Via @RobertMaguire, I saw a Tweet storm from techo-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci that elegantly summarizes how Facebook got played by the alt-right and why social media companies are just as susceptible as old media institutions to “both sides” hogwash. You can find the Twitter thread here, but to spare the blog the pain of waiting for multiple embedded tweets to load, I’ve rendered it below in paragraph form:
1. If you don’t like viral misinfo, fake news & Russian ads—you’re just uncomfortable with “ideas”.
2. This is what getting played looks like.First, the idea if you are getting criticized by “both sides”, you must be doing something right is nonsense—though touted often by media.
Second, the right/alt-right playbook has been to criticize Facebook (or some institution) baselessly, and then watch it cave to appease.
This happened before the election. Facebook got criticized as being anti alt-right (for minimal quality control) so it dropped even that.
What I see that works on Facebook is intense public pressure—no market competition—or employee discomfort. Right/alt/right does the first.
Through intense public pressure, right/alt-right played Facebook into being passive to deliberate misinfo campaigns before the election.
Expect more of the same, especially as whomever Zuck is listening to is advising him to play the useless & weak media “both sides” playbook.
Point is NOT that Facebook should censor right wing views. Of course not. But it’s always been a super helpful platform for Breitbart right.
Facebook has also been super helpful to Trump campaign, working as their competent embedded ad-agency when they were so disorganized.
But the right/alt-right knows the naive, liberal weakness: buckle under tiniest criticism and cave even more. So it keeps hitting. Works.
Facebook, like most trad media, has never managed to grow a backbone—not censorship or bias, but a backbone—and defend ethics & fairness.
Hence Facebook keeps getting played. This is the same distortion/stupidity that made mass media cover both candidates badly before election.
BS “both sides” arguments and getting played and caving when someone flicks a finger: congrats. FB arrives as a traditional media company.
As we discussed the other day, Facebook (and Twitter, Instagram, etc.) let us use their platform at no charge because our eyeballs are the product they sell to advertisers. Zuckerberg’s platitudes about building a community and providing a platform for all ideas is a steaming load of horseshit, as is the notion that when “both sides” are angry, the object of their anger has reached a sweet spot of nonpartisan purity.
In addition to being misleading about Facebook’s mission and full of crap about “both sides,” Zuckerberg is eliding the foreign interference question. That’s what liberals are complaining about: not that Facebook helped Trump but rather that their Wild West approach to ad placement allowed a foreign government to perpetrate a PSYOP campaign to swing our election.
I remain convinced that it will take rules such as those that (inadequately) regulate political advertising in traditional media to address the problem of foreign interference, and that’s not going to happen as long as a) Republicans are in a position to prevent it, and b) foreign interference redounds to the benefit of Republicans.
In the meantime, it’s up to us to work the refs in favor of our side and perhaps to fight fire with fire. Maybe NATO could come to our defense by setting up troll farms in Provence, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, etc., to counter attacks by Russian trolls during our next election. (I’m kidding. I think.)
Open thread!
lgerard
I have always maintained that anyone who has a facebook account is a chump. They got their start by stealing personal information and using it without permission and their ethics have never improved.
eemom
Facebook sucks!! Facebook sucks!! Braaaaawk!!
There, that’s out of the way.
eta: too laaaaaaaate. ?
SiubhanDuinne (at some point in the indeterminate future to be known by my real name, Judith Mann Costello, but maybe not quite yet)
You are a goddess.
germy
I wonder if my local TV station will report this?
I know Mark Zuckerberg wanted to run for president. He did his national tour (“Fellow humans, I greet you”) but I wonder if his chances are slim now?
Gin & Tonic
As I posted downstairs, Rachel Maddow had a good segment last night on how Facebook allowed Russians to ratfuck Ukrainians back in 2014, when the Maidan protest movement led to the collapse of the Yanukovych regime and Russia invaded Crimea. The problems then were brought to Zuckerberg’s attention, repeatedly, by many people, up to and including the new President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. Zuckerberg told them to pound sand.
schrodingers_cat
@lgerard: No FB account here either, have never had one and don’t miss it. When I started getting friend requests from my school friend’s moms, I decided that it was not for me. This was way before even O ran the first time.
Gin & Tonic
@eemom: Would you use it if it cost you $19.95/mo?
Betty Cracker
@eemom: Damn — missed it by a minute!
Starfish
@germy: His chance was always slim because he acts like a robot pretending to be human. It is even slimmer now.
Corner Stone
I disagree with this slightly. I don’t think it was a lack of backbone or “both sides” mentality that caused the media to cover both candidates so poorly before the election. They clearly had a built in hate-on for HRC and the narratives were already written and easily available. Trump kept changing/charging the narrative and he drove clicks.
It was a fundamental betrayal of their duty as free press, not that they were afraid of being bashed from the right.
lgerard
@schrodingers_cat:
I just set up a private blog on Blogger for friends. We can share stuff and comment far from the madding crowd.
Major Major Major Major
You need to read everything Zuckerberg says and has for a while been saying through the lens that he’s a) kind of dumb (ETA or at least incredibly prone to ‘conventional wisdom’ thinking) and b) running for president.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic:
Obama also allegedly “warned” him of similar but Zuck still parroted the “crazy” line after the election. There is not really a lot of gray area here. FB knew what they were doing.
Shinobi
@lgerard: I’ve had a facebook account since it was a fun college thing. I’ll admit, it would be hard for me to disconnect now.
That said, you are not wrong. Every time someone complains about Facebook being mad about their nick name, or giving them trouble about their identity, I point out that the reason they want your identity is so that they can sell as much information about you as possible to advertisers. It’s not a mystery. If they can tie you to a real flesh and blood person (or y’know, a real plastic square with numbers on it) you are worth more money.
But it’s not just facebook. Even the weather app on your phone sells information about you, not to mention, the GPS in your car. That information is packaged and re sold to various companies who use it to figure out where you work, where you live and where you go in between. Some of those companies have very strong protections for your PII, and some of them don’t. It’s the wild west right now.
I’m currently working with a company that DOES have very strong privacy standards for this data. But I am under constant pressure to move over to another company with lower standards because they will provide data that appears richer. (You can track individual people’s movement throughout the day instead of aggregated numbers.) (It’s actually not that much richer because in order to do anything with it you have to aggregate it to useful levels anyway.)
Patricia Kayden
@lgerard: True dat. Have never been tempted to be on FB. Zuckerberg needs to admit that he screwed up and tell us what he’s going to do to avoid a repeat next year and in future election cycles.
MisterForkbeard
Facebook’s biggest concern has always been its bottom line – it will implement and defend truly awful practices if it feels like it’s profitable. Hence their numerous privacy policy revisions and other issues.
In this case, they’re going to continue making the case that they should do *nothing*, because it won’t cost them money. If they can hold themselves up as defenders of peaceful conversation and ideas, that’s a cherry on top. No one at facebook actually believes this crap.
@schrodingers_cat: I use it mostly for keeping in touch with a big family group, and I have lots of friends how use it to plan events. Otherwise, I mostly just lurk. It’s… occasionally hilarious and thought provoking, but there’s always some incredible idiots. In. Every. Post.
Amaranthine RBG
Yeah, as a longtime SF resident, I am still surprised by how insular and deluded so many people in the tech and tech dependent communties are.
Nearly all seem to actually believe that their shallow political preferences actually make them “good” liberals. As in “Hey, I support gay marriage, so what if my job is overseeing supply-chain integrity in some 3rd world shit hole where workers get paid a few dollars a day.” Or, “I do pro-bono work for the Nature Conservancy, nevermind that I also do legal work for Halliburton.”
Zuckerberg is all of this magnified 1000X.
rikyrah
@Gin & Tonic:
Just like he LIED about not knowing anything about Russians and ads for the 2016 campaign.
Then, suddenly, Bobby Three Sticks knocks on his door with a subpoena…and then it’s
“Oh, THOSE Russian Ads.”
Lips pursed.
JustRuss
I’m flabbergasted that anyone trusts Facebook for news. I guess it’s a great way to troll for people stupid enough to believe your propaganda….
trollhattan
Angry Doug Baldwin in his bestest calmest self takes CNN panel to the schoolhouse on what the players would like to see happen. As an aside, I’ve never seen Bennett quiet for that long before.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@germy:
@Starfish:
That’s right. Zuckerburg doesn’t have the charisma to run and win the Presidency. You think the Bernieleft is going to like corporate Zuckerbot when they didn’t like Clinton? Think again.
Betty Cracker
@lgerard: Meh. If you recognize the platform for what it is, weigh the value of its utility to you against the value it extracts from you, you can make an informed choice. Those who choose to use the platform and go in with their eyes wide open aren’t necessarily “chumps” — they’re making a trade off. Not the one you made, but that doesn’t make them stupid or gullible.
Major Major Major Major
Speaking of… (Clickhole)
Mel
And now there’s this.
What a nightmare.
Eljai
So Zuckerberg doesn’t get the difference between “running a platform for all ideas” and accepting rubles to help a foreign agent spread propaganda before our presidential election. Maybe the next time his punkass gets dragged before a Senate intel panel, someone can enlighten him.
MisterForkbeard
@Amaranthine RBG: Yep. I’ve had to spend a lot of time explaining how HIPAA and confidential employee data is *important*, or how it’s important that we don’t use our software in hellholes or allow features that could be plausibly misconfigured to hide law violations from the government.
I had a long, LONG conversation with a PM about a feature called “Multiple Accounting Books”. You can see where I was concerned. >_<
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mel:
Another good reason to avoid social media.
lgerard
@Shinobi:
I remember listening to a podcast a few years ago (maybe Radiolab) about some of the data mining practices of facebook. The claim was made that at any given time the average user was part of 6-8 research projects, most funded by outsiders without their knowledge. I don’t think anyone (including myself) has any real conception of the manipulation or the purposes this information is used for. You are nothing more then a lab rat.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: And they were okay because of all the $$$ they made.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: He’s going for Bloomberg 2.0.
@lgerard: @Betty Cracker: Betty is correct. Almost all of the products and services I use are morally compromised, in fact.
George Spiggott
@Corner Stone:
Ukraine was GRU’s beta test. USA 2016 election was the beginning of a staged rollout.
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/22/533951389/experts-suspect-russia-is-using-ukraine-as-a-cyberwar-testing-ground
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
1 Fuck Facebook
2 Quit connecting every goddamn data store to the Internet
3 Fuck Facebook
4 Fuck Facebook
5 Fuck Facebook
Patricia Kayden
@Mel: Schrodinger’s Cat covered that a few days ago. Beyond shocking how this country is slipping into fascism under the Trump regime.
germy
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: Never heard Bloomburg 1.0 speak much, but my impression was he was more likeable than Zuckerbot.
lgerard
@Betty Cracker:
Disagree!
I don’t think you can make an informed choice because you are not really aware of the “value it extracts from you”
They certainly are not telling you what they do and it goes beyond just micro targeting for advertisers
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy nut, but I guess I do!
Patricia Kayden
@Major Major Major Major: Lol!! That’s hilarious until you realize that it’s a great analogy for all the hacking going on now.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
But those who “go in with their eyes” wide open are a distinct minority of facebook users. That is why is is correct, generally, to say that facebook users are stupid and gullible.
And, as a matter of fact, the most stupid and gullible people are those who think that they have made an intelligent assessment of the trade-offs involved since they really don’t have a clue what information facebook collects on them or how it is used/shared.
Laziness drives people to facebook since there’s no function that cannot be duplicated by other platforms or actions.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@lgerard: Facebook knows way more about you than the NSA does.
Mnemosyne
I have a slight disagreement here:
The weakness is that the vast majority of strong free speech advocates are on the left, and it’s very easy to get their support by crying censorship.
White supremacists have weaponized free speech so they can use it against us, and no one on the left seems to have any clue how to fight it since “more speech” isn’t doing jack shit.
schrodingers_cat
@Patricia Kayden: USCIS already has a door stop on me, I saw it with my own eyes when I went for my citizenship interview. They already have all my info anyway.
ETA: Everyone at the citizenship interview and the ceremony was wonderful. Professional and courteous.
ETA2: I just read somewhere that the USCIS union is suing the administration for travel ban 3.0.
rikyrah
Trump administration’s ACA sabotage campaign intensifies
09/28/17 12:41 PM
By Steve Benen
In Mississippi, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has spent the last few years partnering with local advocacy groups to help lay the groundwork ahead of the open-enrollment period. Organizations and health care stakeholders could count on HHS officials to show up and make sure communities were well served.
Vox reported yesterday that things are different now that Donald Trump is in power.
Mitchell said this is “clearly sabotage,” and it’s hard to imagine anyone seriously arguing otherwise.
What’s more, Mississippi isn’t alone. BuzzFeed reported yesterday that HHS has 10 regional directors, and each of them “were told to not to participate in state-based events promoting open enrollment – a significant change from years past.”
It’s almost as if some in the Trump administration don’t want to help Americans receive the health care benefits they’re entitled to under the law.
ET
I think a lot of the social media and tech people are very, very naive about the intentions of some of their users. I am not talk about individuals saying bad things, I am thinking about state actors figuring out a way to game the system. Just because the techies didn’t intend that their creations were anything but fun, didn’t mean that once they reach a level like Twitter and Facebook have that bad actors were going to try and manipulate them.
Betty Cracker
@germy: This isn’t getting much media play, but that might be for the best. I was pleasantly surprised the Dem prevailed in the S FL district. Local Dem Party orgs from all over the state helped with phone banks, etc.
Patricia Kayden
@JustRuss: People trust Fox News and Breitbart for news which is even more incredible. I assume it’s younger folks who take “news” on FB at face value.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The consensus is your doing something wrong, so you take it as that means I am right, only with someone in the media biz would think that.
The difference is specific things are being pointed out as examples of Russian manipulation of Facebook, Trump the narcissist is just upset Facebook doesn’t kiss Trump’s south end 24/7
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t really think of anything else besides drowning them out by turning out more people at rallies than them and fierce, “shock and awe”-like counter-violence by security forces to cow them into submission in case they get rowdy. Other than that I’m at a loss.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: He is, by a country mile (though is that hard?), but I think Zuck is aiming for the same ‘cult of the savvy’ audience.
ruemara
1. I like FB. 2. I’ve always gone by a pseudonym. 3. I lock my privacy settings to the level I like. 4. Black women and men didn’t fall for this fake news, so there must be some exploitable trait that made the fake news easier to swallow for key populations. I wonder what it is. 5. If Zuckerberg doesn’t get consumer level pushback that this isn’t both sides, it’s Facebook enabling the destruction of democracy, he nor any other techbro with ducats will think they should change anything.
Amaranthine RBG
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Indeed. Might as well say “Both my doctor and my priest think I should give up cocaine – I must be doing something right!”
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: That’s like saying it’s better to contract chlamydia than gonorrhea.
raven
@lgerard: Who gives a fuck what you maintain?
schrodingers_cat
@Patricia Kayden: FWIW my ex-friend started becoming cray cray after she eschewed media because it is biased and started solely relying on FB for news.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Disgusting. They don’t care about the health of millions of Americans who depend on the ACA. This is not normal.
Shinobi
@lgerard: Oh for sure. Working in market research I know all about it. And the thing I said when they first started coming out with these results holds true. “You will ruin what people like about this if you keep doing this.”
I was not wrong. The thing is that while they have upped the experimentation they have also upped the “Engagement quotient’ alongside network effects. So now, no one really enjoys social media anymore, but we are addicted to it, and tethered to it.
That said, do you have a loyalty card? For anything? What about a credit card? An e-mail address? Do you ever click on ads?
Every single one of those things are used to track your behavior and conduct experiments to manipulate you. The loyalty cards are the oldest, if you “join” your grocery store, they track what you buy. And then they study how putting things on different shelves or offering different promotions changes your behavior. Facebook was honestly pretty late to the game on this. They recruited me for their market research group only 4 or 5 years ago. Amazon has been doing this just as long and your local grocer, at least twice as long.
Everyone wants to know how to get you or people like you to buy more stuff. They are using science to figure out how to best manipulate you. They’ve been doing it forever.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
One thing would be to stop knee-jerk reacting in support when the alt-right complains that a PRIVATE COMPANY is “censoring” them. People who create Facebook groups with names like “Kill All The Jews” should be fucking banned and their whining about “censorship” should be mocked and ignored.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: That sounds about right because FB is not where sensible people get their news.
lgerard
@raven:
i do, for one
schrodingers_cat
@Shinobi: But my grocery store is trying to sell me more seafood and produce not giving Russkies a list of my food allergies AFAIK.
Miss Bianca
@germy: Look, we’re trying to be all angsty here. Would you stop with the cheerful “Dems NOT in Disarray” updates?//
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Mnemosyne:
Off topic, but do you know if there will be a writers’ group this Sunday?
raven
@lgerard: Well big fucking deal. Don’t use it if you don’t like it.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@ruemara:
Speaking of which, while I was eating out last night, CNN was on one of the TVs and breaking news was that Russia had placed ads on Facebook promoting Black Lives Matter, but at the same time also playing them up as a risk as well. Some commenters downstairs were talking about Russia lauching efforts to divide nations all over the world so it can grow. This seems like apart of it.
Has there been any other nations confirmed to be targets besides the US? Is Russia only targeting western democracies or are they targeting regimes like China as well?
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Facebook is really, really good at targeting ads but, frankly, you have to be susceptible to BS to get targeted in the first place. The ads they send me on Facebook are all liberal, because that’s what I click on. I never click on any subject that I don’t want to see more of, even from friends and family.
It’s very easy to create a closed loop on Facebook where you only see what you want to see, and that’s the problem.
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: I get some news from Facebook, as in, some of my friends link to news articles which I then read and evaluate, usually only if I am familiar with the publisher. This is of course different from “getting my news” from Facebook.
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Well, China doesn’t have Facebook. But we know Russia has been active in England, France, and Germany.
Barbara
I have a Facebook account that I use to post what I think are the most helpful materials I can find on the ACA and its proposed repeal that are accurate and understandable to the non-specialist. However, as I use it I find it harder and harder to “enjoy” because it is increasingly clogged with materials, i.e., advertisements that I don’t like wading through.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Fat Chance of them trying in China where government censorship is alive and well.
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
What are you, Rip Van Winkle?
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I don’t know. I know TaMara has been traveling because I emailed her about something else. I may try to bug her later.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I agree but at the same time who gets to make those determinations? After all, we don’t think NFL players should be fired because they’re kneeling to protest police violence.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: True, people believe what they want to believe, when it plays to their biases.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
That comes after you fill out the Soylent Green donation card.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic:
I believe he’s from Ohio, which is the state equivalent.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
Personally haven’t heard of any.
Betty Cracker
@lgerard: I don’t use FB much at all. But these days, when I do, I only share stuff I wouldn’t be uncomfortable sharing on a projection screen in the middle of a mall on Christmas Eve. I don’t consider it a news source or use it as commerce platform. I’m reasonably confident they’re not getting information they can use to control my mind.
@Amaranthine RBG: I’m surprised you’re down with the broad brush approach since you bellow like a ruptured cow when folks generalize about gun owners. I guess consistency isn’t your strong suit.
Amaranthine RBG
@raven:
Yeah, and if you don’t like Breitbart, just don’t read it!
Dumbass.
TenguPhule
@Patricia Kayden:
We already have the sensible people, but we need a majority here.
Barbara
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Have you ever known someone who seemingly goes to the ends of the earth to avoid some kind of work and spends more effort trying to get out of work than they would if they had just done it right away? That’s Putin and economic growth. The idea that hurting other countries would be used as a calculated and intentional way to stoke growth would be amusing if it weren’t so terrifying in its implications for other countries. It’s like being able to brag about having the tallest tree only because you chopped down all the taller ones. What kind of pathetic loser would see that as progress?
Chyron HR
Gosh, you guys, it’s a platform for ideas about candidates in US elections that people in foreign countries are paying Facebook to promote. What do you have against ideas?
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
See? That’s exactly why I say the alt-right has weaponized free speech and is using it against us.
We have a principle that we think is important, and they’re exploiting that feeling. It’s not weakness or cowardice on our part, but we’re still getting rolled every day.
Why is kneeling to protest police violence equivalent to having a Facebook group called “Kill All the Jews”?
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: In *this very thread* I referred to the Russian FB attacks on Ukraine in 2014. Do you know how to read?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG:
And? What’s wrong with that advice? What can’t you possibly do to affect Breitbart that doesn’t involve something illegal?
TenguPhule
@Barbara:
Please put your tiny hand down, Mr. Trump.
Jack the Second
@germy: If you want to run for any office, from local to national, you need to consider your support from your party base, your personal support (the people who will vote for you because they know/like/trust/admire you), and the people you can win over during a campaign.
In some places, your party base is enough. Some people have such a large personal base they can win any race on that alone. And some people have such intense charisma they can come out of nowhere and win off the voters they gain campaigning.
Mark Zuckerberg has no inherent support from any party base, he has no personal following beyond that which every rich person gets (“He ran a business, he must know what he was doing!”), and I have no reason to believe he could attract a national following through campaigning.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
It isn’t a broad brush. It is accurate. Do you seriously maintain that most – ore even a significant minority of – facebook users have made an informed calculation weighing loss of their privacy and the corrosive effects of facebook against the convenience of posting vacation selfies? Seriously?
And the fact that your dragging in extraneous subjects here are a tell that you know the facts are not on your side.
lgerard
@Shinobi:
I am not explaining this well.
I’m not talking about marketing research or consumer profiles or anything like that.
I mean more basic, and perhaps more insidious research done without your knowledge or permission.
Like taking a group of 5 or 10 thousand users and presenting information in a certain way to see what happens next and comparing that to another group who has been manipulated in another way. This is the type of thing they will never tell you about, but seems to be ongoing. Perhaps this is how people with “exploitable traits” are found.
A Ghost To Most
@lgerard: Agreed. All your info are belong to the Mercers and Putin.
Facebook has turned into a huge propaganda machine.
lgerard
@raven:
Thank you for your kind suggestion
Amaranthine RBG
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Well, you can speak out to let people know that it is an unreliable, untrustworthy pile of shit.
How about this one: “Don’t like white supremacist rallies? Then don’t go to one.”
Same “logic.”
Mary G
When I got back from my cruise to Mexico last June, there was a big sign on the wall outside the checkpoint that you must provide passwords to all your social media and other accounts and allow copying of the contents of your phone if asked, or else you might not be allowed to enter.
I had a lot of time to read it, because they waved my pasty white self straight through, but questioned (just asked questions, no actual device searching) of all the people with me, because while they all had American passports, they were of Hispanic ancestry.
The members of the family possessing green cards decided not to go on the cruise because they feared being denied re-entry.
I hate Trump, Kelly, and the rest of the Republicans so much it’s unhealthy.
schrodingers_cat
@Mary G: Our immigration lawyer advised against going to India for a family wedding when the whole travel ban drama was unfolding.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think they’re equivalent. Full stop. I guess, like you said above, I think it’s important to stick to principles. I don’t want to be accused of hypocrisy. It seems like when private companies ban racists from their services that’s okay but when people we agree with than free speech is an issue again.
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: Now you’re qualifying the statement with “most.” Before, you were insisting that “anyone who has a facebook account is a chump” is an accurate statement.
ET
@ruemara: people do believe what they are predisposed/want to leaving them open to manipulation.
In particular for right now, Republicans with the Clinton hate mixed with the fact that most of them seem to like and even need to be told what to do, who to hate, what to think left them open to the Russians and other malefactors.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
Random and perhaps not germane, but I once heard an interview with a musician who lost a lot of years to a drug addiction but had gotten clean and was making a comeback. He said that he had had to work way harder to maintain his addiction than he ever did as a musician, so he actually found his comeback tour to be quite restful.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
No I don’t know how to read. Thanks for the condescending tone.
ETA: I happened to miss that comment.
Hobbes83
He lost any credibility/sympathy he was trying to generate in that post when he dropped the “both sides” bullshit. That argument/style of debate/reasoning is the reason Republicans and conservatives get away with the bullshit that they do, and it’s the main reason that our body politic is as dysfunctional as it is.
Barbara
@Mary G: Are they going to check the passwords right then and there? Can you change them as soon as you get to a computer inside the terminal? God, I don’t know how I would even remember my passwords. There are some sites where I basically reset my password every time I use it.
randy khan
@lgerard:
I perhaps am jaded about this because I work within the broad universe of media/communications companies, but in reality it’s extremely hard to prevent the collection and use of all sorts of data about you. Your phone provider knows everyone you call and how you use its services; your address provides a lot of information about your demographics (maybe not 100% accurate, but much more than most people think); the card you get from your grocery store keeps track of every purchase; etc., etc., etc. And, for that matter, the ad networks online are collecting data about all of us all the time unless you refuse all cookies, which hardly anyone does.
All of this is a long-winded way of getting to the point that, contra to what’s suggested above, I’m probably not giving Facebook much that I haven’t given other people, intentionally or otherwise. (And if the suggested posts I get in my feed are any indication, a lot of that supposed microtargeting is terrible – I have been served an ad about a prematurely-born hippo over and over again for the past two weeks, and I promise you it’s a topic of no interest to me, which is true of about 90% of the ads Facebook serves to me.) In my case, I find a lot of useful benefits from Facebook, including reconnecting with people I’d lost over the years and, lately, using it to encourage political activism on health care, immigration, and other topics. (I think it’s worked a little, at least – I keep getting people telling me they’ve called or contributed, or whatever.)
But YMMV, and that’s okay, too.
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Both Germany and Poland have been the targets of carefully organized Russian disinformation campaigns of the ‘spread false rumors that immigrants are raping your daughters and the government is letting them’ style.
@ruemara:
I’m finding, to my unfortunate lack of surprise, that even among white liberals the most common attitude is that while they’re consciously anti-racism, most racism in practice seems like a merely reasonable level of evil. ‘Agree to disagree’ level. To be frank, black lives do not matter to them. When you cross over to the conservative side, that’s when the idea of black lives mattering actively pisses them off.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
On second thought, perhaps the point is that some ideas are so odious (read:dangerous to society at large, such as antisemitism and fascism) that they have no place in society at all.
smintheus
Cancel your Faceblech account and tell them why. That at least is something that Zuckerblech will listen to.
A Ghost To Most
@Betty Cracker: When you accept the fact that the Mercers scraped the data of everyone on FB, and gave it to the Russians, they were all “chumped”, whether they wanted to or not.
When you get a service for free, you are the product.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Like I said, that’s exactly what they’re using against us, and that’s why it’s so insidious and hard to defeat.
And let’s be clear — I’m not saying I have some magical way of defeating this so that we still have free speech but the ones fomenting violence and hatred have to shut up. In fact, I have no idea how to get out of this trap, which is why I find it so frustrating.
I’m mostly trying to point out that we haven’t been trapped by our weakness and by being too apologetic. We’ve been trapped by our sense of fairness and our moral values, and that’s what is being used against us. People with no scruples can manipulate people who do have scruples.
randy khan
@Shinobi:
Ah, Amazon. I remember early on how everyone was impressed by the Amazon recommendation engine (which, in truth, was very good very quickly), but of course it worked by mining all the information Amazon had collected about you – and not just your book purchases – to make the recommendations.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Many do make this argument, and I think they’re wrong.
ETA: To clarify, they’re making this argument as a rationale for banning said speech, which is what I think is wrong.
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I think context is important. These are not merely ‘ideas’ being discussed rationally. They’re deliberate campaigns to abuse the system, intimidation and harassment of the vulnerable, and pervasive enough to actually have policy impact, even if not being fully implemented. Those things are all unacceptable, and they are inextricably tied to letting racists openly discuss their ideas. The racists know that, much better than the merely disinterested white liberals.
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
You’re confused. I never said, let alone insisted that “’anyone who has a facebook account is a chump’ is an accurate statement'”
Here is my first post re the ignorant chumpiness of facebook users:
So, no, I am not now retreating from anything I said previously.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps you could answer the question I asked you:
Major Major Major Major
@A Ghost To Most:
What? No they didn’t.
rikyrah
Read this thread. I believe every word. about Puerto Rico and this WH.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AynRandPaulRyan/status/913426909282713600
Betty Cracker
@A Ghost To Most:
Gosh, that sounds so familiar… ?
A Ghost To Most
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, they did.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
What’s wrong with that rationale as long as it’s not the gov doing the banning and they’re banning the right (wrong) kind of speech that forments hatred and violence?
Like a Facebook group by the name of “Kill All Jews and their Libcuck Allies”?
ruemara
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Multiple. Snowden is one of the largest promoters of Catalan independence in Spain. 2nd being Assange. WTF do they know about Catalan? Russian fingerprints were on the Le Pen presence in the election, using anti-muslim sentiment to promote her. They worked in Germany. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some of the nationalism in Modi’s India about beef eating wasn’t a tactic. They’re undermining as many democracies and countries as possible. I guess they believe they’re going to win while standing on top of the rubble.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Frankensteinbeck just said what I was trying to get at:
That may be part of the problem in battling them. We talk about the issue as though it’s merely a free speech issue — different ideas in the marketplace — while the other side is deliberately manipulating the levers to get people to act.
Gin & Tonic
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Russian cyber-warfare against Ukraine has been in the news for years, and the subject of front-page posts on this board more than once. Their attempts to manipulate the recent French election were front-page news for months. Hell, one of the leading candidates in that election went to Moscow and was photographed shaking hands with Putin. Their attempts to manipulate the German election were front-page news and the subject of a hearing by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
If you were unaware of all this, it was only logical to conclude that you don’t know how to read.
bystander
Just saw on WaPo the Julia-Louis Dreyfus has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s handling it with the intelligence and expansiveness you would expect from Dreyfus.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
Defeating bad speech with good speech requires a certain amount of courage (or some amount of asbestos skin, at least). It also requires the willingness to say directly that something is evil or awful, or whatever the appropriate description might be. I won’t say this is a magic bullet, but a few months ago I completely shut down a right-wing troll who suggested that undocumented people trying to cross the border should be shot on sight by telling him he was evil. They just don’t expect that stuff – they expect long-winded, reasoned responses that do not go to the gut.
I also think that some on the left don’t entirely understand free speech in the sense that they are willing to go along with the idea that it means speaking without consequences. It’s true that the government can’t censor or punish you for pure speech, but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to spew hatred without your views affecting, say, your employment or whether anyone will speak to you again. A lot of people don’t seem to get that.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
Or maybe I just forgot or I haven’t been following it that closely. I’m not on here every day.
Julie
In her essay “Generation Why?”, Zadie Smith captures why at least some of us find Facebook to be annoying:
“It feels important to remind ourselves, at this point that, Facebook, our new beloved interface with reality, was designed by a Harvard sophomore with a Harvard sophomore’s preoccupations. What is your relationship status? (Choose one. There can be only one answer. People need to know.) Do you have a “life”? (Prove it. Post pictures.) Do you like the right sort of things? (Make a list. Things to like will include movies, music, books and television, but not architecture, ideas or plants.)”
Seems like neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook have evolved very far past the level of an immature college student.
Mnemosyne
Along the lines of what I’m talking about is that recent story from The NY Times magazine about how an organized campaign of fake news was used to terrorize a small town.
Was that protected free speech? Why or why not?
randy khan
@Amaranthine RBG:
FWIW, I think at least a significant minority of Facebook users have concluded that they don’t really have much privacy in the first place, so they’re not giving up too much. That may not be a fully reasoned analysis, but it’s a pretty common sentiment.
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: Are you denying that you edited your first comment? If so, don’t waste any more of my time with your bullshit.
As for your question, I never made the claim that most FB users make an informed calculation, just that some do, rendering absolute statements about FB users’ universal chumpitude inherently inaccurate, IMO. Therefore, it’s not my obligation to “maintain” anything.
lgerard
@randy khan:
I don’t disagree with you at all. I also realize that despite not having a facebook account there is a very complete consumer profile of myself maintained by credit bureaus, advertisers and outfits like Google.
What I am saying is your conception of what use facebook puts your account to may not be complete.
A few years ago there was a story in the news about how facebook manipulated users by presenting them with either “happy” or “sad” stories to gauge their reaction. This was not just a one time thing, but part of the ongoing use of their database, many times by third parties to conduct social and psychological research without your knowledge or permission.
That might lead you to ask “why am I getting these hippo pictures?”
Amaranthine RBG
@randy khan:
The other thing that is maddening about FB and twitter’s argument that they are merely platforms and the way to combat bad ideas is to just make reasoned posts fails to recognize how much of the problem is caused by bots and also funded by foreign governments.
What is Jane CItizen to do, spend all day staring at twitter and responding to the thousands of BS tweets? And if someone created counter-bots that posted canned content anytime key words appeared, then you are just going to have a virtually unusable platform.
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: Some readers may be aware that I’m in Eastern Europe reasonably often. Call me a tinfoil-hat nut, but I have a phone that I use there, that I keep with a trusted friend. It doesn’t come back to the US with me, and I don’t take my US phone there. So while Global Entry sure makes the CIS process quick and easy, if some guy did come up to me and say “can I see your phone, please?” I just say “sorry, don’t have one.”
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think of it as an issue of the marketplace of ideas, at least not in the microcosm. I don’t anticipate Nazi ideology being 100% squashed merely because it’s insane and other ideas are not insane. You shouldn’t fight them with opposing ideas, because as you say it’s not about ideas. Everybody knows their ideas. Engage with them on the fronts they’re actually fighting on. Causing a ruckus about a speech at Berkeley just sells books for Milo. What brought him down (the first time at least) was digging up some good old-fashioned pro-pederasty clips. ETA which is to say, you can fight dirty, you don’t have to have a “Nazis: good or bad?” counter-debate.
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I’m talking about people who think the government should ban said speech.
ETA: Can somebody tell me where this “facebook group called Kill All Jews” thing you’re all referencing comes from? Last I saw, the way the targeting worked was:
1. Somebody puts the string “kill all jews” in their profile as their career
2. Facebook allows you to target people based on what they put down as their career
3. Facebook ads targeted at people who put down “kill all Jews” as their career.
Actual Facebook groups are policed in a way that the line items in your profile like that are not.
No Drought No More
Zeynep Tufekci was in the running for the character’s name as played by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. Or it should have been, anyway.
Gin & Tonic
@lgerard: Every provider with a major Web presence does that kind of A/B testing all day long.
lgerard
@Betty Cracker:
Well maybe the term “chump” was a bit harsh
As you can tell, this subject is one of my pet peeves
Steeplejack (phone)
Ready to volunteer for the Provençe troll farm right now! I’ll even bring my own computer.
The Ancient Randonneur
There have been many offers of guidance for Facebook as it tackles the growing number of fake news outlets. Jeff Jarvis (professor of media) and John Borthwick (of Betaworks) proposed 15 good ideas, though most of them lack any sort of technical guidance on how these could be achieved.
A Ghost To Most
@lgerard: They were unwillingly chumped.
sharl
She certainly is. Her tweet accompanied by her thoughtful and dignified short note made me weepy. Bless her* (*or whatever it is we nonbelievers are supposed to say…).
trollhattan
@bystander:
Oooh, here’s hoping it was caught early and she recovers completely. LOVE JL-D!
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: RSS does not need Russian help for insidious propaganda. The beef thing has been their favorite hobby since their inception almost 100 years ago. The problem in India is different, the opposition parties have shown themselves completely inept time after time. BJP was the literally the last party standing after every other party got its chance. In India with a few individual exceptions, politics is a cesspool.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: I figure that is the way I would go as well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC muted, because Jethrene is up there lying and bullying, just looked up and saw “WH ‘not sure’ if Jared and Ivanka have used private planes as WH officials”
26 hours till the Friday news dump?
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
We already have a story about how fake news was used to manipulate people in a small town. How do we engage with them on that front to defuse propaganda campaigns like that?
And, again, I’m not being sarcastic. I genuinely don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do to fight that.
And if Berkeley would stop bowing to pressure that says that “free speech” demands that they let Milo speak there, he would have a harder time finding an audience. Again, that’s what I mean when I say that the alt-right is weaponizing our principles and using them against us. They know we believe in free speech, so they bombard us with hate speech because they know we can’t defend against it.
catclub
@Jack the Second:
So how was Trump in 2015 different from this?
trollhattan
@Steeplejack (phone):
You take Provençe, I’m eyeballing the Amalfi Coast or Santorini.
bystander
@trollhattan: I always get her hyphen wrong. And I shouldn’t after all the years of looking at her family business. (Long before Seinfeld, not a case of stalking but watching a client’s competitor.)
Cheryl Rofer
It occurred to me this morning that there is a working analogy to the fixes needed to social media. It’s called export controls for nuclear-related technology. That’s pretty wonky and, when it’s working right, pretty boring. But there’s an interesting story behind it.
Back in the late eighties, a company called Leybold, which makes vacuum equipment for research and manufacturing, sold vacuum pumps to Iraq, supposedly for use in the oil industry. After the 1991 Iraq war, those vacuum pumps were found in equipment for enriching uranium.
Leybold was mortified, and I think may have been fined by the German government. They then put together a program to make sure they didn’t do something like that again. Mostly it is a matter of knowing their customers and the uses they intend for Leybold equipment. They are very open about it, and have made the structure of the program available to other companies.
I think there is a lot of similarity to the problems of the social media companies. I’m going to be working this out with others who know about export controls and the Leybold program, to advocate to Congress and the social media companies.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
I didn’t think I could love JLD more, but she’s wearing a pussyhat in her Twitter profile picture. ?
Amaranthine RBG
@Betty Cracker:
I may have edited parts of it right after I posted it to clean it up but I certainly didn’t go back later and change anything after you responded.
It was another poster – lgerard- who said “I have always maintained that anyone who has a facebook account is a chump.”
I made my first post about FB chumps at 2:44. You made your mistaken post at 3:11 that I was qualifying my previous post. Your post was after the edit window for my post expired.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Trump had white supremacy. A guy named Zuckerberg who’s married to an Asian-American will not have that constituency behind him.
catclub
@Julie:
except for the fantastically successful $270B company.
Obdurodon
Point #1 (people and beliefs): I have no idea whether Mark Zuckerberg truly believes in making people more connected, but I know that I do. I’ve met hundreds of other Facebook employees creating and maintaining that platform, and most of them do too. I’ve also seen things work out that way as a user. Without Facebook, I would probably still have no contact with my father’s entire side of the family, and my relationships with many past friends and coworkers would be even more tenuous than they already are. Doesn’t any of that count at all?
Point #2 (public spaces): Like Google and Twitter and every blog host or forum site ever, Facebook’s content prioritization and ad targeting can best be described as *amoral*, not *immoral*. It’s all about the eyeballs and the clicks and the bucks, which you might find objectionable but it’s not the same as favoring a particular agenda. (BTW a lot of us would *love* to find a way to provide the service other than via ads, but we haven’t found any and those giant data centers are kind of expensive.) Maybe you feel that if Facebook is going to make what amounts to a “common carrier” defense then they should be regulated as one. Fine. It’d be stupid for me to argue about that. However, please keep in mind that regulating content without abridging free speech is kind of an unsolved problem, and heavy-handed attempts to regulate the vast flows through social media (because finer distinctions and labor-intensive approaches won’t work at that scale) would almost certainly create new problems.
Point #3 (content quality): As I’ve said many times, your experience on social media is largely what you make of it. If your feed is full of garbage, it’s because you’re following people and pages that post garbage. Find better people and pages. My feed is doing just fine, thanks for asking, because I actively curate it. I mute or unfollow sources that make me unhappy, and balance out the serious stuff with quite a few humor pages. Arguably that means I’ve created my own little filter bubble, but that’s the side I’m willing to err on. When I want to see other perspectives I go other places. I don’t make angry trolling the dominant strain of my day-to-day reading, regardless of whether it comes for right or left.
Maybe some of you think I’m a chump, I’ve drunk too much Kool Aid, I’m evil, whatever. I’m trying to engage here, show that there is a less Manichean way of looking at this. I’d like nothing better for fake news to be stamped out, for advertising to be less of a force in our lives, for everyone to enjoy and be fulfilled by their online experience. I’m just a bit wary of some “cures” I see people prescribing. Maybe let’s discuss some *realistic* ideas for how to solve these problems and reduce division instead of just hammering on new fault lines.
randy khan
@lgerard:
It’s not exactly news that companies in Internet businesses constantly conduct tests on their users/customers to tweak their targeting. (For instance, there was a spate of stories on A/B testing a few years back.) Heck, it’s now common in political fundraising as well.
Mind you, I’m not saying that most users or even a significant minority of them, are aware of this. I’m just saying it’s not a surprise to me. As I said, I’m involved in the broader industry, so I have a specific interest in these things.
Spanky
I posted this in an earlier thread today:
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Trump also had a natural political party affiliation on account of being an insane racist and nativist. Zuckerberg… doesn’t, and he’s not a natural Dem because (I assume) he’s pro-‘fiscal responsibility’, anti-union, and pro-monopoly.
Another Scott
What all these companies understand, and what they only understand, is money.
BBC – German law imposing 50M Euro Fines for Not Taking Down Illegal Content – including threatening, etc., content.
That is what is going to get Zuckerberg’s attention. Until we’re willing to change the law, or simply stop using it, the USA is going to be under threat from outfits like this that only care about money.
These companies tell us every day – through their actions – that they only care about money. We need to start believing them.
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@Gin & Tonic:
I would worry that if I said that, they wouldn’t believe me and would initiate a strip search. If I really wanted to avoid problems, I would have a cheap flip phone with prepaid minutes, and make some self-deprecating comment about technophobia.
Spanky
@Spanky: And more specifically:
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
Lips Pursed.
……………………………………………………………………
GOP rep says deficit talk was just an Obama-era ‘talking point’
09/28/17 02:48 PM
By Steve Benen
The debate over the budget deficit and “fiscal responsibility” runs like clockwork: when there’s a Democratic president, Republicans pretend to care about balancing the budget; and when there’s a Republican president, the GOP drops the pretense.
Indeed, it’s one of the few constants in American politics. When George W. Bush was president, Republicans put two wars, two tax cuts, Medicare expansion, and a Wall Street bailout on the national credit card – and made no effort to pay for any of it. Dick Cheney declared that “deficits don’t matter” and Orrin Hatch said it was “standard practice not to pay for things” in the Bush era.
Then Barack Obama was elected and many of those same Republicans decided the fate of Western civilization was dependent on balancing the budget.
There have been some good pieces published lately highlighting the cynicism of the GOP’s shift in posture, and the Republicans’ indifference to the deficit as their tax plan comes together, but today’s New York Times article included a quote of particular interest
Major Major Major Major
Huh, just got a DSCC fundraising email from Bernie Sanders, I don’t know if I’ve seen one of those before.
bystander
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: OK “Jethrene” made me laugh. She does remind me of Max Baer Jr, now that you mention it.
Also easy on the cedilla. “C” is always soft before “e” so no need for the ornamentation.
A Ghost To Most
how they did it.
trollhattan
@Amaranthine RBG:
“Captain, would you like these deck chairs straight across or in a chevron formation, like yesterday?”
–Titanic deckhand
schrodingers_cat
@A Ghost To Most: Isn’t Intercept another Russian propaganda shop/
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, ever since the Snowden debacle I don’t trust their reporting on this sort of thing at all.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
There isn’t a Facebook group by that exact name. However, “Pinochet’s Anti-SJW Beach Club” is a real one that a NYT reporter found.
lgerard
@randy khan:
I’m not really thinking about which soap ad do you prefer or which cat picture will get you to click on it.
I think that there is a whole world of more basic research being done using facebook’s data by third parties you don’t know and for purposes that you are not aware of.
I realize that sounds vague, but that is because i am not really an expert in this field and because this is something that is not made public for obvious reasons.
This is the crux of my distaste for facebook, what I see as basic dishonesty in their opaqueness.
sharl
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Putin has multiple reasons so sow chaos within and among western nations. There’s evidence of Russian intervention in the recent German election to further aggravate already existing islamophobia within the population, which was already ramping up due to Merkel’s immigration-friendly policies (e.g., toward Syrian refugees). In fact the nativist islamophobic AfD party made significant gains in that election, from zero seats in the Parliament to 94 (12.6%) – info from Wikipedia, I didn’t check the arithmetic. Mission accomplished for Vlad, I guess.
NATO has long been a worry for Putin and other Russian leaders and nationalists, so messing with NATO members and alliance operations seems to be one particular goal.
J R in WV
@MisterForkbeard:
PM = Prime Minister?
PM = Publicity Manager?
PM = Project Manager?
PM = ??? what exactly ??
I do see the problem with double-bookkeeping, as opposed to double-entry bookkeeping. Amazing you had to explain it, suspect the PM (whatever that is) knew all along that there were moral, ethical and legal issues, didn’t care about any of that if it was something he could use/sell. Could the PM have been snarking you, and I don’t mean in a funny way, in a conspiratorial way??
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: that name is more than a little different from Kill All Jews.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: More recently, the arrest of the whistle blower who sent them documents
ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the answer you’d like to hear. Zuckerbutt has gotten rather rich doing what he does, bet I’d get rich way before he changes. What do you think the odds are for that?
Betty Cracker
@Amaranthine RBG: As you’re probably aware, when you open a page, it remains static until you refresh it, either by manually refreshing it or performing some action that automatically refreshes it, like posting a reply. The post you edited was changed in a material way — you went back and qualified an absolute statement. Now you’re trying to gaslight me — “you’re confused” (#108) — by implying that you never made a broad brush statement. It’s dishonest bullshit, and I’ll waste no more time on it.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: I was speaking specifically to how they were apparently physically incapable of accurately describing the contents of the Snowden leaks. They severely exaggerated the NSA’s capabilities and knowledge.
Amaranthine RBG
@trollhattan:
“I don’t know what is going on but I iz just gonna wade into the argument because I wants me a seat at the big boy table.”
Obdurodon
@Amaranthine RBG:
“Don’t” is pretty close to the right answer IMO. This has been the rule since before Facebook and Twitter, on other forums and before that on Usenet. Engaging with trolls usually just raises their exposure and gets them a bigger audience. I’m not saying ignore them completely. *Someone* has to challenge their lies and twisted logic, but it doesn’t have to be everyone and there’s an art to it. The trick is to maximize the ratio of damage you do to their argument vs. surface area you give them on which to build another BS response. Essays are anathema. Short, pithy, and deadly is the way to go, but wielding that stiletto is hard work. Get that head shot, yield your position in the line to someone else, then go read or create some better content while you wait for your next turn.
A Ghost To Most
@schrodingers_cat: Could be, but there are plenty of other articles on how it went down. Here’s another one:
vice
and
guardian
Pretending it didn’t happen is not useful.
Corner Stone
@Obdurodon: You curate it? You curate your feed? GTFOH
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: You know how you overcome and win against people like this?
Ditch your scruples. When other people abandon them and use yours to ruin your life (and as with ACA repeal, literally trying to kill people) you’re not under any obligation to deal with them fairly.
I know a lot of people here don’t like me saying this but I’m going to keep saying it. Ditch this high-road bullshit. It will get us all killed.
J R in WV
@Mel:
DHS wants very strongly to be better at their job than the SS was, than the KGB was, than the Stassi was. And they are prepared to work very hard to get there, no matter what the Constitution
saysUSED to say.Amaranthine RBG
@Obdurodon:
I would agree with the first part were these actual human actors. But when you have bots that take pre-packaged posts and make thousands or millions of posts/tweets/whatever, hitting ignore doesn’t counter the message.
randy khan
@lgerard:
It’s hard to convince someone that I’m aware of something that you can’t even really describe, but I’ll just say that I have a very good idea of how data can be used and the kinds of ways a company might experiment with it. I’ve been working on related issues for a very long time.
Cheryl Rofer
@Obdurodon: Thanks for your contribution. I agree that we have to be looking for solutions. See my comment at 143.
Obdurodon
The idea of DHStasi monitoring and modifying everyone’s social media is far scarier than anything else mentioned here. Yes, they’re incompetent, but even in that incompetence they can do more damage than any company.
Chyron HR
@The Moar You Know:
Another day is swiftly drawing to an end, and I can’t help but notice that once again no Trumps, Kochs and/or Mercers got into exploding automobiles. Maybe you’re more infirm of purpose than you let on.
Major Major Major Major
@A Ghost To Most: thanks for those, I remember them now. Note that they don’t include any mention of the “30 million people” scoop that the intercept hangs its hat on. Which was more or less the objection I had.
eemom
@Betty Cracker:
THANK YOU Mrs. Cracker. I know I hide it well, but I am SO very sick of the holier than thou bullshit from the anti-FB mouth-foaming fanatical zealot contingent.
Take your schtick to a protest somewhere and leave us chumps the fuck alone, freakazoids.
The Moar You Know
@Obdurodon: I’d rather have Satan himself posting here. You go straight to the pie filter.
That’s “curating my feed” in your language, scumbag.
trollhattan
@Amaranthine RBG:
You’re the boss, Sparky now go finish your homework or no Ovaltine.
A Ghost To Most
@randy khan: After a 40+ year career in IT as a programmer, Oracle DBA, and database design expert, I also know how data can be used/misused. That knowledge was enough to wave me off most social media. I knew that sooner or later, all the info would be scraped by someone, and put to nefarious use. Turns out I was right (it happens).
Obdurodon
@Amaranthine RBG:
Fair point. At risk of suggesting a technical solution to a social problem, which as a techie I know is fraught with peril, what if we took a page from the anti-spam playbook? Create shared block lists to filter out the crap *collaboratively*, no company or government dictating anything. Sure, the faithful will still see and believe the garbage, but I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that entirely without turning into a censor state. The best we can hope for is contain it to their tribe, keep it from infecting the larger discourse.
Obdurodon
@The Moar You Know:
I knew I’d get at least one response like that. Ah, well. Have a nice day.
A Ghost To Most
@Obdurodon: Isn’t that what verrit is attempting (poorly) to do?
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: No idea about Vice News, but Guardian was batting for BS long after his innings was over.
Major Major Major Major
@Obdurodon: You gotta admit, it was pretty sinister of you to cultivate a comment history here months (years?) in advance of this thread just so we’d take you seriously when the moment came.
@schrodingers_cat: Guardian has an awful lot of lefty garbage but I trust them a hell of a lot more than the intercept, which I actively distrust.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: that notion of export control would be an excellent one for social media – the question is, given that the current occupant of the White House owes his position to the fact that there *were* no such controls on social media, where is the pressure going to come from for social media companies to clean up their act?
The Moar You Know
@Chyron HR: I know, right? DAMMIT.
Hey, seriously: I’m not advocating murder. I’m just saying, stop treating these people fairly. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Stop sticking up for them. They’ll never do any of this for you.
Gin & Tonic
@Obdurodon:
Only someone with absolutely no knowledge of the methods of the Stasi or the KGB could write this sort of thing.
Amaranthine RBG
@A Ghost To Most:
Are you sure you made an informed decision? What about not being able to post pictures of your cat so that everyone in you high school graduating class can see???
/s
A Ghost To Most
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t where that number came from. Some of those articles state that CA has info on every American; much more on FB users.
Major Major Major Major
@A Ghost To Most: They get that number from some Cambridge Analytica goober boasting about it, in what sounds to me like typical bluster.
ETA: Sorry, that’s where the ‘every American’ thing came from. Dunno about the 30 million.
A Ghost To Most
@Amaranthine RBG: Your’e a clown who supported Bernie, whose campaign was bolstered by the Russians, just like Jill Stein.
Amaranthine RBG
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s a great slogan for the DHS – “Hey, we’re not as bad as the Stasi!”
… yet
Obdurodon
@A Ghost To Most:
Dunno, I’ll look into it. Thanks!
Amaranthine RBG
@A Ghost To Most:
Oh Hi Moron,
Is it that time of day where people go back to rehashing the 2016 Democratic Primary? Lots of fun times there for constipated dorks, I guess.
(And, if you look back through my posts you will see that I 1) gave the maximum personal donation to Clinton, 2) contributed to super-PACs supporting her beyond that, 3) worked phone lines for 2 months before the election for Clinton, and 4) took two weeks vacation to drive over the Sierras to live in a crappy motel in Reno to campaign for Clinton and Cortez-Masto.
So fuck you very much, you ignorant shithead.
Major Major Major Major
@Obdurodon: No, verrit sucks. A better model is something like wikipedia.
Fair Economist
@Amaranthine RBG:
And this is a problem how?
lgerard
@randy khan:
I am not really talking about companies and commercial uses.
What was Cambridge Analytica selling?
How many facebook users consented to be a part of their database?
Again, my objection is to the benign image face book presents, that of a very useful platform with real benefits, and oh yeah, we have to pay the bills so we will help Nabisco sell you Oreos.
There seems to be a lot more to it then that
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major:
I usually rely on wikipedia to curate my facts.
Amaranthine RBG
@Fair Economist:
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think the world would be a much better place if facebook and twitter burst into flames tomorrow.
sharl
@Obdurodon: I appreciate a current Facebook employee/contractor weighing in here; thank you for that. I will note that Zeynep Tufekci has expressed a frustration with “wistful former FB people” offering ideas for improvements, when those same folks apparently ignored her and others in her area while they were still at FB and might have been able to influence the business model. (As a current FB’er, she’d probably like to talk to you. ?)
Here are a couple recent tweets from her exchange with a former FB product manager who offered suggestions for improvements in a recent Wired piece.
Those two tweets are from the same thread, in response to Antonio Garcia Martinez’s recent piece in Wired, “I helped create Facebook’s ad machine. Here’s how to fix it.” I would link it directly, but there is a 3-link limit here, and I’ll get thrown into moderation purgatory if I exceed it. The Wired piece is available at the start of the tweet thread though. His bio from the Wired piece:
I’ve never been on FB, but my assumption regarding one big source of the problem are folks like, say, a sweet older woman using FB to chat with friends and family, share photos, and maybe search for a good price for a ceramic armadillo for her garden. Then a “news” story shows up: “BREAKING: New report shows that Hillary Clinton strangled Vince Foster with piano wire, then ate his raw liver.” The dear sweet FB user clicks on ‘Share’ so her pals can also sees it, then goes on with sharing family news and photos. Shit like that will slowly eat yer brain, without you realizing it…
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, I pied0 Amaranthine RBG some time ago, and only occasionally click the little chevron to see what it is trolling about today. Other commenters’ comments are often interesting and people here treat obvious trolls, well, entertainingly. . Amaranthine RBG is one of those who deliberately starts feuds in a thread, and will lie just to pour fuel on the fire. Just do it, you know you want to.
Although I do understand that as a host you probably feel responsible for watching those tools… so don’t take my advice seriously… at least not this advice ;-)
bluefoot
@randy khan: I really don’t get this. I work at a biotech company, and I can’t do something like conduct a survey without having to write a proposal, have it reviewed, get IRB approval and obtain informed consent from any potential participant. How is experimentation on the internet okay?
Amaranthine RBG
@bluefoot: Because you agreed to it in the terms of service. You read those, right?
Amaranthine RBG
@J R in WV:
“only occasionally”
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: Aww, we’re pie buddies!
@bluefoot: I mean, it’s the same principle as sending out two different mailers and seeing which one gets you more donations, then using that to inform future mailers.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
We know Facebook and the Mercers were direct collaborators. It’s on video from people who participated. The solution to Facebook is to have Zuckerberg in an orange jumpsuit for 30 years.
The Moar You Know
@J R in WV: I loled. Literally the first one into my filter. And I have less than zero interest in what it says. It burned all the bridges here a long time ago.
There have been plenty more since. Thank you for the pie filter, Alain and Cleek!
Corner Stone
Mark Meadows is a domestic terrorist. He should be arrested, tried and jailed for the remainder of his natural life.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
@Corner Stone:
Me too. But the other day I was looking various stuff up, and found a clear, obvious contradiction between one Wiki article about a person, a bragging most/longest/jump highest kind of statement, which was way contradicted by the next article, where the dates made it obvious the first article was pulling dirty facts out of someone’s butt.
I wanted to fix it, but, really if would have taken quite a bit of research (probably off line) to pin the facts down, and then some hireling would have put it back the way they wanted it the next day.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: They still manage to have fewer errors than most actual encyclopedias.
J R in WV
Julia Louis-Dreyfus — was she in Seinfeld? I never watched the show all the way through an episode. Tried it from time to time, always reacted with revulsion. She seems like a nice real person in real life, and I’m sorry she has a violently horrible disease.
Fuck cancer!!!
Obdurodon
@sharl:
Yeah, I follow Zeynep too. She’s awesome. :)
As for your dear-old-woman example, that’s a tough one. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we can’t educate her to filter that out *herself*. That might be the very-long-term solution, but it has no role in a present-focused discussion. Let’s also leave out the “shut them all down” Luddite hissy-fit. Ain’t gonna happen. The technological genie is out of the bottle. Social media will continue to exist, and continue to be a tool that propagandists twist to their own ends. Full stop, mic drop. Such a counter-factual idea is a waste of our time.
So, who *else* do we trust to keep that liver-eater propaganda from reaching our dear old aunt? Seems like nobody trusts Facebook that much, and Facebook doesn’t want the responsibility either. Once they take on the role of moderator, legal liability will make it impossible for them to stay in business so that’s just a thin veneer on the “shut them all down” shite-pile. Do we want the government deciding either who can post or what they can post? HELL no. See “DHStasi” above. The *only* clear path I see is to do this socially and collaboratively, outside of government. Get auntie on whichever block list you like best, just as you do with her anti-spam block list and anti-malware programs. Maybe there’s some *logistical* support that Facebook or others could provide, tools and interfaces and such, but they wouldn’t and can’t be the ones actually making the decisions. And yes, it will be a never-ending arms race, just like malware and spam. Like those, though, it will be an arms race fought by the community itself, not by corporations or governments.
BTW, I think the spam analogy is worth exploring some more. There are many similarities in terms of the problems, solutions, and problems with solutions, all backed by many person-years of effort and experience. Even if I’m wrong about the exact details, I guarantee that “the answer” to fake news is going to look a lot like what we’ve already done for spam.
Corner Stone
@Obdurodon: I might have missed it, and forgive me if I did. But what I did not see in your post is “profit motive”. Compensation dictates behavior.
Let’s see your considered and thoughtful approach on how to structure the actual business to put in place something besides asking auntie to do all the work.
Corner Stone
@Obdurodon:
Enron no longer exists. Neither does Arthur Andersen in its past form. What is so special about FB?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: AFAIK Obdurodon meant, as they said, “social media”, not “facebook”.
Another Scott
Relatedly, TheRealDeal:
Something’s really fishy about the 666 deal as well. It may be just the culmination of the housing bubble froth, but even for those times it’s an outlier.
Of course since Javanka is desperate to salvage something out of it, and bills are coming due, and the only people willing to do business with him seems to be foreigners, well Mueller is rumored to be very interested…
Donnie and Javanka should review 1 Timothy 6:10
Cheers,
Scott.
Kathleen
@Barbara: Republicans. That’s why they expend so much effort trying to prevent “those people” from voting. Or having affordable health care. Or having the temerity to breathe.
Gelfling 545
@Amaranthine RBG: No always, but most times if everybody thinks you’re wrong, you’re wrong.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: I still think that 666 Fifth Avenue is the sort of address that, like, the Antichrist would own.
randy khan
@bluefoot:
It’s not in academia, and it’s not regulated by the FDA, so there aren’t any rules to speak of. The FTC requires companies to tell you if they’re going to use your data, but as long as they disclose sufficiently (in a link that you’re unlikely to click through) they can do pretty much anything with it. Edge providers and Internet providers in general also aren’t subject to HIPAA, since they’re not in the health care business.
Mind you, the same is true of grocery stores, lawn care companies, contractors, etc., etc. In general, there’s nothing at all that prevents them from using data they get from you for any purpose unless there is a specific rule that covers something (e.g., credit card numbers). It’s literally true that a contractor who builds an ADA-compliant bathroom for you could give that information to a company that sells incontinence products or wheelchairs.
joel hanes
@Obdurodon:
Short, pithy, and deadly is the way to go
Exactly.
If you MUST respond to a troll, refute once, and move on.
Do not reply to replies.
Shinobi
@lgerard: The distinction is that now we’re being experimented on in order to sell us ideas, instead of to sell us physical products.
The Obama campaign also engaged in this practice quite widely by studying the response to their e-mail campaigns. Because they could see exactly who donated in response to what they were able to better hone their message, the times of their message. (And remember how they kept sending a million e-mails? that’s because no matter how many e-mails they sent you people kept donating.) I saw a great talk by their research guy a few years ago. Though again, donations, vs ideas.
They are also trying to identify “influencers.” FWIW, not just who is exploitable. They want to know who other people listen to, and target those people specifically so that others will follow them.
I certainly see the difference between Facebook and groceries, but the process is not new or unique. The problem is that we haven’t objected to being “lab rats” before when people were just trying to sell us the newest best chip that was designed by flavor profile to make you eat more while not filling you up.
A Ghost to Most
@Amaranthine RBG:
Thanks for that. I feel better knowing that our feelings are reciprocal.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Check Maggie Haberman’s Twitter feed. I’m sure she’ll have the real inside story that will clear it all up for us. (snark)
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Good idea!
It’s really just a variation of “follow the money”. If someone is giving you money to do something with your stuff (your good name, your equipment, your people, your information, your reputation), it only makes sense to do some checking to know whether it’s a sensible thing to do. FB and the political PACs and the various huge worldwide advertising firms involved in politics haven’t been doing due-diligence for far too long, and they’ve been far too willing to take money from anyone. They’re destroying our commonweal in the process.
Thanks, and good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
bluefoot
@randy khan: I know, but it’s so messed up. I can’t use anonymized data that’s been provided to us if I want to use it for a purpose not explicitly stated in the consent form, etc. I would need to go through additional review and approval with no guarantee I’d get it – and that’s with data that there is no way to tie back to the individual. Plus I am required to go through legal, ethics and compliance training periodically. But companies like Facebook, or whoever, can run experiments on people no problem? I get that’s it’s normal, and it’s been going on forever, but what I’m saying is that perhaps we need to take a step back and examine what we’ve normalized.
This actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a personal trainer at the gym at our first session. He wanted information on past injuries, other medical conditions, etc, plus they take personal identifying info. He’s inputting it all into their database via an iPad, so I asked how is my info protected, does HIPAA apply? He said no it didn’t, and that the gym didn’t guarantee my info would stay secure. Hmph.
different-church-lady
@Obdurodon:
a) If these people are so important to you, why did it take Facebook to remain connected (or reconnect) with them?
b) If Facebook is you only connection to them, then isn’t the connection rather superficial?
different-church-lady
@eemom: Nobody’s forcing you to read this blog.
eemom
@different-church-lady:
Nobody’s forcing you to use this blog as a mouthpiece for your insane obsession.
different-church-lady
@eemom: I don’t recall Cole ever saying people couldn’t give their opinions regarding social media here.
sharl
@Obdurodon: Thanks for your response. I’m still pondering the issues, and it’s true that much cannot be laid solely at the feet of social media. But social media certainly greases the skids and supercharges the process of helping already low-information voters to get even more ignorant and riled up. And a lot of those folks are older, relatively prosperous and privileged white folk, unencumbered by the challenges of various techniques of voter suppression and already targeted outside of social media by Fox News et al. by mechanisms that confirm their racial/cultural biases and further ramp up of their fears of “The Other”. Facebook doesn’t do like Fox does, but it certainly provides a convenient and low-cost (or even profitable) pathway for those who do the same thing as Fox. If FB user eemom above (#183) – lawyer and educated, well informed person – were representative of FB users, we might not be having this conversation.
Zeynep may have written some pieces with ideas on how to do things better, though lately she has spent most of her time sounding the alarm on what is wrong and dangerous. She has also complained that FB keeps its ad targeting strategies/algorithms as closely held secrets, which makes it very frustrating to her and other academics and outside experts to analyze the sausage-making and come up with suggestions for ways that are less destructive. As an academic, her complaint comes as no surprise, just as – being a highly profitable company, and one that wants to stay that way – FB ain’t gonna share its proprietary money-making algorithms. I don’t know if there is a compromise here that would work, e.g., a small group of independently funded academics who are allowed access to the Secrets of the FB Temple in return for signing a non-disclosure agreement. I’m no lawyer, but I have doubts that a mutually satisfactory NDA could be arrived at that preserves FB IP while allowing the academic nerds to report on their findings.
_________________________________________
I totally forgot to post something else before this thread arrived at its dying embers stage. This video (4m41s) is from a longer BBC show I still need to see (international access permitting), Secrets of Silicon Valley. Here’s the description included at the link:
I gotta tell ya, I got a lot of retweets and favs on this video, and a number of people were pissed. Facebook was clearly an active – and deadly effective – player in the Trump campaign.
Gonna think more about this whole thing…
eemom
@different-church-lady:
Nor did he ever say people can’t call out other people for being weirdly obsessed fanatics; nor tell them not to read the blog if they don’t enjoy being subjected to the rantings of such.
Gravenstone
@eemom: @different-church-lady: Would you two just get a room or something?
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: So the fuck what?
different-church-lady
@eemom: So we have an understanding then.
different-church-lady
@Gravenstone: If I could get a room I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.
randy khan
@bluefoot:
At least the trainer was honest about it.
I agree – it is messed up. One of the few arguments in the network neutrality fight that actually has any traction with me is that the ISPs are subject to different rules on privacy than everybody else. Of course, my preference would be that the rules be extended further, but in a world where my information can be used willy-nilly by nearly everyone else, I have a tiny smidgen of sympathy for the companies that are subject to restrictions that don’t apply to anyone else.
Mart
@ruemara: Last two day’s I have been working with old white guys (like me) who spent most of the day complaining about NFL kneeling. When we walked into an office reception area with CNN on, they all cried fake news. Old white men are generally fucking idiots. Of course George Soros came up. I said, oh, you mean Jared Kushner’s business partner? I said Trump is clearly racist and explained why at length when asked how I figured. They are all convinced I am delusional.
Cpl. Cam
The thing about Facebook is it’s a public platform. If you don’t like what you see there you don’t have to wait for it to be policed up to your standards, create an account and call it out. The main benefit Trump got from Facebook was the perception of popularity because only HIS side was engaged in the debate there. Can’t really blame Trump for that…
Corner Stone
@Cpl. Cam: You obviously have no idea how FB was actually used during the 2016 election.
sharl
Because of course…
DOJ demands Facebook information from ‘anti-administration activists’
Cpl. Cam
@Corner Stone: Aw, boo hoo. Russia bought a WHOLE $100,000 worth of ads then had bot farms hype them. I was on it the whole fucking time raging against their bullshit. Where were you?
Cpl. Cam
Putin paid to flood Facebook with bots in an attempt to influence public opinion and half the “liberals” at balloon juice won’t even sign up for a free account. So who’s fucking smart now?
sharl
@Cpl. Cam: Some of us “liberals” have had a longstanding concern with surveillance capitalism in general, extending back to days well before Russia and Trump showed up on the scene. For us worry warts, there are memories of Facebook being particularly problematic on this score, though they’ve improved their information security operations since their early days. By that I mean that there are now very few stories like that of the woman whose written accounts of her intimate experiences with an ex – “protected” with the maximum privacy settings – were suddenly made public due to an oopsie by FB, at which point her own mother was able to enjoy reading about daughter’s previously private sex life.
Of course, both then and now, FB users have been the product acquired and sold by FB in the information marketplace, so that hasn’t changed. And I’ll note that I’m not a hardcore personal opponent to surveillance capitalism: I use both Twitter and a grocery savings card, and in both cases I have a pretty good idea of what personal information is being made available, and I’m OK with the risks in those cases (I dunno, maybe I shouldn’t be?). On the other hand, there are information merchants like FB (for which I have the option of not signing up) and Equifax (for which I have no choice, under existing law and finance practice in this country).
Facebook has always given me the creeps on this score. I still occasionally consider signing up using a pseudonym and fake personal information, despite that being a violation of FB’s terms of service. I wouldn’t care about violating FB’s TOS, though if I sign up to be an online swordsman in the battles against Putin bots and maga chuds, and were to bring attention to my account by being particularly effective at it, my odds of being busted for violating the TOS would be greatly heightened. Rather than donating my own time in such endeavors, I’d rather that FB would just clean up its act, and/or the government change the laws so that FB was compelled to do so. Given how much they’ve helped Trump – who is of course now in charge – and the uncertainty of how FB will act from here on out (see for example my comment at #248), I’m not counting much on serious corrective actions being taken by FB, nor on Federal government interest in this matter for the near future. Pity that…