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Facebook's Election 'War Room' Takes Aim at Fake Information

posted by martyb on Friday October 19 2018, @11:12AM   
from the press-play dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

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.

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Original Submission

• Re:definition Re:definition (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:05PM (#750919)

  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:

  WSWS: The video you published is hilarious, and I applaud you for finding the element of humor in this, but when I got to the part where you describe having your re-write of Hitler’s Mein Kampf get accepted in an academic journal, that was where the smile left my face. Can you tell us about that?

  [Helen Pluckrose]: You know, even after we revealed ourselves as hoaxers, we’ve found it strange. Some people are still defending that article, saying it was a good part of Mein Kampf! In both the identitarian grievance studies and fascism you still get totalitarianism, militancy, and grievances, even though identity people are coming from a left perspective.

  But what we mainly wanted to do with that article was to show that this feminist and postmodernist theory can be manipulated to support anything. We found a text which is the opposite of social justice and we managed to make the theory work for it.

  Parent comment:

  The Dems are blissfully unaware they've become corporatist collectivists as they run around calling everyone else "fascists".

  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]:

  “What’s really offensive to me is that in the last few years high level supposed liberals, Hillary Clinton for example, was bragging about her relationship, her ties to national security experts like Henry Kissinger,” Todd, a veteran of the Iraq war told the [International Youth and Students for Social Equality].

  He continued by noting NYU’s ties to the Department of Defense. “I think it’s consistent with a lot of trends you see,” he said. “I look around and see New York police officers that have military equipment. You see this in the way that social media platforms are being folded into the security state. It’s interesting that there’s an increasing militarization of these institutions in society that filters down to the way we think about the concept of the nation and our identity as citizens.”

  More: The CIA Democrats: Part one [wsws.org] of three.

  Parent

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• Re:definition (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:45PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19 2018, @02:45PM (#750931)

  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.

  Parent