
Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Russia - ccnafr
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/01/removing-cib-from-russia/
======
rocqua
Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads.

How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? If this is the extent of
'Coordinated inauthentic behavior' I'm rather unimpressed with the
capabilities of Russia.

~~~
tapoxi
790,000 followers

~~~
mensetmanusman
What % of them do you think get feeds from these russian actors that make it
to their main feed. FB has said they filter 99% of the 1000’s of posts
happening that you could be following due to overload, so that would be a
couple hundred people.

------
sudoaza
What about "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" from elsewhere? FB is just
feeding the coordinated desinformation spread by the US. Billions in ADs,
targeted manipulation, phone bots, media monopolies spreading bullshit round
the year, but don't worry about that, look Russia...

~~~
pergadad
Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a
surprise - basic propaganda tactics.

The things the Russian propaganda machine is spreading are just intense.
Misinformation on repeat, with real life consequences. That big US corps
manipulate too is another story, but what Russia is doing is clearly at
another scale and state sponsored with clear foreign policy aims, most
importantly to undermine trust in institutions and the actual news media and
secondly to try different alternate narratives and see which ones stick. The
key aim of these many sites is to disseminate and diffuse the disinformation
to come from 'many sources' at once, to make it more convincing (what we hear
often enough we believe).

This series of bans is a very good initiative, although I'd say far too little
too late. Sputnik and co are not media, they are propaganda machines that
happen to intersperse some true stories and occasional facts in their package
of lies. If you don't believe me- look at the site. Solid news mixed with
outlandish conspiracy theories, and all that 100% state sponsored.

For context I very much recommend anyone interested to take a look at Oxford's
excellent computational propaganda research:

[https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/](https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/)

This official EU initiative is similar, taking apart individual pieces of
disinformation:

[https://euvsdisinfo.eu/](https://euvsdisinfo.eu/)

~~~
zozbot123
> Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a
> surprise - basic propaganda tactics.

FWIW, the commenting guidelines ask you _not_ to impute astroturfing or
shillage in HN comments. Although I do wonder to what extent such a suggestion
might apply to _this_ thread - "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" being as
good a definition of astroturfing as any - it makes sense to err on the side
of caution, if only for the sake of having a productive discussion!

------
ddebernardy
In case anyone from the FB team behind this is reading: Was stealth banning
the relevant accounts considered? If so, curious to know why it was rejected.

~~~
atemerev
In such coordinated operations, the impact is usually verified via independent
accounts which are not participating in spreading, which are nearly impossible
to distinguish from actual victims. So stealthban is not particularly
effective. As a part-time consultant on countermeasures for opinion
manipulation in social networks, I can say that passive defenses are usually
not reliable enough.

------
spamlord
Does Facebook have the same amount of concern for massive "Coordinated
Inauthentic Behavior" campaigns originating from Israel/JIDF and US
Intelligence Agencies that dwarf the Russian ones pointed out in this post?

------
Artemis2
“Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” is a nice euphemism!

~~~
Udik
Sounds like a good definition to me. Better than the widely used "troll",
which used to mean a different thing, before being appropriated by the
mainstream media. Trolls used to mean people provoking emotional reactions
with the intent of disrupting communities and ridiculing their members. And
unless Putin is doing this for the laugh...

------
prewett
By calling it “coordinated inauthentic behavior” FB is themselves being
inauthentic. Authentic would be to describe actually what it is and what the
problem is. Is the problem that it was coordinated? That it was not true to
the poster’s personal belief (inauthentic)? Not actually true assertions (not
authentic)? Maybe the behavior is the problem? Or some combination? So if the
Russian state clearly put out content saying “This is Russia and we think you
should vote for X” is that okay (coordinated authentic behavior)? What about
all the “CIB” originating from inside the US? Or, how about FB’s own “CIB”,
like the link in question?

~~~
repolfx
I don't understand their claim it was inauthentic either.

Their writeup says the pages claimed to be independent, but were actually
linked to employees of Sputnik News.

OK, but all the screenshots they showed (in the first batch) had the word
"sputnik news" in the URL. That doesn't look very surreptitious to me, let
alone inauthentic. If Sputnik employees are linking to stories they worked on
or their employer published, how is that different to journalists tweeting
stories from their news outlets on their personal Twitter accounts? Is there
some formal rule now that all employees of news agencies have to loudly
identify themselves as such before re-sharing content from their employer? If
so, where did Facebook announce that?

The odd way Facebook are describing this action also makes me wonder about
their claim the accounts were "linked to" employees of Sputnik. What does that
mean exactly? Not owned, if they were owned presumably Facebook would have
said so. Rather they are "linked to". This could mean many things.

------
notjonmadden
> We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because
> we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people

Right, as long as you don't count American political content and advertising!

~~~
jmvoodoo
I had a similar reaction... It seems that's the entire point of the platform.
Perhaps more accurate would be "we don't want our service to be used to
manipulate people in ways we disagree with/could get in trouble for"

------
walrus01
I'd be very interested in seeing if there's a similarly worded vkontakte or
livejournal post from their admins, about removing "coordinated inauthentic
behavior" from american sources.

Edit: I'm not alleging the US is doing such a thing in an organized manner, as
the Russian "internet research agency" does, what I'm asking is whether the
knee jerk response from Russian Facebook competitors (or state media like RT,
Sputnik) will be to make the same allegations but in reverse. And if so, what
form that will take.

~~~
pjc50
It does beg the question of whether Facebook will, or will be even allowed to,
combat _covert_ Western influence operations.

(I'm OK with _overt_ influence operations that are clearly labelled, like the
BBC World Service)

~~~
walrus01
In my past experience the US' foreign language government run media operations
are pretty transparent. The BBG, broadcasting board of governors, is part of
the federal budget and is regularly audited, is subject to FOIA requests, etc.

BBG is the parent entity of Voice of America, etc.

The US runs a lot of foreign language media which people might not know
exists, if they aren't a native speaker of the target language/culture.

For example Radio Azadi, which is the VOA/RFE for Dari speakers in
Afghanistan. It also produces Pashto content.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi)

And Farda for Iranian Farsi.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda)

~~~
pjc50
The transparent ones are visible, but what about the deniable ones we can't
see?

~~~
walrus01
Totally personal opinion, but they're more likely funded by private
corporations that want to influence society to buy more of their product, or
slush funds of lobbying money similar to how the Kochs fund PACs in the USA.
Mercer family funds, etc.

People who have vested interests in organizations such as Saudi Aramco
maintaining the status quo.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
It's worth noting that US propaganda operations even on US soil are not
unprecedented. During his tenure Obama signed a national defense authorization
act[0][1] that some claim has re-legalized propaganda operations on US
citizens. The CIA has admitted doing so during Operation Mockingbird[3] and in
other situations[4] in the past. Given that I suggest that you remain highly
skeptical of all media and independently verify claims as much as possible as
it seems historically governmental as well as corporate interests have
manipulated the media for their purposes and that is appears it is legal for
the CIA to do so today.

[0][https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-
propaganda-20...](https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-
propaganda-2012-5)

[1][https://www.rt.com/usa/propaganda-us-smith-
amendment-903/](https://www.rt.com/usa/propaganda-us-smith-amendment-903/)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird)

[4][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion)

Edit: made comment more clear

~~~
pjc50
While what you say is almost certainly true, I note the irony of linking to a
Russian propaganda news organisation to support it.

Even more ironically the only reason people follow RT is that they're often
covering things that the western media status quo has a blind spot to.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
I noted that myself, rather suspiciously western media failed to cover it at
the time. I can find the text for the bill and prove that he signed it via
official government sources but business insider is the only reasonably
reputable source that covered in the US to my knowledge. I'm not a lawyer so
I'm not going to assert that it does what they say it does but it leaves me
skeptical.

~~~
tivert
> I noted that myself, rather suspiciously western media failed to cover it at
> the time. I can find the text for the bill and prove that he signed it via
> official government sources but business insider is the only reasonably
> reputable source that covered in the US to my knowledge. I'm not a lawyer so
> I'm not going to assert that it does what they say it does but it leaves me
> skeptical.

The take you're promoting seems to have originated with Buzzfeed, then got
picked up by BusinessInsider and amplified by Russia Today. Given that it's
pretty unbelievable that there's a coordinated Western-media conspiracy to
suppress it, my bet is that take has some major flaws and/or there's less to
it the take makes it seems.

Based on some quick Googling, the law that was modified was the one that
authorizes The Voice of America and related organizations, and (according to
Wikipedia) the prohibitions on its US dissemination were originally put in
place because some Congressmen in the 40s thought the State Department _was
full of commies_ (really).

This NY Times from 2018 gives some perspective
([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/technology/facebook-
ads-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/technology/facebook-ads-
propaganda.html)). VOA is still not permitted to advertise to Americans, and
it characterized the law RT was writing about as:

> As with all affiliates of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Radio Free
> Europe/Radio Liberty is governed by the Smith-Mundt Act, a 1948 law that
> banned government-funded media outlets from disseminating their content
> inside the United States. The law was amended in 2014 to allow state-funded
> media organizations to distribute their content “upon request” to American
> viewers.

It seems that it amounted to giving organizations like the VOA permission to
send their content to individual Americans who ask for it. It seems like prior
to that it was available "for examination only."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Provis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Provisions)

I would only be skeptical of something based on an RT story if you actually do
the digging yourself to see if there's really a there there. In this case, I
don't think there is.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
That New York Times article is interesting, if it is indeed illegal to target
propaganda to American citizens it seems that VOA did so in violation of law
and only stopped when caught doing so.

That leads me to one of three conclusions:

1: Someone working for VOA felt that it was not illegal for them to do this
making Business Insiders interpretation of the law at least plausible if not
correct.

2: VOA knowingly used Facebook to target Americans with illegal propaganda.

3: Workers implementing VOA advertising were unable to understand that if you
select "United States" as a target in Facebook's geo-targeting tool[0], that
advertising indeed will be shown in the US.

Three seems the least likely to me personally given the historical context and
since being skeptical of news releases is likely good practice anyway I'm not
convinced that you shouldn't be.

To quote the same article:

Weston R. Sager, a lawyer with firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell who has
written about anti-propaganda laws, said that it was disturbing to see
government-funded news agencies targeting Facebook ads at Americans, no matter
their content.

“I’m concerned that we’re seeing the beginning of government efforts to try to
influence public opinion in the United States through the B.B.G. and its
affiliate entities,” Mr. Sager said. “It’s one thing to read a tweet by Donald
Trump. It’s another to receive a very polished news story from an organization
that holds itself out as objective and fact-based.”

[0][https://www.facebook.com/business/help/202297959811696](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/202297959811696)

~~~
tivert
> That leads me to one of three conclusions:

There's a fourth speculative possibility:

4\. The VOA ad-buyer isn't a robot and bent the rules to target ads at the US
for testing purposes (e.g. to see with his own account).

You could call such an act "propaganda illegally targeted at American citizens
by the US government," and while technically true, it'd also be a
hyperventilating overreaction. Especially since:

> The ads included several human-interest stories about Russia and a graphic
> about NATO’s popularity.

It's also worth noting a fact about the VOA's history. It was meant as an
antidote to Soviet propaganda efforts, which featured heavy censorship and
deliberately concocted lies [1] [2], by reporting truthfully according to
Western journalistic standards. While that might still arguably be classified
as propaganda (in its broadest form, an effort to convince someone of
something), I'd find it difficult to honestly condemn it. I've read memoirs of
dissidents that spoke very highly of it and its reporting, and they wouldn't
have done so if it had been merely censoring and lying with a different bias.
In my view, the modern desire to keep it out of the US is mainly born out of
tradition and an abundance of caution.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation#Defections_reve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation#Defections_reveal_covert_operations)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion)

> Three seems the least likely to me personally given the historical context
> and since being skeptical of news releases is likely good practice anyway
> I'm not convinced that you shouldn't be.

I'm appropriately skeptical of news releases, but it's possible to be over-
skeptical as well. That over-skeptical state is actually the goal of some
forms of propaganda.

------
atemerev
Facebook carefully guards its monopoly on coordinating inauthentic behavior!
:)

~~~
setquk
Yep. It’s ok when SCL, AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Data Propria etc do
it of course!

