
Facebook admits: governments exploited us to spread propaganda - sethbannon
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/facebook-report-government-propaganda
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makecheck
It’s easy to gather some sense of what seems like “good material” or “bad
material”, and easy to imagine solutions that try to block what enough people
consider bad. And yet, this is not what should happen all. It is too simple,
and it hides the real problem.

People need to have _critical thinking skills_ , about _everything_. “How
could this be misleading?” is a valuable question to be able to ask in life,
whether it is about news or the latest TV commercial or something else. It is
certainly useful in capitalist systems; for instance, when being sold
something and an advertisement boasts “up to 40%!”, that kind of verbiage
should _always_ raise questions like: “how often will this be 0% or even
negative, values which are also in that range?”. This kind of thing is used
very frequently in advertising alone but certainly in news and even in
discussions with other people. Wording is crucial, comprehension is crucial.
If you ever suspect you do not really understand what you see, you need to
take it as a cue to educate yourself.

Echo chambers, or silos or whatever you want to call them, should also be
recognized. Skills need to be practiced, and you cannot practice critical
thinking if you are surrounded by agreement all the time. This can be a hard
sell because you can certainly feel a lot _happier_ when not encountering
things that challenge your views but that is not how an intellectual
discussion works; you need to at least accept the _possibility_ that even your
long-held beliefs are not _exactly_ right.

It is dangerous for suppression tools to exist for news or anything else
because, like so many things in security technology, something that’s
_possible_ to do can eventually be abused by _anyone_. Claims that “only the
good guys will be able to use this” are not relevant to the discussion. At
some point in this case, there _will_ be someone capable of masking something
that he or she _personally_ does not like, and “propaganda” will have nothing
to do with the mechanism by which the material is hidden.

In any scientific endeavor, you can never universally support results; you
always need to know _what was considered_ to understand if the results make
sense _within those parameters_. And this applies to any source of
information. Even in heated political discussions, it is _way_ easier to
understand why somebody may hold a view that you consider strange if you can
figure out exactly what they have and haven’t heard about.

~~~
r_singh
Your comment me of the book Predictably Irrational. All these examples are
testaments to our collective irrationality.

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Hydraulix989
In what way?

As it stands (or once stood), Facebook more or less permits free speech on its
platform, modulo pornography and gun sales. I'm against algorithmic
"censorship" against their definition of "government propaganda." Let the
educated reader decide that for herself (indeed, my Facebook friends -- who
are also my IRL friends -- aren't agents of government propaganda by
participating in our Democracy via discussing their rather-diverse political
views over a public forum).

It's a little too transparent that "government propaganda" here means Donald
Trump. I hope that Facebook is merely acquiescing to bad PR from the left here
with a faux apology.

It's a shame that they were pressured to feel responsible when they are merely
a communications medium. I don't recall telegraph operators feeling
responsible for antebellum slavery or radio broadcasters feeling responsible
for the rise of Adolph Hitler (of which Trump's mainstream democratic election
as our President cannot even reasonably be held in comparison to either
_actual_ historical atrocity).

By writing this rather dissident post here, I am not "exploiting" Hacker News.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's a little too transparent that "government propaganda" here means Donald
> Trump.

Donald Trump wasn't a government, or in a position to direct the propaganda
efforts of one, at the time of efforts to manipulate the US elections, and has
never been blamed for efforts to manipulate the French elections, so, no,
that's probably not what "government propaganda" means.

You may have confused Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin.

~~~
Hydraulix989
No. I try to be reasonable so I wasn't going to entertain conspiracy theories
in my post (particularly when they are "convenient" scapegoats when combined
with vague, evasive finger-pointing from Facebook HQ -- always be sure to ask
yourself "Qui bono?" when reading these public statements). I am fully aware
of FB's misguided definition of "government propaganda" and wholeheartedly
feel that it is a gross misuse of the word, so yes I am aware that the ACTUAL
"propaganda" here didn't come from an existing government (nor would I commit
the transgression of calling the public content "propaganda").

Once there is real proof (and not the left's version of WMDs), I will happily
revise my views (from the article, FB declined to provide any or even blame
anybody specific).

For now, I am outraged that FB even felt compelled by certain groups to
publish their own propaganda (this article).

~~~
sprafa
The left's version of WMDs? It's funny that there wasn't a single propaganda
campaign under Obama afaik that ever reached the depth of counterinformation
as the Bush-Blair WMD campaign, yet everyone just uses the biggest lie the
Bush administration ever peddled on Americans as some sort of evidence that
every government does this.

No they don't. Rumsfeld had to create a special office inside the Pentagon to
manufacture evidence so the WMD case could be created. They didn't use the
intelligence agencies, they went around them as much as they could to create
"alternate facts".

The idea that Obama has managed to do the same thing as Bush, but using 10 or
so intelligence agencies to "manufacture evidence" is a lunacy. The Bush
administration had to go through huge lengths to build up a false case for
war. Obama just asked his intelligence agencies to give him their opinion.

You can use the crimes of the Bush Admnistration to call anything and
everything that comes out of government a lie. But all that you're doing is
critiquing the Bush admnistration. Not all administrations are guilty of
wildly deceiving the public.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Well, I just so happen to think undermining the American democratic process by
calling into question the legitimacy of the (undesired) election results is
pretty serious.

This has happened time and time again anytime we somehow end up electing a
Republican...

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metal
Water is wet

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sprafa
No responses yet? They are essentially admitting what we already know - The
Russians brainwashed maybe a few million Americans into believing absolute
bullshit, and they might've turned the election towards Trump with what we now
know was a highly concise and directed effort towards the blue-collar Democrat
states.

If you're going to tell me that brainwashing is not a thing, then explain how
advertising exists as a billion dollar industry.

~~~
hiram112
Blue collar Democrat states? Lol.

Democrats looked at the demographics and made an explicit decision to toss out
blue collar (and now even white collar a la H1b) workers in favor of
immigrants and corporations. The only difference between the Republicans these
days is the Republicans don't hide behind their agenda by labeling those who
disagree as bigots and uneducated idiots.

You can only call someone a racist, xenophobe, while they are training their
own foreign replacement, for so long, before it loses effectiveness.

Do the Russians have organizations tasked with influencing foreign policy in
their favor? God damned right they do, just like every major nation state on
Earth. The US, btw, dwarfs the rest in this type of work.

Do these types of influence work in a vacuum? Not as well as they do when a
demographic is already teetering on the edge.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Democrats looked at the demographics and made an explicit decision to toss
> out blue collar (and now even white collar a la H1b) workers in favor of
> immigrants and corporations

Bill Clinton and the neoliberal DLC did, and it's been the source of a lasting
divide within the Democratic Party (the party-in-government, not just the
party-in-the-electorate) since; see, everything from the vote oj NAFTA through
the 2016 Presidential primary and the subsequent DLC leadership campaign.

While the neoliberals are still the dominant faction within the Democratic
party, they've lost ground to more strongly pro-labor progressives recently
(compare 2008, when both leading primary contenders were soldily in the
neoliberal faction to 2016) and there's plenty of reasons to think that will
continue.

