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Days after President Donald Trump's surprise victory, Zuckerberg brushed off assertions that the outcome had been influenced by fictional news stories on Facebook, calling the idea "pretty crazy ."
But Facebook's blase attitude shifted as criticism of the company mounted in Congress and elsewhere. Later that year, it acknowledged having run thousands of ads promoting false information placed by Russian agents. Zuckerberg eventually made fixing Facebook his personal challenge for 2018.
[...] The war room is a major part of Facebook's ongoing repairs. Its technology draws upon the artificial-intelligence system Facebook has been using to help identify "inauthentic" posts and user behavior. Facebook provided a tightly controlled glimpse at its war room to The Associated Press and other media ahead of the second round of presidential elections in Brazil on Oct. 28 and the U.S. midterm elections on Nov. 6.
"There is no substitute for physical, real-world interaction," said Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook's director of elections and civic engagement. "The primary thing we have learned is just how effective it is to have people in the same room all together."
More than 20 different teams now coordinate the efforts of more than 20,000 people—mostly contractors—devoted to blocking fake accounts and fictional news and stopping other abuses on Facebook and its other services. As part of the crackdown, Facebook also has hired fact checkers, including The Associated Press, to vet new stories posted on its social network.
To assess the factual content of news stories published by agencies like the Associated Press, Facebook is hiring the Associated Press.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:17AM (2 children)
"War Room"? How about "Peace Room" or "Ministry of Truth"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:41AM
How about a War theatre, I don't know, like a comedy of war?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @01:39PM
Hmm....
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the Peace Room!"
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is MiniTru/MiniPax/MiniLuv!"
Just doesn't work as well as
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Friday October 19 2018, @11:24AM (5 children)
Note the definition of fake information is merely non-leftist opinion.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @12:40PM (3 children)
Also as WSWS has extensively documented, fake news is anything that does not agree with the Democratic Party party line. News sources that are more right-wing are "fake." Additionally, news sources that are more left-wing (as in anti-war) are also "fake." See The “new cold war,” censorship, and the future of the internet [wsws.org] and Facebook’s purge of left-wing media: A frontal assault on freedom of speech [wsws.org].
The problem child is the Democratic Party and the ruling elites it represents. Now if only the Republican Party weren't a fucking dumpster fire....
Nothing will change as long as we keep voting for those two parties. We need to vote for Libertarians and Greens. You might be interested in the Natural Law/US Taxpayer's party.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @01:27PM (2 children)
They are the left wing and much less critical of Trump than the Democrats. The Dems are blissfully unaware they've become corporatist collectivists as they run around calling everyone else "fascists".
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)
If you mean WSWS and the International Committee of the Fourth International, they aren't as critical of Trump because they don't need to be. His depravity is on clear display every time he opens his mouth for all to see.
The great irony of the Democratic Party and its adherents calling everybody who disagrees with them "fascists" and... wait for it... Literal Hitler! is that they praise passages from Mein Kampf that have been piped through sed -E "s/Jews/men/". See A discussion with Helen Pluckrose, co-author of “Grievance Studies” hoax article [wsws.org], which is the kind of thing this "War Room" seeks to suppress while promoting propaganda painting the Democratic Party is somehow "progressive." Specifically:
Parent comment:
One nitpick. As with all right-wing authoritarian movements (Altemeyer), the followers and the leaders are distinct. The SJWs, the right-wing authoritarian followers of the Democratic Party, perhaps have this blissful unawareness. However, it's almost certainly a different story when it comes to the DNC and the ruling elites, the right-wing authoritarian leaders. Anti-Kissinger protest at New York University [wsws.org]:
More: The CIA Democrats: Part one [wsws.org] of three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:45PM
The Kissinger protest was strange [thenation.com] considering the Dems election platform. I think the guy should have stood trial but to ignore hard won cease fires or the tarnishing effects of Watergate is to do him a disservice. And nobody else predicted Trumpian RealPolitik [axios.com] as a risky but overdue realignment of world power.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @06:04PM
Note the definition of fake information is merely non-leftist opinion.
Just 'cause you guys think it's OK to blatantly lie now doesn't mean Facebook is required to agree.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Bodger on Friday October 19 2018, @11:46AM (7 children)
One person's choices of gospel truth, is another person's source of fake news.
This goes against the First Amendment, plain and simple. And although Facebook is a publicly traded company and not a government organization, it is by definition a monopoly on one aspect of social media, Twitter is or is likely to do the same thing. I am thinking that the Sherman Anti Trust laws are likely to be applied after the mid terms.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @11:56AM
Careful how you are treading, there's that nagging thing called objective reality.
Which takes quite a piss on your First Amendment the moment you start to ignore or blatantly contradict it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday October 19 2018, @04:13PM (5 children)
There should be a concept of objective truth out there. By all appearances, for a lot of people there isn't. It's cognitive dissonance theory writ large: "My previously held beliefs and actions depend on a certain idea being true/false, therefor it is regardless of the facts, and anything I see to the contrary is lies meant to confuse me." This is aided considerably by media systems that have been set up for the explicit purpose of pushing various political agendas (e.g. Fox News exists to back the Republican Party, MSNBC exists to back the Democratic Party).
This is one reason I dislike the term "fake news", because it encompasses a lot of different concepts, like:
- Propaganda, where a person or organization is deliberately trying to convince you of lies using various psychological manipulation techniques.
- Genuine mistakes, where a news organization had every reason to think that what they reported was true, even though it wasn't.
- Spin, where a person or organization is saying things that are technically true but very misleading.
- Advertising, where again what is being said is technically true, but it's all geared towards "buy more kumquats" or what have you.
- Straight-up lying, where the person knows what's being said is false but says it as convincingly as they can.
Part of the problem is that when people are conditioned to believe things that make no sense (e.g. 2 of every species were all on 1 boat), they'll be more likely to believe other things that make no sense, a la George Orwell's concept of blackwhite.
Carl Sagan's "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" ought to be required reading, because that's the best way to counter this bunk.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @04:55PM (4 children)
Yes - but - the Dems have multiple media giants backing them, while the R's have only Fox. It's the lopsided numbers that aggravate me most of all. If it were only MSNBC vs Fox, and if all the others were neutral and/or represented different parties, or even points of view, I might not hate MSM so much. In such a situation, I could spread my contempt out among all those parties and/or points of view.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 19 2018, @05:31PM (3 children)
No they don't, unless you think Sinclair Broadcast Group, InfoWars, and quite a few other organizations don't exist.
In the world of cable news, there are basically 3 big players: Fox, NBC, and CNN. Fox is basically Republican propaganda. NBC is basically Democratic propaganda. CNN alternates between saying nothing of substance at all (Wolf Blitzer in particular has made a career of this) and toadying to whoever happens to be in charge at the moment.
As for local TV, I happened to be watching the local news broadcast in an auto shop waiting room and noticed something very peculiar: Except for the attack ads, you would have had no idea that an election was going on.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by jmorris on Friday October 19 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
You are of course lying by spin and false equivalence. It isn't three cable channels with FNC dominating the other two in viewers. The left has the Universities, the government schools, Hollywood, all of the broadcast networks (including PBS) and all of cable with the exception of primetime on FNC, every large circulation newspaper, it has all of the major social media, the entire Silicon Valley tech monolith, the venture capitalists, the Fortune 500, the banks. Paypal, Stripe, Visa / MC, shall I continue?
Yes. The propaganda in the programming rolls on, election or no election.
But that doesn't make any of what they push factual, true or even Truthy. A lie does not become the slightest bit true by repetition. And that is why, despite those massive advantages, your side is losing, is in fact bound for the ash heap of History.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @12:53AM
the matrix has you
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 19 2018, @11:48PM
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, each of which is as influential as FOX, plus PBS. That doesn't look the least bit lopsided to you? As jmorris said, that is outright dishonest on your part. Infowars, for instance, is a niche thing, that fails to reach the markets that the others reach.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by Bot on Friday October 19 2018, @11:57AM
as if the russian/republican disinfo were the only sh!t electors came in contact with before the vote. The opinion polls giving trump defeated? The mere existence of polls in a 2 candidates vote IS interference. Yet democrats, and republicans when it suits them, pretend they are having something fair.
The war room, as I read it, is an yet another delegitimizing op against the POTUS. IMHO there is a lot to criticize about Trump, but those things are mostly in continuity with democrats' policy so, the game is attacking persons and the legitimate, albeit probably too late, defense of national economy through isolationism. Not to mention the way migrants are depicted as the heroes against the bad borders. The heroes are those that stay in their country and fight their own corrupt regimes, not those who, probably rightfully and surely not heroically, flee.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 19 2018, @12:14PM
Fox, henhouse, nuff said.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Entropy on Friday October 19 2018, @12:43PM (2 children)
white -> nazi
male -> nazi
white male -> hitler reincarnated
republican -> nazi
conservative -> nazi
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 19 2018, @06:08PM (1 child)
conservative -> projecting
Hitlery [soylentnews.org]
Hitlery [soylentnews.org]
Hitlery [soylentnews.org]
Hitlery [soylentnews.org]
Hitlery [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @07:54PM
SN confirmed Fake News
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Friday October 19 2018, @01:08PM (1 child)
In the news today: some Dutch journalists successfully got fake news ads approved by Facebook. The ads were targeted to influence upcoming elections: Facebook approves fake news [tellerreport.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday October 19 2018, @11:34PM
Who cares? Every day we see more examples of Facebook, Apple, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Stripe (FAGYTS) directly meddling in the elections. Their own meddling is far more corrosive than any ad buy. Facebook's banhammering of 800+ accounts with over a million subscribers is a perfect example. One was a triple amputee veteran. The guy was on tv explaining that he saw the rules changing and kept asking his account manager (hint: he HAD an account manager meaning he was a large customer) for some sort of guidelines as to exactly what the new rules were. While they were happy to keep taking his money they never got around to answering that question before suddenly erasing all of his acounts and data. He had an account manager, they KNEW with certitude he was a real person and not a "Russian bot." That is meddling on a scale Putin would only aspire to in a wet dream.
Or take Alex Jones for another example. Crazy conspiracy nut? Yup. But the censors generally don't start with the most popular dissidents. Over a million YouTube subs. Gone. Apple started the ban and just a little over a week later it had expanded to everyone including a Paypal / Stripe ban. I would say it looked like somebody so big they could order all of the Tech and Banking industry around but that would be a crazy conspiracy theory.... right? See why he had so many subs? It has become so hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what is just "the news."
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 19 2018, @05:16PM
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday October 19 2018, @08:20PM
Speaking of their War Room and deep in TFA:
Sayeth the company that promotes virtual social interaction. So just why haven't they come up with tools just as good for their team combatting fake news?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Troll) by linkdude64 on Friday October 19 2018, @10:28PM (1 child)
"We need to be unbiased, here! How could everyone not LOVE Hillary Clinton!?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20 2018, @04:24AM
Exactly! Anyone who does not must be a Russian hacker.
It is time for Hillary in 2020. #HerTurn