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1. blf says

   12 April 2021 at 8:39 am

   [T]he Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens:

   A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform

   Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.

   The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.

   The investigation shows how Facebook has allowed major abuses of its platform in poor, small and non-western countries in order to prioritize addressing abuses that attract media attention or affect the US and other wealthy countries. The company acted quickly to address political manipulation affecting countries such as the US, Taiwan, South Korea and Poland, while moving slowly or not at all on cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Mexico, and much of Latin America.

   “There is a lot of harm being done on Facebook that is not being responded to because it is not considered enough of a PR risk to Facebook,” said Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook who worked within the company’s “integrity” organization to combat inauthentic behavior. “The cost isn’t borne by Facebook. It’s borne by the broader world as a whole.”

   Facebook pledged to combat state-backed political manipulation of its platform after the historic fiasco of the 2016 US election, when Russian agents used inauthentic Facebook accounts to deceive and divide American voters.

   But the company has repeatedly failed to take timely action when presented with evidence of rampant manipulation and abuse of its tools by political leaders around the world.

   Facebook fired Zhang for poor performance in September 2020. On her final day, she published a 7,800-word farewell memo describing how she had “found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry” and lambasting the company for its failure to address the abuses. “I know that I have blood on my hands by now,” she wrote. […]

   [… details and examples…]

   Ultimately, Zhang argues that Facebook is too reluctant to punish powerful politicians, and that when it does act, the consequences are too lenient.

   “Suppose that the punishment when you have successfully robbed a bank is that your bank robbery tools are confiscated and there is a public notice in a newspaper that says, ‘We caught this person robbing a bank. They shouldn’t do that,’” Zhang says. “That’s essentially what’s going on at Facebook. And so what’s happened is that multiple national presidents have made the decision that this risk is enough for them to engage in it.

   “In this analogy, the money has already been spent. It can’t be taken back.”

   Also in the Grauniad, a much longer and more detailed article, How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower’s account:

   The inside story of Sophie Zhang’s battle to combat rampant manipulation as executives delayed and deflected

   […]

   Zhang knew that this was not a tale that Facebook wanted her to tell, so when she hit publish, she also launched a password-protected website with a copy of the memo and provided the link and password to Facebook employees. Not only did Facebook temporarily delete the post internally, the company also contacted Zhang’s hosting service and domain registrar and forced her website offline.

   […]

   She argues that Facebook is allowing its self-interest to interfere with its responsibility to protect democracy, and that the public and regulators need to know what is happening to provide oversight.

   “The whole point of inauthentic activity is not to be found,” she said. “You can’t fix something unless you know that it exists.”

   […]

2. raven says

   12 April 2021 at 10:29 am

   LOL.
   That is Jordan Peterson all right.
   Jordan Peterson hates everybody who aren’t cis het white males. Some quotes of his about women.

   https://www.quora.com/Why-i…
   The poster below on quora has some Peterson quotes. I normally don’t like to copy other people’s comments but in this case it’s important enough that I will with attribution. The sources are at the original article reached by the link.
   His quotes are in bold

   Riley May
   Answered May 4, 2018 · Author has 70 answers and 83.4k answer views
   Because he says things like:
   ..women have a subconscious wish for brutal male domination
   This is bullcrap. He doesn’t know this.
   ..that it’s unfortunate that men can’t control women who say crazy things because they aren’t allowed to hit them
   How about crazy men like Peterson. We aren’t allowed to hit them either.
   Peterson admires violence and is frustrated that he can’t be violent towards women.
   Guy is a sick puppy.
   ..young women are outraged because they don’t have a baby to suckle
   Gibberish. He doesn’t know this. It’s just a misogynistic insult.
   more….

   ..if a woman doesn’t want to have kids, there’s something wrong with her
   Gibberish. It’s an opinion or an assertion without proof. It’s also wrong.
   It’s a sick puppy thing again.
   ..and says “The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.” – despite women lacking basic human rights and legally being owned by men throughout history
   The oppresion was/is blatantly true and obvious.
   ..says stuff like “Men cannot oppose pathological women because chivalry demands they keep their most potent weapons sheathed” on twitter
   That violence thing again. I would be very surprised if Peterson doesn’t have a history of violence against women, children, and pets. Anything smaller and weaker than himself.
   There is lots more. Pages and pages of sick garbage like this.
   No matter how ugly and vicious Peterson seems, the reality is going to be far worse.

3. raven says

   12 April 2021 at 10:37 am

   Jordan Peterson uses a lot of violent language and comes close to flat out calling for violence often.
   He is at least a supporter of terrorism if not an outright terrorist himself.
   I can’t see why we let him into the USA.
   He is a Canadian citizen and we have enough of our own right wingnut terrorists right now.

   Jordan Peterson:
   He describes debate as “combat” on the “battleground” of ideas and hints at physical violence, too. “If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect,” he told Paglia last year, adding that it is harder to deal with “crazy women” because he cannot hit them.
   and
   Interview in Reason Magazine
   “It’s very helpful for people to hear that they should make themselves competent and dangerous and take their proper place in the world.”

   Stossel scoffs, “Competent and dangerous? Why dangerous?”

   “There’s nothing to you otherwise,” Peterson replies. “If you’re not a formidable force, there’s no morality in your self-control. If you’re incapable of violence, not being violent isn’t a virtue. People who teach martial arts know this full well. If you learn martial arts, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously you learn to control it … Life is a very difficult process and you’re not prepared for it unless you have the capacity to be dangerous.”

   Peterson comes close to flat out calling for violence often

4. Alex Hatheway says

   12 April 2021 at 12:27 pm

   I guess this is what they mean when they say you gotta understand him in context.

5. robro says

   12 April 2021 at 12:59 pm

   This showed up in the ACM TechNews email this morning: Facebook Algorithm Shows Gender Bias in Job Ads, Study Finds. Note that this report is published in WSJ, i.e. a Murdoch, version of the story but I’ve seen other versions of it.

6. blf says

   12 April 2021 at 3:29 pm

   Recently my ISP e-mailed me an invitation to join(? “like”?) a (newly-launched?) factsborked page (in translation) “to be informed in real time and discuss the digital topics of our daily life : New apps, social media benefits and excesses, technologies that make your life easier, or how to avoid online scams”. There’s so much wrong there, but the one which made my jaw drop is how to avoid online scams — on factsborked, amongst the scammist most dishonest and unreliable multiple pilesmountains of shite evar.