Facebook's Censorship Of Legit Activists Shows The Policing Of Propaganda Is Going To Be A Fucking Mess
from the everybody-loses dept
Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it had uncovered a new wave of disinformation attacks ahead of the 2018 elections. To hear Facebook tell it, the new attacks pretty closely mirror Russia's Internet Research Agency attacks during the 2016 election. As in, the culprits are trying to sow distrust and amplify partisan divisions on both sides of the aisle by creating fake organizations, fake people, fake news, and rockin' memes. How much that actually accomplishes is the matter of some debate, but it's also pretty clear we don't yet understand how deep this rabbit hole really goes.
According to Facebook, this latest attack on the nation's gullible shows signs of evolution from the more ham-fisted attacks seen during the 2016 election. And while there's no hard link to Russia yet, Facebook claims there are some connections between Russian Internet Research Agency "troll farm" accounts and this new wave of disinformation:
"For example they used VPNs and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf. As we’ve told law enforcement and Congress, we still don’t have firm evidence to say with certainty who’s behind this effort. Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below."
The problem, as Twitter, Facebook (and Mike, And Tim) have made abundantly clear, these companies are absolutely terrible at policing their own platforms, and simply crying out that they should "do something" without understanding what they're doing isn't likely to work. When these platforms do attempt to address hate speech or propaganda, they repeatedly do a terrible and inconsistent job of it. Said terribleness almost always results in over-reach and collateral damage.
For example, Facebook's response to the discovery of the latest disinformation attack involved taking down at least 32 pages and numerous profiles on Facebook pushing bullshit to partisans on both sides of the aisle. Said "inauthentic operators," as Facebook called them, included groups like "Aztlan Warriors," "Black Elevation," and "Mindful Being." Most of these groups and pages were indeed bogus efforts designed to stoke existing partisan tensions by amplifying many of the most annoying aspects of extreme partisans on both sides.
But in the process Facebook also shut down a group named "Resisters," which had been organizing a “No Unite the Right 2 - DC" counter-protest against a planned white supremacist rally scheduled in Washington DC on August 12. Needless to say, the legitimate activists weren't particularly pleased:
"However, activists who had worked with Resisters said the counterprotest they planned against a far-right rally was legitimate — and that Facebook was harming their ability to combat the rise of white supremacy. The event, called “No Unite the Right 2 DC” and promoted by Resisters along with other left-leaning groups, was collateral damage in Facebook’s battle against disinformation, they said.
Facebook has “delegitimized our whole event — and all the work that folks across the D.C. area have put a lot of time and effort into,” said Caleb-Michael Files, an organizer of the March to Confront White Supremacy, a group that was organized after the Charlottesville protests, and a co-host of the counterprotest event page."
Over at Facebook, one of the justifications for the removal of the page was that an account linked to the Russian IRA disinformation effort had been an administrator for the page for all of seven minutes:
"The IRA engaged with many legitimate Pages, so these leads sometimes turn up nothing. However, one of these leads did turn up something. One of the IRA accounts we disabled in 2017 shared a Facebook Event hosted by the “Resisters” Page. This Page also previously had an IRA account as one of its admins for only seven minutes. These discoveries helped us uncover the other inauthentic accounts we disabled today."
Taking down a whole, legitimate website because one IRA-linked account had admin rights for all of seven minutes seems shaky at best, and Facebook isn't clear on what additional evidence they relied on. The other problem is that Facebook notified all of the group's legitimate members about its move, undermining the effort as a whole. Facebook's blog post is also misleading, in that it suggests that these legitimate activists were somehow conned into participating in a counter-protest they would have been engaged with anyway:
"The Event – “No Unite the Right 2 – DC” – was scheduled to protest an August “Unite the Right” event in Washington. Inauthentic admins of the “Resisters” Page connected with admins from five legitimate Pages to co-host the event. These legitimate Pages unwittingly helped build interest in “No Unite Right 2 – DC” and posted information about transportation, materials, and locations so people could get to the protests."
The event is still scheduled, but the new Facebook group created in the wake of Facebook's actions has far fewer members, and it's unclear how many people who would have otherwise attended were scared off by what feels like over-reach.
It's a bit of a master class on the terrible position Facebook suddenly finds itself in and the need for transparency as we try to craft a solution. The Washington Post quotes somebody inside Facebook that notes the company debated whether or not the bans would harm legitimate activism, but ultimately decided that the harm to these groups from being potentially co-opted by hostile foreign intelligence efforts was worse than the potential censorship.
That was cold comfort to activists, who suddenly found their efforts to undermine white supremacy derailed due to no fault of their own:
“It’s an extremely dangerous situation for free speech when politicians are screaming at web platforms to ‘do something’ about a problem that is difficult to address,” she said. “Censoring an anti-Nazi protest was a particularly egregious example of collateral damage."
The problem here is there's no real consensus on a path forward. We don't honestly know how to combat this yet.
Modern disinformation efforts clearly amplify tensions and sow distrust, and, as intended (check out Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation documentary when you have a few hours to kill some time), help contribute to the undermining of traditional media and traditional institutions, opening the door wider to future disinformation efforts. The impact isn't easily measurable, letting many dismiss the problem as over-hyped and unimportant. But if you've watched as conspiracy goes mainstream and often wanders comically close to White House policy, it should pretty clear there's a very fucking real problem here.
But Facebook and Twitter have both shown they're aggressively incompetent at regulating platforms or being transparent about such behavior. Congress can barely put its pants on in the morning. And despite some healthy debate for the better part of the year by journalists and academics alike, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody that currently has a solution to this particular problem. In part, because none of the solutions are easy, whether it involves shoring up critical thinking training in a country that consistently likes to underfund education, or reconfiguring systems to make spreading bullshit less profitable.
This new wave of disinformation and conspiracy is much like a bacterial infection, and it's going to take time for the culture and body politic to generate an immune response. In the interim, the learning process is going to be ugly as we feel out the best path forward. Whatever that path winds up looking like, hopefully it comes with notably less censorship and a whole lot more transparency.
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Filed Under: activists, content moderation, election interference, free speech, trolls
Companies: facebook
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The platforms alone won't be able to solve the problem. We must take this into our hands as society with free speech in mind. The most important step and yet the one that won't yield fruition as fast as we need is educating the ones we can so they'll think critically, look for multiple, reliable sources and more importantly, take their time to read and understand stuff before forwarding instead of parroting tiny, easy to memorize headlines. One can hope, no?
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reality bites
No entity can or does censor/police our vast world of 'disinformation'. That's Life! We all deal with it as best we can ... but sources of valid information grow just as fast as sources of disinfomation, as technology advances.
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Re: reality bites
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Scorched earth
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Re: Scorched earth
Even if Facebook hadn't taken the pages down, all the IRA had to do was leak their involvement themselves and they still would have gotten what they wanted: an erosion of trust.
It's an old KGB tactic; Russians were doing it decades before Facebook. Play both sides -- the pro-government and anti-government -- and then, once the protesters are done protesting, tell them, "By the way, the government was responsible for planning your anti-government protest the whole time." Bingo: you've spread paranoia, distrust, and cynicism, the protesters feel like they've been duped, and they're less likely to protest in the future.
Hell, that's basically the plot of 1984.
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Re: Re: Scorched earth
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Please stop with the bullshit "attack" phraseology
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Re: Parts of the solution...
"Full disclosure: they sent me a free sample" or
"Full disclosure: My brother works for so and so".
Given Techdirt's approach of "More speech is better", I don't think "taking down" BS posts is gonna do the job...
But I do think enforced disclosure might help. What if those legit protestors had to disclose that they'd let a russian agent be an admin for a few minutes? You can't buy an anonymous political ad on TV, why not something analagous on the internet?
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Re: Please stop with the bullshit "attack" phraseology
And "world" is not a proper noun, just FYI.
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Russians
Russians!!
RUSSIANS!!!"
-Jan Brady
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Re:
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OMG LAWD JESUS OF NAZARETH HALP ME!
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Re: body politic to generate an immune response
Let me tell you a little story:
Once apon a time some guys invented a new technology that totally transformed the national economy. Over the years it became apparent that it commoditized civil rights. Some people started having a problem with this, and the state hemmed and hawed about what to do, but ultimately did nothing until it was too late.
Now you tell me: Am I talking about the blackbirders of the late 1700's, or ad-tracking?
It isn't about what the bad guys are saying. It is about the fact that they know exactly what to say to YOU. And that is entirely driven by the commercial surveillance economy.
The Constitution is the foundation. The commercial surveillance products sector is a swamp, built on top of that foundation. There is no solid ground on which to build a legislative approach. The solution is as self evident now as it was then: Litigate under existing law. There are other messier solutions but litigation is the best.
With complex problems, you have to understand them before you can fix them. The DNC/RNC alliance operates on fundamentalist views that serve no one, but the oligarchy. Because neither party is tolerant of reason.
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Re: Re: Parts of the solution...
One solution might be making some kinds of activity require disclosure and relation to actual national IDs; except the US has a major problem in that actual national IDs are resisted (instead of instead being far more stringent about when, and how they're used and regulating how they're stored).
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Re: Re:
I'll bite.
Aside from the fact that there are Senate hearings involving Russia, in what way is this similar to the McCarthy hearings?
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Re: Re:
I don't think there's anyone alive who could make "Have you no common decency, sir!?" resonate with an audience of any significant size anymore, anyway... unless they end it with a "/sarc" tag (or the phrase "Goodnight from everyone here at Last Week Tonight").
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Moderation of large platforms is a mug's game
I suspect that improved critical thinking teaching for everyone could solve it best but that would be a glacially slow game as it would only really be applied in schools and probably not that well.
Hypercitation of sources could e useful as an approach to fact checking but that they themselves can be poisoned with misinformation and of course can fail with up to the minute and chaotic emerging situation. There are a lot of 'second gunmen' from echoes during shootings in a panicked situation or just seeing the gun of police responding and assuming they are another shooter - hiding in response to anyone unknown with a gun in a situation like that is a pretty sensible decision (heck even if you recognize them as police it is a good idea to stay out of the way in case it turns into a firefight) but it isn't accurate.
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Re: Re: Parts of the solution...
Not sure exactly what this means or implies - do you?
Certainly, once in place it will be abused.
What is a legit protester?
You are suggesting the already shot down ID silliness is a good idea, perhaps you have not thought that thru to its obvious conclusion.
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Re: Re: Re: Parts of the solution...
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I don't have a FB account or any other "social media" account. Sadly the GF does. Some of the things that come out of her mouth just make me say WTF? Where did you hear THAT? "Well it was on <insert social media here>"
It's a lot of work to try and get the real story anymore. I haven't been able to find a site that doesn't spin the news so I read the same item as reported by sites that are both left and right and try to deduce what the real story is about.
Even the almighty Zuck or Congress can't fix stupid. And a lot of the things that get posted there are just that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Parts of the solution...
fuck facebook
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Dog, forgive us for aour short sighted evaluations..
Ummm..
This has been happening since I was young. 3rd parties that Loved 1 side or the other, would create THEIR OWN adverts to broadcast..The 2 main parties arnt SUPPOSED TO..
Truth, lies, MUD, has been going back and forth FOR YEARS..
Why does the internet MEAN anything in this?
WITH OR WITHOUT THEM..if we remove them from our history, we are CLEANING HISTORY, BLEACHING IT..removing Proof that it happened. Making the Votes on a Bill, PRIVATE/SECURITY RATED is another part of this. Finding out who was the IDIOT TO VOTED for certain laws..gets to be very hard sometimes.
Alot of the idiocy that happens on the hill, tends to be them TRYING to hide stuff. Or fix something so it has no affect, AFTER the fact.
Its no worse then the OTHER corp adverts that Promise everything, IF'(please read the fine print on the back as well as every other form listed to find out NOTHING IS FREE)
Its as bad as TRUTH IN ADVERTS LAWS in this country.
But consider that IT WAS an advert, and you saw it.. Was/is it true or not. Except for theh '*' mark hidden in the advert, WE HAVE A HARD TIME TRYING TO FIGURE IT OUT/..
Anyone ever read the USURY laws?? They only work, IF' you dont sign a contract.. WHICH is funny as hell.
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Re: Dog, forgive us for aour short sighted evaluations..
HOW do you censor politics??
BAN THEM ALL...until they can PROVE ANYTHING they say, CUT them all off.
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Re: Russians
-- Les Nesman
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Re:
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Re: Russians
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When the US is busy trying to incite government and policy change in Iran and other countries and has been for decades, it is hard to claim indignant concern when an outside power returns the favor.
When the average website tries to run many 3rd party scripts just to load, it will be near impossible to fully figure out what all is being loaded or attempted to load. Made worse when many of those scripts attempt to load still more. And this is for so called legitimate sites.
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But you cant please all of the people all of the time .
So People just mind your own shit and don't worry about
other peoples shit and you will live a lot more happier life
because really your shit does stink even if you cant smell it
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Re: Re: reality bites
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Re: OMG LAWD JESUS OF NAZARETH HALP ME!
Health care is not a right!
Going to school for years on in to become a doctor, only to make $60,000 makes zero sense. End up with even a larger Doctor shortage.
I can go on and on.
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Re:
While I have a Facebook account, I limit myself to minutes 1 or 2 days a month at most. I'm not on Twitter, as I just don't care what strangers are doing at all times of the day. I don't care if they're a Celeb.
I get my info from a number of places.
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Re:
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Face book is one sided .
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