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Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

theguardian.com

141–150 of 158 posts

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#141
post #34

> The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanist…

Not pertinent to the main issue, but I just find it funny how the guardian never forgets to include such “facts” about countries: “poor, small and non-western countries”. Does similarly when it talks about racial “equality” up to the point its readership will pretty much always associate certain countries and ethnicities with poverty. Basically, promoting stereotypes.

I don't think the intention here is to imply that all of these countries are all three adjectives. It's that poor countries, small countries and non-western countries appear to be getting less prioritization than rich countries, large countries and western countries.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A teaching moment for using strong passwords.

That’s missing the point. And frankly victim blaming. Allowing all the security info to be changed moments after logging on with no way to put them back is absurd.

The reverse compromise, where the email is hacked would require exactly that though. It's not a problem with one solution. It's many problems that require a human point of contact.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine Radiohead's Creep playing on the background and it fits perfectly.

I thought that song was originally written by Nine Inch Nails, or am I misremembering? Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren’t necessary

> Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren’t necessary

Hacker News has by far the weirdest downvote patterns of any forum I've used. I wouldn't pay much mind.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#144
post #55

The Guardian, and a few other outfits in global media sold its readership very hard on the "Gadhafi killing his own people" fallacy to enable Islamist gangs to plunder and maim and kill and ruin the societal fabric of Libya (and a few southern neighbors). Since then, Libya is a wasteland, its inhabitants enslaved as a whole (as opposed to the few political (read Islamists) prisoners' under the Gadhafi dictatorship),…

People are capable of critizing the bad things that both FB and the Guardian have done

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#145
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels to me like a bit of a 1 dimensional appeal to authority. Consider the role of old guard media in selling the war in Iraq to the American public. Their pieces weren't well researched and turned out to have been fed to them by the administration. The Osama Bin Laden cave base diagrams also come to mind in the same vein. The NYT Daily's "Caliphate" podcast series is another great example.

Sure, I didn't suggest that they were unimpeachable but the "alternative" sources so often touted by self-proclaimed Facebook experts are orders of magnitude worse.

I depends what you mean by "alternative sources". Lot's of places still have local papers that are pretty good for local news. There are international papers that have a different point of view to the American corporate press, which is quite useful from time to time. There's also good bit of quality opinion and some reporting on substack. And then there are some select reporters that have a narrow beat who do great work in their niche, but may work for a place that is overall questionable.

American news consumers should be critical, and pay attention to times when major competing news outlets are running the same headline about a complicated story.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that song was originally written by Nine Inch Nails, or am I misremembering? Edit: fellas I asked a question downvotes aren’t necessary

You are, it's a Radiohead tune. Though it sounds similar to "The Air That I Breathe" By The Hollies, but that song is from the 70s. NIN broke out a few years before Radiohead (Pretty Hate Machine was released in 1989 while Pablo Honey was released in 1993).

>Though it sounds similar to "The Air That I Breathe" By The Hollies

Wow you are right[1][2]. Very similar tone progressions.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7duPNQCp-w4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#147

Off topic. Last week wife got an email that her Facebook was logged into. Told her to open app and change password immediately. Too late. Account email and phone number already changed. No way to use old ones to get control back. 15 year old account with a huge amount of memories gone. Best possible was to indicate a problem, so account is disabled. But no way to use it anymore. Apparently this has happened to around…

A teaching moment for using strong passwords.

It's actually a moment for 2FA.

Also the other commenter is right about victim blaming. The notification about a suspicious login should give appropriate options to safeguard one's account from a takeover.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#149
Facebook is power and control over several billion people and countries across the world. That is superpower level power.

Mark Zuckerberg will never give up that level of power because either he wields that power or someone else will.

Weak countries don’t matter in matters of power and this is an example of it.

Also, Facebook has no issues at all when it comes to manipulation when it is to its benefit. It has done so before.

If you believe that Facebook doesn’t have that power then you must also believe that people aren’t easily manipulated. Advertising is proof against that belief.

Re: Facebook slow to address political manipulation outside wealthy, western nations

#150
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was never a popular upheaval in Lybia, the Islamists were offered to dismember the country by a few European powers (mainly France and the UK) with Arab allies for good optics (Qatar). https://iai.tv/articles/why-they-killed-gaddafi-auid-1757

Your source makes reference to an email which is no longer available, thanks to a dead link.

Not to give credence to the overall article, but that part seems legit:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12659

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfa... (p10#20)

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