I want Mueller to know, and I want to know in a year, but I don't want Facebook to release the info now. Better to let the guilty parties remain uncertain about how much is known so that they make mistakes.
Seems like the guilty party here is Facebook itself. Foreign entities don’t particularly care about the peculiarities of US law. Facebook, on the other hand, should.
Yeah, but then they would need to actually check the ads they serve. Like, with PEOPLE.
Have you ever MET a people? Gross, no, keep them out of it.
It's like how you can't expect ad networks to avoid serving up malware every now and then. What, do you expect them to be responsible for the negative externalities of their products? I thought this was America.
Facebook is certainly in trouble. But as for other entities, it's too early to say they were all foreign. I would not be surprised if a few Americans knew about this. Let them sweat and maybe turn each other in.
It’ll soon be a full year since “Russian collusion” investigation started and to date it produced basically bupkis. At what point will you realize that you’re being had?
>Here’s what we don’t know, at least not directly from Facebook:
>• What all of those ads looked like
>• What specific information – or disinformation — they were spreading
>• Who or what the accounts pretended to be
>• How many Americans interacted with the ads or the fake personae
>We also don’t know what geographical locations the alleged social media saboteurs were targeting (The regular list of swing states and counties? Or the most politically flammable fringes?) Facebook says that more of those ads ran in 2015 than in 2016, but not how many more.
>Nor has Facebook reported whether the people who were targeted were from specific demographic or philosophical groups — all of which means we really don’t know the full extent of the duping on Facebook, and maybe Facebook doesn’t either.
Couldn't it be the case that Facebook has given, or is in the process of giving, all of this information to the FBI? And perhaps the FBI does not want it publicized as it may affect an ongoing investigation? Also, it's pretty personal info: in the event that one or more of the ad buyers grouped into the list really was a private citizen with no affiliation to any government, is Facebook in the right to publicize who they are and which ads they purchased?
>Also, it's pretty personal info: in the event that one or more of the ad buyers grouped into the list really was a private citizen with no affiliation to any government, is Facebook in the right to publicize who they are and which ads they purchased?
Shouldn't Facebook be verifying who is real and who isn't? For tax + many and I mean many other reasons... shouldn't they verify exactly who is giving them money?
Secondly for all of the fakes, there is absolutely zero privacy concerns. No fucks given for those that meddled in our election process. They should all be extradited and thrown in our jails.
When you buy something, do you expect to show ID? Every merchant I've ever done business with, has accepted cash without questioning if the name I'm giving is actually mine.
For their tax reasons, I really don't see how it matters. "Got cash payment of $$$ for ads" gets the same treatment regardless of the buyer's name.
>Secondly for all of the fakes, there is absolutely zero privacy concerns. No fucks given for those that meddled in our election process. They should all be extradited and thrown in our jails.
And how can we know who these people or organizations are if law enforcement can't properly investigate them?
Not if laws weren't broken with the meddling. Buying ads and making fake news sites isn't necessarily illegal, and we shouldn't expect FB to police something that's not illegal.
Bluman v. Federal Election Commission [1], which was upheld by the Supreme Court, and prohibits “independent expenditures” [2] from non citizens local or abroad.
I’m not a lawyer, but this doesn’t seem to apply to the seller of the ad, which would be Facebook. It seems silly to expect a billboard company, or Facebook, to run a background check and citizenship verification on every purchase.
Regardless, I picture an easy way around would be to get a former Russian, now citizen, to do it, then poof, no illegality from the buyer, from my understanding.
So ... other countries are watching this carefully I assume. And waiting to hit Facebook with their own requests for similar ads run in their countries which were paid for in USD?
I am hoping, as an individual, for this to all come out because I expect the scope to be really interesting.
I think the exact nature of content of ads brings open all sorts of investigation / interests in others outside of simple election meddling. It'll likely expose the reality of everyone being not only being targeted, but facebook building an advertising platform that makes it easier.
The other thing that surprises me here is that people are all of a sudden concerned that russia may have tried to sway an election as if this hasn't been going on since the dawn of time.
If anything is learned from this I hope it's that people should be more subjective even with things that seem to support their own personal opinions.
Yeah, that's one of two main things I come back to each time I consider this from outside the USA. Hacking and influencing is at least a relatively bloodless way to secure the result you want, and, for the most part, the US population voted the way they did. Every Trump failing was on full show and repeated over and over by the media and people voted for him regardless. Maybe Russia tipped things in his favour, but it's not like it was from 30% to 51%.
> for the most part, the US population voted the way they did.
> Maybe Russia tipped things in his favour, but it's not like it was from 30% to 51%.
That's my feelings as well. There's always misinformation in elections and you're never going to eliminate it. The bigger issue is people falling for it and only paying attention to information that confirms their beliefs. I'm not sure what a practical solution is but having your election results rely on shielding the public from misinformation doesn't seem practical either. What do other countries do?
At the same time I haven't heard any credible evidence to think that anything happened. Don't get me wrong, we should definitely move to replacing electronic recording machines with paper-based records. There's no reason to spread unfounded rumors, and plenty of reasons not to. If this is something you're concerned about, and it sounds like you are, do what you can to replace electronic recording machines with paper to strengthen the system.
In the affiliate marketing world I've seen huge international affiliates set up 100s of proxies to arbitrage grey-market affiliate offers (supplements / financial services / bizop / etc) on FB's platform.
One stupidly effective and commonly used tactic to prevent FB from shutting the accounts down immediately was to run URL redirects based on known IP blocks from FB's compliance team, including 3rd party teams / etc - sort of an arms race.
I imagine with the budget and sophistication of Russia's digital team anything that's so far been detected by FB is the tip of the iceberg.
The giant tech companies have enjoyed eye-watering revenues thanks to the magic of network effects and the dopamine boost that social networking gives the human brain.
By keeping their support/human costs low, they've delivered massive profits.
Now we start to see the pushback. For Google, it was Europe's right to be forgotten.
Now for Facebook, its the concept that its simply not acceptable to allow hostile foreigners to use your platform to disrupt political debate.
Its time these guys paid their way. Their profits have always been fuelled by very deliberately staying away from this hard stuff. That can't go on.
I spent about $200 on negative Hillary ads on Google. Anyone can buy ads. Hillary was about to ruin the 4 year college system in the United States by having the Government pay all tuition. There wouldn't be enough spots at schools as they are pretty impacted already so instead a bunch of questionable schools would be opened and the Government would be taken for a ride and go even further bankrupt.
Err, it's worse than that. Vastly expanding undergraduate degrees would make them functionally equivalent to high school degrees. Something that everyone can fairly easily get is the new "bar" that less and less desirable jobs would start requiring.
These losers that lost the battle of ideas really want to push a message that anything that goes against their narrative and interests automatically implies evil, criminality and debauchery. Nobody cares if people in Russia did things to influence US culture. People from different countries can speak to one another and exchange ideas. The only people who oppose this are authoritarians that want to shut down the discourse. All sides push propaganda, who cares if it comes from Russia? Why specifically is it "sabotage" and "meddling" when it comes from Russia? We are talking about internet ads that push a certain kind of ideology, not criminal acts. Hilary Clinton lost because she ran one of the most embarrassingly awful and out of touch election campaigns of all time. Even if Russia did push lies and manipulations, if it resulted in denying that terrible cow the presidency then ultimately it is still a good thing. The US should be easing sanctions on them because of this, not constantly berating them in the media.
Facebook intentionally revealed that a small amount of money was spent by one firm via its ads platform.
In reality it is the news feed behavior that was exploited. Facebook can "fix" the ads platform by adding a bit more human vetting, but unless the behavior of the news feed is changed specifically to censor political content deemed objectionable by Facebook, the same basic PR strategy will work in the next election.
So we have to decide whether broad censorship over social media is what we really want.
There is also too much emphasis being placed on the foreignness of the ad-buyers. It's just as likely that in the next election some domestic entity will sponsor similar ads, since any foreign interests will have had time to establish domestic branches run by American citizens.
So we must ask again, do we really want censorship?
The solution, I think, is to allow the marketplace of ideas to function, and for all of us to make the extra effort needed to hold informed, reasoned opinions and to resist tribalism and the good guys vs bad guys mentality that plagues politics and political debate.
29 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 36.4 ms ] threadHave you ever MET a people? Gross, no, keep them out of it.
It's like how you can't expect ad networks to avoid serving up malware every now and then. What, do you expect them to be responsible for the negative externalities of their products? I thought this was America.
>• What all of those ads looked like
>• What specific information – or disinformation — they were spreading
>• Who or what the accounts pretended to be
>• How many Americans interacted with the ads or the fake personae
>We also don’t know what geographical locations the alleged social media saboteurs were targeting (The regular list of swing states and counties? Or the most politically flammable fringes?) Facebook says that more of those ads ran in 2015 than in 2016, but not how many more.
>Nor has Facebook reported whether the people who were targeted were from specific demographic or philosophical groups — all of which means we really don’t know the full extent of the duping on Facebook, and maybe Facebook doesn’t either.
Couldn't it be the case that Facebook has given, or is in the process of giving, all of this information to the FBI? And perhaps the FBI does not want it publicized as it may affect an ongoing investigation? Also, it's pretty personal info: in the event that one or more of the ad buyers grouped into the list really was a private citizen with no affiliation to any government, is Facebook in the right to publicize who they are and which ads they purchased?
Shouldn't Facebook be verifying who is real and who isn't? For tax + many and I mean many other reasons... shouldn't they verify exactly who is giving them money?
Secondly for all of the fakes, there is absolutely zero privacy concerns. No fucks given for those that meddled in our election process. They should all be extradited and thrown in our jails.
For their tax reasons, I really don't see how it matters. "Got cash payment of $$$ for ads" gets the same treatment regardless of the buyer's name.
And how can we know who these people or organizations are if law enforcement can't properly investigate them?
Bluman v. Federal Election Commission [1], which was upheld by the Supreme Court, and prohibits “independent expenditures” [2] from non citizens local or abroad.
I’m not a lawyer, but this doesn’t seem to apply to the seller of the ad, which would be Facebook. It seems silly to expect a billboard company, or Facebook, to run a background check and citizenship verification on every purchase.
Regardless, I picture an easy way around would be to get a former Russian, now citizen, to do it, then poof, no illegality from the buyer, from my understanding.
[1] http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/bluman-v-federal-...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_expenditure
I am hoping, as an individual, for this to all come out because I expect the scope to be really interesting.
I'd be interested to know the content of the ads especially if people are claiming these somehow helped swing the election.
The other thing that surprises me here is that people are all of a sudden concerned that russia may have tried to sway an election as if this hasn't been going on since the dawn of time.
If anything is learned from this I hope it's that people should be more subjective even with things that seem to support their own personal opinions.
> Maybe Russia tipped things in his favour, but it's not like it was from 30% to 51%.
That's my feelings as well. There's always misinformation in elections and you're never going to eliminate it. The bigger issue is people falling for it and only paying attention to information that confirms their beliefs. I'm not sure what a practical solution is but having your election results rely on shielding the public from misinformation doesn't seem practical either. What do other countries do?
It's not actually clear how many people actually voted for Trump.
Hackable electronic voting machines and vote-counting machines without paper trails make knowing that virtually impossible.
One stupidly effective and commonly used tactic to prevent FB from shutting the accounts down immediately was to run URL redirects based on known IP blocks from FB's compliance team, including 3rd party teams / etc - sort of an arms race.
I imagine with the budget and sophistication of Russia's digital team anything that's so far been detected by FB is the tip of the iceberg.
The giant tech companies have enjoyed eye-watering revenues thanks to the magic of network effects and the dopamine boost that social networking gives the human brain.
By keeping their support/human costs low, they've delivered massive profits.
Now we start to see the pushback. For Google, it was Europe's right to be forgotten.
Now for Facebook, its the concept that its simply not acceptable to allow hostile foreigners to use your platform to disrupt political debate.
Its time these guys paid their way. Their profits have always been fuelled by very deliberately staying away from this hard stuff. That can't go on.
If someone knew how to win an election with a $100k ad buy, they sure could have saved a lot of money. $100k is 0.00005 of a $2B budget.
In reality it is the news feed behavior that was exploited. Facebook can "fix" the ads platform by adding a bit more human vetting, but unless the behavior of the news feed is changed specifically to censor political content deemed objectionable by Facebook, the same basic PR strategy will work in the next election.
So we have to decide whether broad censorship over social media is what we really want.
There is also too much emphasis being placed on the foreignness of the ad-buyers. It's just as likely that in the next election some domestic entity will sponsor similar ads, since any foreign interests will have had time to establish domestic branches run by American citizens.
So we must ask again, do we really want censorship?
The solution, I think, is to allow the marketplace of ideas to function, and for all of us to make the extra effort needed to hold informed, reasoned opinions and to resist tribalism and the good guys vs bad guys mentality that plagues politics and political debate.