
Facebook takes down thousands of posts, obscuring Russian disinformation - bentaber
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/10/12/facebook-takes-down-data-and-thousands-of-posts-obscuring-reach-of-russian-disinformation
======
ilaksh
The problem is that they are portraying things as if propaganda is something
that only Russians or some "other" group uses, and that there is somehow an
authority that knows what is the "real" truth, which we must count on to save
us from the fake news -- by removing it.

In other words, they are trying to make censorship something that only happens
to fake information. So by censoring something, they automatically can qualify
it as false.

This is the main problem. Not Russia or some other country's propaganda. It is
the domestic propaganda, and censorship, which is most harmful.

I know most people do not believe that their country (especially in the US)
has propaganda, but unfortunately, there is quite a lot of propaganda in
normal news outlets here.

Do some googling for things like 'Edward Bernays' or 'The Fourth Estate'
before you dismiss this. Also, after your research, you may come to the
conclusion that this has only happened at some distant point in the past, and
has stopped in 'modern' times. Which would be a break from the entire history
of civilization.. so just maybe its still going on, and you are in denial.

~~~
GoToRO
There is propaganda and there are lies. Russia lies. Lies the world and even
more so, the russians. At some point the russians will wake up.

------
hourislate
Mark Zuckerburg for whatever reason has always supported Russian
disinformation in the past.

Saw this on reddit today...

[http://radiolemberg.com/ua-articles/ua-
allarticles/weaponizi...](http://radiolemberg.com/ua-articles/ua-
allarticles/weaponizing-facebook-for-russia-s-invasion-of-ukraine)

> At the same time Russian information warriors were posting voluminous fake
> news, such as the infamous “crucified boy” false report that was first put
> out by Russian propaganda TV on 12 July 2014. Using huge numbers of “sock
> puppet” accounts, the Russians amplified fake news to put it at the top of
> “most viewed right now” lists on social media and news aggregators. The
> Russian troll army also worked in large numbers to suppress or ban pro-
> Ukrainian accounts. En masse, they would report to Facebook any posting
> critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as being either
> “nudity/pornography” or “hate speech” against an identifiable group. It
> turns out the category of the complaint didn’t matter, as the algorithm used
> by Facebook responded to the volume of complaints, not the substance of
> them. Ukrainian accounts accurately reporting the war were punished with
> banishment, and Russian accounts spreading fake news were rewarded with
> prominence.

~~~
commenter1
As much as your mother is supporting the American disinformation campaign by
spawning you.

------
pasbesoin
The Internet is not a library. It's not an archive. You have no guarantee of
content's continued existence -- less so that with respect to old piles of
newspaper in your garage.

This concerns me. Absent ensured storage _and access_ (that can't e.g. be
retroactively 404-ed via robots.txt), our very history is at risk.

And with walled gardens like Facebook taking over more and more traffic,
delivery, viewership... We may never know what happened. Even absent a
deliberate, concerted plan to eliminate the evidence.

Such privacy is fine, for private, personal conversations. Is it, for a paid
advertising campaign reaching millions?

------
Nomentatus
Title false, the posts and shares had already been taken down; but cached
copies were still available, by error of omission, to its analysis tool. That
part of the cache has now been removed.

Back when I was employed in a newspaper office, you were given mere seconds or
maybe a couple of minutes to title articles; it wasn't expected that you read
the whole article first, there wasn't time. Most staff were involved in the
advertising department, news was the filler, the afterthought. Could be that
hasn't changed much.

------
FellowTraveler
They should publicly post all of these "Russian propaganda" items in a single
place, so we can all see them.

