
Facebook Knows More About Russia’s Election Meddling. Shouldn’t We? - SREinSF
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/business/facebook-russia.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
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meowface
>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?

~~~
wintom
>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.

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nikanj
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.

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comicjk
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.

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0xbear
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.

~~~
comicjk
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.

~~~
0xbear
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?

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marze
Wasn't about $2B spent on the election by each party?

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.

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aorloff
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.

~~~
Larrikin
Taking money from a foreign entity to run political ads is against the law.

~~~
nomel
Could we get a reference for this claim?

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-...](http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/bluman-v-federal-
election-commission/)

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

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aresant
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.

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grandalf
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.

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almonj
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.

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rjplatte
Russia bought ads. The US flies over countries distributing propaganda for
their favored candidate. Why is there a conflict?

~~~
synicalx
Hell, they used to go a bit further than just dropping leaflets...

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freshhawk
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.

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seanwilson
Can anyone summarise what Facebook are being accused of here? That they were
careless not reviewing ads like these or something worse?

I'd be interested to know the content of the ads especially if people are
claiming these somehow helped swing the election.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
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.

~~~
prawn
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%.

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pmoriarty
_" people voted for him regardless"_

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.

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grzm
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.

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abraae
Its about time Facebook faced the music.

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.

