
What is our action plan against foreign interference? - smsm42
https://www.facebook.com/help/1991443604424859
======
superplussed
On the subject of increasing transparency, Jason Calacanis had a suggestion
that I thought was brilliant. There should be a public database of all ads
running on Facebook, that would simply show the ad, the ad purchaser, and who
the ad is targeted to.

There ads would be filterable, so that someone viewing the database could
filter based on the same criteria that Facebook allows advertisers to target.
So if I search "non-college educated white males over the age of 40 in
Midwestern suburbia", I get a complete overview of what these people have been
shown. If I come across a nefarious advertiser, I can also filter to see what
other campaigns they've run and who they've targeted.

Transparency, solved. Now the responsibility to police the ads becomes
somewhat shared and it's easy to imagine watchdog groups monitoring different
types of campaigns looking for bad actors.

~~~
chronid
That could become a terrible disadvantage for Facebook and could be weaponized
by competitors - unless it is mandatory for _all_ companies publishing ads
online (and maybe offline?).

~~~
superplussed
Yeah for it to work it would have to be a regulation for all companies that
allowed targeted advertising and reach a certain scale.

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OoTheNigerian
Foreign to whom?

Just the US or to all governments?

Will this transparency be available to the Russians? Saudi Arabians?
Egyptians? Nigerians? Brits? French? Iranians?

Even though all nations interfere in everyone's business,the undisputed number
one interferer in others countries business is the United States government.

Anything short of of making these tools available to everyone would position
Facebook as an agent/agency of the US Government.

-

As an aside, the Russia brouhaha is a ridiculous sideshow led by people who
are yet to come to terms of defeat. If a Less than a million dollars of
Facebook ads shown to a few thousand people can determine who becomes
president in the US, then there is a much bigger problem.

But we all know that's not the case.

~~~
statictype
>If a Less than a million dollars of Facebook ads shown to a few thousand
people can determine who becomes president in the US, then there is a much
bigger problem.

Do we know that that’s all that happened? Or is this just the tip of the ice
berg.

>Anything short of of making these tools available to everyone would position
Facebook as an agent/agency of the US Government.

Facebook is an American company. So is Apple and Google. Even if they are not
legally bound to serve the interests of the country, their employees are
overwhelmingly American and probably patriotic and so we have to expect that
when push comes to shove the interests of the US will come first.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
>"Facebook is an American company. So is Apple and Google. Even if they are
not legally bound to serve the interests of the country, their employees are
overwhelmingly American and probably patriotic and so we have to expect that
when push comes to shove the interests of the US will come first."

85% of Facebook users are outside the United States. Taking the position of
"when push comes to shove, we work for the US government" is probably not the
best way to be seen.

There is nothing stopping them to be equally transparent for everyone while
keeping the laws of every jurisdiction in which they operate.

~~~
smsm42
> we work for the US government

It isn't even "US government". It is a part of US government that is gripped
by paranoia-of-the-day and wants to grab powers Constitution does not give
then, because paranoia is excellent grounds for power-grabbing.

------
macspoofing
>We're updating our policy to block ads from Pages that repeatedly share
stories marked as false by third-party fact-checking organizations

Eek. Those fact-checking sites are staffed by underpaid, inexperienced,
20-somethings with their own ideological bent. These young staffers aren't
doing any investigative work - they just sit there and google stuff. Not to
mention the fact that those sites have the same advertising pressures as other
sites (incentive is for click-bait articles). Let's not go overboard with
treating them as some sort of a gold-standard.

------
notimetorelax
What does foreign mean? Does all this apply to European elections?

~~~
ghostcluster
Time to censor The Economist for meddling with the US political process!

Speaking of, does Facebook censor Al Jazeera? It is foreign State run media
that often runs English language stories tinged with Anti-Western agitprop.

Their drive to limit clickbait is at least noble, though we'll see what that
means in practice. Some of the worst clickbait offenders are none other than
the large US media institutions themselves, from NYTimes, to WaPo, to Vice and
BuzzFeed.

~~~
ssijak
Clickbaiting is new default in media. Where I come from I stop reading all
news because clickbaiting is soooo overused and in EVERY article that it is
painful to read something that seems as written by an adult who researched the
topic.

------
meowface
I'm no fan of Facebook as a corporation but they seemed to handle the election
interference situation about as best they could.

The default stance for posts and advertisements should always be to not
censor, which is what happened. When they were presented with clear evidence
of malicious advertising and accounts, they provided everything they knew
about them to law enforcement and to Congress. And now they're proactively
monitoring for future attempts.

~~~
ryandrake
I'm not a fan either, but honestly--if a presidential election can actually be
swayed by "people buying ads on Facebook" then the USA has problems much
deeper than Facebook. What happened to the five whys and getting to the root
cause of a problem?

To any politician ready to crucify Facebook over Russians buying ads I ask:
"What have _you_ personally done to help separate money from politics?"

~~~
RyanZAG
As a non-American, I haven't understood why this issue is about Russians to
start with. Aren't there many countries who donated large sums of money to
American politics [1]? Also if Russian adverts are having such a huge effect
on American politics, why are Russian adverts different to political adverts
bought by non-Russians? Any advert is obviously bought with the intent to
swing the election in favor of company purchasing that advert - likely for
malicious intent by many.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/hillary-
clint...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/hillary-clinton-
presidential-campaign-charity.html)

~~~
ssijak
Well, if for example Saudi king donates you tens of millions of dollars to
your campaign [1] and you win thats perfectly fine, but you lost and then 500k
of funny ads bought by some bogus/fake companies is in your words why you
lost. Not even funny. And saying facebook is part of it is even more stupid.

On the other hand I never understood why for US citizens it is perfectly fine
for political persons to receive millions in donations from corporations.
Where I come from that is considered bribery by default and that politician
would be in problem.

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/why-did-the-saudi-
regime...](https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/why-did-the-saudi-regime-and-
other-gulf-tyrannies-donate-millions-to-the-clinton-foundation/)

~~~
ern
_Well, if for example Saudi king donates you tens of millions of dollars to
your campaign_

I feel compelled to fact check this. There article you linked to discusses the
Clinton Foundation, not the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

------
confounded
Well, I imagine periodically setting up a pseudonymous account to catch
invites to parties is about to get a lot harder.

Unsurprisingly, many of these measures align with zucc's motives to make
Facebook the new Experian as the canonical owners of your 'identity' for
business purposes.

------
thisisit
How about this for an action plan:

1\. Stop collecting data on people's political leaning

2\. Stop allowing granular ad targeting which can reach people of certain
political leaning and/or world view

------
phrygian
What does foreign mean to Facebook? I had assumed that Facebook sees itself as
some transnational entity. Unless this is about picking winner states.

------
jabretti
Damn, I'm a foreigner. Will I be banned from speaking about US politics on
facebook?

~~~
confounded
Who can tell? You won't be _banned_ from speaking about anything, but whether
anyone sees it or not is a secret matter, between Facebook and their clients.

