bring it up after the hearings were finished and right before the vote. I don't buy that she wanted to remain anonymous because she had contacted the Washington Post at the same time she contacted her congresswoman. If her claim had been considered credible, i
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Actually they will because it was straight up across the board political censorship favouring the establishment https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]. So a straight up pack of lies by Facebook and corporate main stream media.
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I have to say that was pretty well crafted, so I thought you deserved some recognition [gph.is] of your work.
All too often creative AC's toil in darkness without reward!
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So freedom of speech (Score:1, Insightful)
Talk about politics too much and thats tracked for violations.
No freedom after speech as the account is removed.
Wonder what happens online when a citizen attempts to petition the government using a computer?
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How exactly is spamming Facebook using fake accounts a way of "petitioning the government"? I'm not being flip, I'm sincerely trying to understand the connection as you see it.
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The Russian trolls are just pissed their activities are being curtailed.
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Wow incredibly racist. Most trolls are Americans, that's a fact and many are paid, even by the corrupt American government itself. Facebook is reaching end of life, most people don't care any more and the end will be pretty fast, although Facebook will strive to make deleting an account as difficult as possible and probably slip it back in as a zombie account to keeps numbers up, they will of course kindly keep adding information into your zombie facebook account to make it look like it is still active to b
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That's like saying "how is it possible to believe everything Facebook says it's doing and end up disagreeing". As soon as there is a form of coordinated messaging towards a political target it can be called spamming, or petitioning. And for political activists coordinated messaging is one of the few tools they have. There is also a lot of horizontal spreading of news. This is a head on attack on free speech, combined with the usual PR saying everything's fine.
But just look at what the indy media are saying,
Re:So freedom of speech (Score:5, Insightful)
So freedom of speech is now "sensational political content".
Not in the least. If you look at the tabloid-esque content that was being pushed through multiple accounts, you will see it was in fact maximally sensational.
Here's a more complete article [washingtonpost.com] that explains the type of content that was removed.
No freedom after speech as the account is removed.
You are one of these many misguided people that seems to think you can say anything you want and people have to just put up and listen to you. However, the truth is you are simply not being jailed for saying things. A site owner has zero obligation to keep your content on their site, especially when it just points to your own website which you make money off from.
Remember, the freedom of speech means you stay out of jail but does nothing to force people to listen to you.
Re:So freedom of speech (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be a useful idiot - of course WashPo is going to highlight the sketchy pages and not not the anti-authoritarian pages. There were dozens of police accountability pages that were taken down - Copblock and the like. They had some opinion pieces, sure, and authority didn't like them, obviously, but most all of the content in the groups I saw disappeared was links to police brutality pieces. All gone, thanks for using Facebook.
The revolution will not be carried on corporate hosting platforms.
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Here's a more complete article [washingtonpost.com] that explains the type of content that was removed.
Even the WaPo semi-official propaganda story you linked makes it obvious that Facebook censored legitimate American political activists.
Why do you hate freedom of speech? Do you suppose that your faction will always be in power?
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Why do you hate freedom of speech?
Did you have a reading comprehension failure or did someone get put in jail for their speech?
"Remember, the freedom of speech means you stay out of jail but does nothing to force people to listen to you."
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I stopped using Facebook about 3 years ago due to the political spam. Good for them for dropping the bot accounts.
Next they should ban the people who share the "if you don't share this post 100 kittens will die" spam.
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When Facebook adopts its own constitution and/or bill of rights, then you can point to how they're breaking those rules. Until then, you're just another voice whining that the big boy isn't playing the game you want him to play. And you're basing that complaint, not on any firsthand experience of your own, but on a partisan report of a management statement, which makes it about as meaningful as a fart in a tornado.
Meddling (Score:2)
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will Facebook get called out for meddling in an election
Sounds like a good topic for congressional hearings.
Better article (Score:4, Informative)
There is a better and more complete article on The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] that describes the type of crap Facebook purged. Spoiler: it's clickbait that leads to other profit driven sites. Don't assume it's all conservative media either because it's not. They got crazy shit for folks of all types.
Bottom line: this is good for all (even slightly) rational actors.
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The WaPo isn't exactly trustworthy on this topic .. at all. They have more than one vested interest in this purge, e.g. wanting to frame "legitimate" political debate themselves according to their bias, and wanting to get rid of independent competition.
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There is a better and more complete article on The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] that describes the type of crap Facebook purged. Spoiler: it's clickbait that leads to other profit driven sites. Don't assume it's all conservative media either because it's not. They got crazy shit for folks of all types.
Bottom line: this is good for all (even slightly) rational actors.
It's rather pointless trying to demonstrate that this isn't a partisan action to people who have already decided Facebook is the "Lib'ral" enemy. Their mind is made up and they're are just looking for any evidence to support their already decided opinion.
They're also hypocrites as they tend to restrict their sources of information to organisations that deliberately obfuscate facts that do not support their point of view (like Fox News) or outright lie (like Infowars).
They get all up in arms about Face
Re: Conservatives mad as hell! (Score:1)
That's funny, coming from the same people who claim that Citizens United means that the corporations own the government.
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Putin-bankrolled Russotrolls seem to forget that private companies in the US are under no compulsion whatsoever to guarantee freedom of speech.
TFTFY.
often indistinguishable... (Score:5, Insightful)
"often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate." - ie Legitimate political debate, but not what they agree with?
Comment removed (Score:3)
Facebook (Score:1)
Also in the news (Score:2)
Facebook happily announced the influx of thousands of new users.
Satire is political commentary too, right? (Score:1)
Satire is political commentary too, right?
But it is their platform.
I'd rather they leave it up and tag it with "UNVERIFIED" or "VERIFIED FALSE". Then the jokes would really begin.
Alex Jones: canary in coal mine (Score:2)
Alex Jones was the canary in the coalmine, now they will continue ensuring Sanders (and other upstarts) never gets a second chance.
She writes:
Regardless of where you’re at on the political spectrum, if you oppose the status quo then opposing internet censorship of any political speech is now a matter of simple self defense. If this wasn’t obvious to you
As has been pointed out, but must be emphasized (Score:2)
"often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate."
So, often are in fact legitimate political debate, being indistinguishable.
For, if the syrup you pour on your cakes for breakfast is indistinguishable from real, natural, from-a-tree maple syrup, are you in any way not actually enjoying the taste of maple? And if so, are you not, in any way, diminished having been given a not natural, but indistinguishable syrup?
So these sources, while in Facebook's view being somehow illegitimate, are indistinguish