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Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

lgraham.senate.gov

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Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#51

Post by [deleted] »

softrock wrote: post #46
factsaresacred wrote: post #38

> 56% of total ad impressions were after the election. > Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. > Many of the ads and posts we’ve seen so far are deeply disturbing—seemingly intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people against each other. "Deeply dist…

I don't think anyone is implying that the ads themselves constitute a crime. The issue is that a foreign power attempted to manipulate the public in a certain direction. Your assertion that "the media" intentionally tries and turns groups against one another is pretty sweeping. Certainly certain advocacy groups attempt to paint their opponents in a bad or even dishonest light, but this is far different than a foreign…

[deleted]

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#52

Post by toomuchtodo »

rrhd wrote: post #40
factsaresacred wrote: post #38

> 56% of total ad impressions were after the election. > Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. > Many of the ads and posts we’ve seen so far are deeply disturbing—seemingly intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people against each other. "Deeply dist…

You don't see the Russians attempting to influence the US elections via social engineering as a problem?

No more than entrenched political parties (Republicans and Democrats) doing so.

The American electorate is gullible, and that’s a hard pill to swallow for most; easier to yell “Russia!” “Collusion!”

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#53

Post by AlexandrB »

factsaresacred wrote: post #48
rrhd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see the Russians attempting to influence the US elections via social engineering as a problem?

Not any more than I saw Obama's threat to put Brits to the back of the queue in trade if they voted for Brexit. Paying to promote ads is a pretty common thing. It's as problematic as any other ads that are designed to influence you - so pretty much all of them.

> Paying to promote ads is a pretty common thing. It's as problematic as any other ads that are designed to influence you - so pretty much all of them.

Right. The real problem is we've allowed ad companies to mediate not only commercial spaces but now also personal interactions. So propaganda shows up not only in public spaces but also in seemingly private ones like a Facebook wall where it's hard to track and near impossible to counter.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#54

Post by rhcom2 »

factsaresacred wrote: post #30
jonny_eh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, sans-sarcasm. It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts.

> It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts. No it's not better. "Russian disinformation" is a bullshit term to describe overblown and mostly ineffective tactics used by just about all governments. Disinformation clogs the web. From WaPo to NYT to Salon to [insert media outlet here]. The very same bozos who sold you the Iraq war. The dumbness of American discourse i…

That's the line Trump loves to get people to believe, that random fake blogs are equal to newspapers in their disinformation.

And why investigate it? Everyone is just as bad /s

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#55

Post by zeveb »

ou89 wrote: post #16

Hey Russians! If you guys have worked out how to get the herd to stampede, then why for the love of cabbage, do you need to use this skill to just cause randomness??? I mean can't you guys get the herd to buy Russian iPhones or line up for Russian super hero movies or something? I really can't understand what the Russians have gained here. If Mueller's final report says the Russians had a major influence on the elect…

> I really can't understand what the Russians have gained here.

They've weakened the United States. I doubt that they really cared if either President Trump or Mrs. Clinton won the election (and indeed I believe that they spent on both); they merely want to divide our society and weaken the country so that they have a free hand to act across the world.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#56

Post by lubesGordi »

factsaresacred wrote: post #38

> 56% of total ad impressions were after the election. > Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. > Many of the ads and posts we’ve seen so far are deeply disturbing—seemingly intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people against each other. "Deeply dist…

What's the difference between censoring 'fake news' and making it illegal?

The disinformation issue is deep, and people want to just call some things disinformation and other things truth. It's intellectual laziness. You're not going to get to truth by blindly believing trusted sources. You need to do your own research. And what, you're going to let the CIA decide what is a trusted source? The route this is going is incredibly scary. At the very least people's attitudes should be 'I'll make up my own damn mind, thank you very much!'

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#57

Post by rgbrenner »

sova wrote: post #27
rgbrenner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.

Independent fact checking firms exist, I don't think it is a stretch to distill their info into an easily comprehended badge icon. Google, according to their Counsel, is already giving anti terror groups flagging software.

So you propose Tampa Bay Times Politifact, and The Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org become arbiters of truth?

Have you actually read many of their articles? A lot of it depends on judgement calls of the person doing the fact checking. Leeway is given or taken by the fact checker.. and that amount varies by who is doing the checking. (And you can’t eliminate this because human language is so flexible that it will always require a judgement call to be made in all but the most blatant lies.)

There are plenty of examples.. here's one:

Politifact rates this as mostly true: Bernie Sanders says 'real unemployment' rate for African American youth is 51 percent http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/...

Politifact rates this as mostly false: Trump misleadingly puts black youth unemployment rate at 59 percent http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do...

The rate is nowhere near that high according to the BLS: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm

If politifact can't call out Bernie's 51%, like they did for Trump.. why would they get this trusted position you seem to think they are qualified for? Politifact is run by human beings. Their judgement shouldn't be substituted for the judgement of others. You can't outsource critical thinking.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#58

Post by rhcom2 »

lubesGordi wrote: post #56
factsaresacred wrote: post #38

> 56% of total ad impressions were after the election. > Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. > Many of the ads and posts we’ve seen so far are deeply disturbing—seemingly intended to amplify societal divisions and pit groups of people against each other. "Deeply dist…

What's the difference between censoring 'fake news' and making it illegal? The disinformation issue is deep, and people want to just call some things disinformation and other things truth. It's intellectual laziness. You're not going to get to truth by blindly believing trusted sources. You need to do your own research. And what, you're going to let the CIA decide what is a trusted source? The route this is going is…

People are now blindly believing any source if it backs up their opinion. You're not going to be able to get primary sources on everything so at some point you will HAVE to trust some source.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#59

Post by AlexandrB »

rgbrenner wrote: post #21
sova wrote: post #7

Facebook Counsel says: Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and what we found. From the beginning, we have always believed that Facebook is a place for authentic dialogue, and that the best way to ensure authenticity is to require people to use the names they are known by. Fake accounts undermine this objective, and are clo…

And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.

Traditional media has had a long tradition of informal, ethical standards that goes into "reporting"[1]. It wasn't perfect, but it was something. Now that we've flipped that apple cart with technology it's not easy to replace centuries of culture with an algorithm. What I fear is that the problem is fractal. Solving the easy parts of the problem scales well and is thus economical. The hairy parts of the problem don't scale and are left by the wayside. For an example of this look at YouTube content ID. It works well enough to placate content owners. Making it any better (e.g. fair use) requires human intervention so it's not gonna happen.

[1] A parallel in the political sphere is Trump himself. He's violated a bunch of informal understandings about what a president is/does. Now there's no going back.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#60

Post by jfindley »

sova wrote: post #31
comex wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t watched the testimony, but I don’t think the suggestion is for the government to make the judgements for the labels - at least, that sounds like an epically terrible idea, especially (but not only) given the current president’s predilection for calling any news he doesn’t like “fake”. Rather, I think social media platforms would be expected to do that themselves, maybe by contracting with external fact chec…

Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info

Many of the most important issues (e.g. current crisis in Rohingya) are in environments where there is no such thing as absolute truth.

To pick one example, in a conflict, it's very rare that any two independent sources can even agree on the number of casualties (much less on whose side they were, what the cause of death was, etc), and what the western world tends to treat as some of the most reputable sources explicitly ignore any reports not written in English. Which is obviously not useful when many of these conflicts occur in regions where English is not a primary language.

We can define the boundary between fact and opinion all we want, but in the real world it's very rarely so black and white. Sure, pieces that are merely commentary/opinion should be labelled as such, but in all reputable news outlets already do this. I've yet to see a single useful solution to this issue that stands up when there's simply no practical way of accurately establishing what the truth really is.

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