
Inside Facebook’s Election ‘War Room’ - coloneltcb
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/technology/facebook-election-war-room.html
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shiado
If Facebook cares so much about influencing elections and interfering in
democracy, why do they do it themselves?

[https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/04/fbook-lobbyists-
gav...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/04/fbook-lobbyists-
gave-600k-zuckerbergs-congressional/)

~~~
djajshgsjja
That’s FB using the official election-influencing methods. The controversy
here is about the government being upset that people are influencing the
elections outside the approved channels.

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travisoneill1
> the War Room will house a team of about 20 focused on rooting out
> disinformation

Something tells me that they aren't putting much effort into this. Hopefully
it's because FB knows that a war on lying is about as winnable as a war on
drugs.

~~~
neuronexmachina
Indeed, fighting the "Firehose of Falsehood" propaganda model is quite
challenging:

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html)

> Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a
> remarkable evolution in Russia's approach to propaganda. The country has
> effectively employed new dissemination channels and messages in support of
> its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, its ongoing involvement in the
> conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, and its antagonism of NATO allies. The
> Russian propaganda model is high-volume and multichannel, and it
> disseminates messages without regard for the truth. It is also rapid,
> continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency. Although
> these techniques would seem to run counter to the received wisdom for
> successful information campaigns, research in psychology supports many of
> the most successful aspects of the model. Furthermore, the very factors that
> make the firehose of falsehood effective also make it difficult to counter.
> Traditional counterpropaganda approaches will likely be inadequate in this
> context. More effective solutions can be found in the same psychology
> literature that explains the surprising success of the Russian propaganda
> model and its messages.

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ve55
Pretty chilling that 'private' companies like this are able to set up such
operations that could easily sway federal election results without providing
any transparency or having many regulations to follow.

~~~
trendia
Like a newspaper, magazine, or TV station?

~~~
rubbingalcohol
That's a false equivalence. Facebook has an inordinate amount of power over
person-to-person communication. TV and print media is not even in the same
ballpark of influence.

~~~
beager
Conglomerated media companies like Sinclair are in the ballpark, but true
independent media outlets don’t, for sure.

And it’s not false equivalence in my mind, just worth noting the difference in
magnitude and considering the difference that might make.

~~~
asabjorn
False equivalence definition: "A common way for this fallacy to be perpetuated
is one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence,
especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the
logical result." \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence)

It is hard to see the equivalence between a traditional media company such as
Sinclair that produce content for distribution and a social _platform_ for
individuals to share their thoughts such as Facebook.

When we are talking about potential effects on personal communication it does
not make sense to compare the magnitude between a traditional mass media
platform product and a social media platform, because the latter focus is
entirely on personal communication and the former is a mass media company.

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delbel
How is this legal? Don't they need to register was a political action
campaign? What the hell? They must at a minimum describe and disclose their
methods, procedures, determination factors, cash flow/conflicts of interest
and some kind of transparent audit log. Who determines "fake news" \-- a
subjective term. The whole premise is that they don't believe people can
determine that for themselve and must be "managed". What a travesty of our
democracy. Big tech big brother.

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RickJWagner
Social media is just one 'propaganda center' to be concerned with.

Hollywood is a notorious mouthpiece for politics. (They are also very heavy-
handed in controlling the message through use of carrot-and-stick.)

Big media is of course totally lopsided, one way or the other. Fox is as bad
as CNN is as bad as MSNBC. Take your pick.

For my tastes, the best way to get a central view is to look at a site like
'Real Clear Politics', which shows the most outrageous headlines from both
sides of the aisle. The reader is left to triangulate a position, after having
seen the most persuasive arguments from both sides of the aisle.

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chalkandpaste
> ... biggest companywide reorientation since our shift from desktops to
> mobile phones...

Putting 20 people behind it?

~~~
gesticulator
Tech companies are like glaciers, 20 people at the tip of this project will be
leveraging all of FB’s internal tooling and might be able to get more done.

Also, it would be difficult and maybe a waste of effort to try to scale a team
faster than that, with midterms so close. For sure they can increase headcount
if it’s successful.

~~~
fhbdukfrh
You're joking right? FB has over 25 _thousand_ employees and you think 20
people is a significant reorientation effort? Or that a team any larger would
have problems a scaling?

~~~
jeeyoungk
Then put 100 people in the room? 1000? Not sure what's the point of having
everyone in the single room, when the entire company is in the single company
anyway.

