{"id":15124,"date":"2019-05-22T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-found-hosting-masses-of-far-right-eu-disinformation-networks.html"},"modified":"2019-05-22T12:48:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:48:55","slug":"facebook-found-hosting-masses-of-far-right-eu-disinformation-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-found-hosting-masses-of-far-right-eu-disinformation-networks.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook found hosting masses of far right EU disinformation networks"},"content":{"rendered":"

A multi-month hunt for political disinformation spreading on Facebook <\/a> in Europe suggests there are concerted efforts to use the platform to spread bogus far right propaganda to millions of voters ahead of a key EU vote which kicks off tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Following the independent investigation, Facebook has taken down a total of 77 pages and 230 accounts from Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Poland \u2014 which had been followed by an estimated 32 million people and generated 67 million \u2018interactions\u2019 (i.e. comments, likes, shares) in the last three months alone.<\/p>\n

The bogus mainly far-right disinformation networks were not identified by Facebook \u2014 but had been reported to it by campaign group Avaaz<\/a> \u2014 which says the fake pages had more Facebook followers and interactions than all the main EU far right and anti-EU parties combined.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results are overwhelming: the disinformation networks upon which Facebook acted had more interactions (13 million) in the past three months than the main party pages of the League, AfD, VOX, <\/a> Brexit Party, Rassemblement National and PiS combined (9 million),\u201d it writes in a new report.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough interactions is the figure that best illustrates the impact and reach of these networks, comparing the number of followers of the networks taken down reveals an <\/span>even clearer image. The Facebook networks takedown had almost three times (5.9 million) the number of followers as AfD, VOX, Brexit Party, Rassemblement National and PiS\u2019s main Facebook pages combined (2 million).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Avaaz has previously found and announced far right disinformation networks operating in Spain, Italy and Poland \u2014 and a spokesman confirmed to us it\u2019s re-reporting some of its findings now (such as the ~30 pages and groups in Spain that had racked up 1.7M followers and 7.4M interactions, which we covered last month<\/a>) to highlight an overall total for the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur report<\/a> contains new information for France, United Kingdom and Germany,\u201d the spokesman added.<\/p>\n

Examples of politically charged disinformation being spread via Facebook by the bogus networks it found include a fake viral video seen by 10 million people that supposedly shows migrants in Italy destroying a police car (but was actually from a movie; which Avaaz adds that this fake had been \u201cdebunked years ago\u201d); a story in Poland claiming that migrant taxi drivers rape European women, including a fake image; and fake news about a child cancer center being closed down by Catalan separatists in Spain.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s lots more country-specific detail in its full report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In all, Avaaz reported more than 500 suspicious pages and groups to Facebook related to the three-month investigation of Facebook disinformation networks in Europe. Though Facebook only took down a subset of the far right muck-spreaders \u2014 around 15% of the suspicious pages reported to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe networks were either spreading disinformation or using tactics to amplify their mainly anti-immigration, anti-EU, or racist content, in a way that appears to breach Facebook\u2019s own policies,\u201d Avaaz writes of what it found.<\/p>\n

It estimates that content posted by all the suspicious pages it reported had been viewed some 533 million times over the pre-election period. Albeit, there\u2019s no way to know whether or not everything it judged suspicious actually was.<\/p>\n

In a statement responding to Avaaz\u2019s findings, Facebook told us:<\/p>\n

\n

We thank Avaaz for sharing their research for us to investigate. As we have said, we are focused on protecting the integrity of elections across the European Union and around the world. We have removed a number of fake and duplicate accounts that were violating our authenticity policies, as well as multiple Pages for name change and other violations. We also took action against some additional Pages that repeatedly posted misinformation. We will take further action if we find additional violations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The company did not respond to our question asking why it failed to unearth this political disinformation itself.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the EU parliament vote, which begins tomorrow, Facebook invited a select group of journalists to tour a new Dublin-based election security \u2018war room\u2019<\/a> \u2014 where it talked about a \u201cfive pillars of countering disinformation\u201d strategy to prevent cynical attempts to manipulate voters\u2019 views.<\/p>\n

But as Avaaz\u2019s investigation shows there\u2019s plenty of political disinformation flying by entirely unchecked.<\/p>\n

One major ongoing issue where political disinformation and Facebook\u2019s platform is concerned is that how<\/em> the company enforces its own rules remains entirely opaque.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t get to see all the detail \u2014 so can\u2019t judge and assess all its decisions. Yet Facebook has been known to shut down swathes of accounts deemed fake ahead of elections, while apparently failing entirely to find other fakes (such as in this case).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a situation that does not look compatible with the continued functioning of democracy given Facebook\u2019s massive reach and power to influence.<\/p>\n

Nor is the company under an obligation to report every fake account it confirms. Instead, Facebook gets to control the timing and flow of any official announcements it chooses to make about \u201ccoordinated inauthentic behaviour\u201d \u2014 dropping these self-selected disclosures as and when it sees fit, and making them sound as routine as possible by cloaking them in its standard, dryly worded newspeak.<\/p>\n

Back in January, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg <\/a> admitted<\/a> publicly that the company is blocking more than 1M fake accounts every day. <\/em>If Facebook was reporting every fake it finds it would therefore need to do so via a real-time dashboard \u2014 not sporadic newsroom blog posts that inherently play down the scale of what is clearly embedded into its platform, and may be so massive and ongoing that it\u2019s not really possible to know where Facebook stops and \u2018Fakebook\u2019 starts.<\/p>\n

The suspicious behaviours that Avaaz attached to the pages and groups it found that appeared to be in breach of Facebook\u2019s stated rules include the use of fake accounts, spamming, misleading page name changes and suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior.<\/p>\n

When Avaaz previously reported the Spanish far right networks Facebook subsequently told us it had removed \u201ca number\u201d of pages violating its \u201cauthenticity policies\u201d, including one page for name change violations but claimed \u201cwe aren\u2019t removing accounts or Pages for coordinated inauthentic behavior\u201d.<\/p>\n

So again, it\u2019s worth emphasizing that Facebook gets to define what is and isn\u2019t acceptable on its platform \u2014 including creating terms that seek to normalize its own inherently dysfunctional \u2018rules\u2019 and their \u2018enforcement\u2019.<\/p>\n

Such as by creating terms like \u201ccoordinated inauthentic behavior\u201d, which sets a threshold of Facebook\u2019s own choosing for what it will and won\u2019t judge political disinformation. It\u2019s inherently self-serving.<\/p>\n

Given that Facebook only acted on a small proportion of what Avaaz found and reported overall, we might posit that the company is setting a very high bar for acting against suspicious activity. And that plenty of election fiddling is free flowing under its feeble radar. (When we previously asked Facebook<\/span> whether it was disputing Avaaz\u2019s finding of coordinated inauthentic behaviour vis-a-vis the far right disinformation networks it reported in Spain the company did not respond to the question.)<\/p>\n

Much of the publicity around Facebook\u2019s self-styled \u201celection security\u201d efforts has also focused on how it\u2019s enforcing new disclosure rules around political ads. But again political disinformation masquerading as organic content continues being spread across its platform \u2014 where it\u2019s being shown to be racking up millions of interactions with people\u2019s brains and eyeballs.<\/p>\n

Plus, as we reported yesterday<\/a>, research conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute into pre-EU election content sharing on Facebook has found that sources of disinformation-spreading \u2018junk news\u2019 generate far greater engagement on its platform than professional journalism.<\/p>\n

So while Facebook\u2019s platform is also clearly full of real people sharing actual news and views, the fake BS which Avaaz\u2019s findings imply is also flooding the platform, gets spread around more, on a per unit basis. And it\u2019s democracy that suffers \u2014 because vote manipulators are able to pass off manipulative propaganda and hate speech\u00a0as bona fide<\/em> news and views as a consequence of Facebook publishing the fake stuff alongside genuine opinions and professional journalism.<\/p>\n

It does not have algorithms that can perfectly distinguish one from the other, and has suggested it never will.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that even if Facebook dedicates far more resource (human and AI) to rooting out \u2018election interference\u2019 the wider problem is that a commercial entity which benefits from engagement on an ad-funded platform is also the referee setting the rules.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the whole loud Facebook publicity effort around \u201celection security\u201d looks like a cynical attempt to distract the rest of us from how broken its rules are. Or, in other words, a platform that accelerates propaganda is also seeking to manipulate and skew our views.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/GePF1VZQGFA\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A multi-month hunt for political disinformation spreading on Facebook in Europe suggests there are concerted efforts to use the platform to spread bogus far right propaganda to millions of voters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-15124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t