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

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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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday October 19 2018, @11:34PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday October 19 2018, @11:34PM (#751206)

    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."

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