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Business Insider:Facebook scrubbed thousands of posts shared during the 2016 campaign

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-russia-data-fake-accounts-2017-10


thanks Cameron:

backed up by WAPO

Facebook removed thousands of posts shared during the 2016 election by accounts linked to Russia after a Columbia University social media researcher, Jonathan Albright, used the company's data analytics tool to examine the reach of the Russian accounts.
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"Not everything, but it allowed us to make sense of some of this thing," he said.

Facebook confirmed that the posts had been removed, but said it was because the company had fixed a glitch in the analytics tool — called CrowdTangle — that Albright had used.

“We identified and fixed a bug in CrowdTangle that allowed users to see cached information from inactive Facebook Pages,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman.

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Albright, who discovered the content had reached a far broader audience than Facebook initially acknowledged, told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the data had allowed him "to at least reconstruct some of the pieces of the puzzle" of Russia's election interference.

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The other 464 accounts closed by Facebook have not yet been made public. If they are, an analysis of their combined posts would likely reveal that their content was shared an estimated billions of times during the election.

zuckerberg-toast.gif
 

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
It's always the coverup. At best Facebook was unknowingly complicit. Covering their tracks though, that will raise even more scrutiny.
 

cameron

Member
Also reported by WaPo: Facebook takes down data and thousands of posts, obscuring reach of Russian disinformation
”This is public interest data," Albright said Wednesday, expressing frustration that such a rich trove of information had disappeared — or at least moved somewhere the public can't see it. ”This data allowed us to at least reconstruct some of the pieces of the puzzle. Not everything, but it allowed us to make sense of some of this thing."
Facebook does not dispute it removed the posts, but it offers a different explanation of what happened. The company says it has merely corrected a ”bug" that allowed Albright, who is research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, to access information he never should have been able to find in the first place. That bug, Facebook says, has now been squashed on a social media analytics tool called CrowdTangle, which Facebook bought last year.

CrowdTangle enables advertisers to view metrics about the performance of their Facebook and Instagram campaigns, such as how many times a post was liked, commented, or shared. Until this week, advertisers were able to see metrics for content that had already been taken down on Facebook and Instagram.

”We identified and fixed a bug in CrowdTangle that allowed users to see cached information from inactive Facebook Pages," said company spokesman Andy Stone. ”Across all our platforms we have privacy commitments to make inactive content that is no longer available, inaccessible."
Whatever the reason, researchers expressed frustration that crucial data and thousands of posts are now gone.

Last week, two other researchers who had been working with the Facebook data, Joan Donovan and Becca Lewis of the nonprofit Data and Society Institute, also noticed that it had suddenly disappeared.

”When platforms do not release data for researchers to analyze, they set themselves up for drawing their own conclusions based on their own interests," said Donovan, who has used Facebook data for the last eight years to study how influence campaigns on social media impact participation in political movements. ”The bits and pieces of data we found in CrowdTangle are alarming because of who the Facebook pages target — everyday people with sets of mutual concerns about the future of our society."

Albright's research began when he tried to determine how far the Russian disinformation campaign reached during the campaign, an elusive question that many others had grappled with. He knew that Facebook had acknowledged some basic numbers regarding the Russian effort, specifically that the company had shut down 470 Russian-controlled pages and accounts that had bought more than 3,000 ads, and that those ads had reached an estimated 10 million people, based on the company's own modeling. Facebook has declined to say how many people saw the free posts created by the Russian accounts and pages.
 

Armaros

Member
Which means it was even worse then reported if they are blatantly covering trying to hide the scope of interference.

Since this has no good PR.
 

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
So Trump is partially the result of a bug in some analytics system. Good times.

This is the digital equivalent of shredding all the evidence
 
It would be amazing and hilarious if Zuckerberg ended up in prison before Trump for Russian collusion (impossible, but it's nice to dream).
 
I feel that all of this stuff is going to go very deep. Corruption could be exposed on so many different levels, it could be insane. Total implosion of the United States, if the level of backroom deals/corruption goes as far as I'm tending to believe it does.

I'm posting in a Gaming Side thread about how the timing of Pokemon Sun/Moon's dump to the internet was pretty strange. According to the OP it leaked to 4chan on 11/7 through 11/8, and yeah it could be pure coincidence/bullshit, I think it's interesting to consider. So many posters in that thread are so combative, ignorant, and straight up dismissive of the things happening, and the facts about Russian involvement. So to see a big article come out when trying to post in a gaming thread about people shouting 'cool tin hat' or 'McCarthyisms' or 'Red Scare 2.0' is actually pretty interesting hahaha.
 

Zenner

Member
“We identified and fixed a bug in CrowdTangle that allowed users to see cached information, which some might call evidence, from inactive Facebook Pages,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman.

Just ran it through Google Translate. O:)
 
I posted today that organizations that care about the survival of democracy need to come down hard on Facebook. Great work Jonathan Albright, I'd buy you a beer and a meal if I could.
 

jon_i634

Banned
Jesus christ, who thought this was the correct move to make? Disaster after disaster for Facebook and they can't get any of it right.
 

WedgeX

Banned
Didn't want to show their incompetence/complicity so they covered up just how widespread Russian fake accounts were.

And the country suffered.

Cannot even own up to their own failings.
 

chaos789

Banned
They need to do an investigation into facebook. Companies like facebook and twitter are fucking up. Social media was a bad idea.
 
Not surprised, Zuckerberg is testing the waters to run his own. And considering people's stupidity (Trump) we'll have him as president elect.
 
They need to do an investigation into facebook. Companies like facebook and twitter are fucking up. Social media was a bad idea.

What's there to investigate?

All these companies, Facebook, Google, Twitter collect data that people give them willingly in order to deliver targeted advertising. They will help anyone advertise. They even worked with Russia paying in rubles because hey money is money. Shareholders want their $$.

Working with politicians to deliver targeted political ads to brainwash people into voting against their self interests is the next step from trying to sell you products. I'm not sure but I'm guessing that's where the money is too.

Fuckerberg is doing an apology tour and "cooperating" so the government doesn't regulate the kind of shit he's pulling. Running for office is one way he can ensure social media stays unregulated(if he wins).
 

chaos789

Banned
What's there to investigate?

All these companies, Facebook, Google, Twitter collect data that people give them willingly in order to deliver targeted advertising. They will help anyone advertise. They even worked with Russia paying in rubles because hey money is money. Shareholders want their $$.

Working with politicians to deliver targeted political ads to brainwash people into voting against their self interests is the next step from trying to sell you products. I'm not sure but I'm guessing that's where the money is too.

Fuckerberg is doing an apology tour and "cooperating" so the government doesn't regulate the kind of shit he's pulling. Running for office is one way he can ensure social media stays unregulated(if he wins).

Hopefully he never wins. I would never vote for that asshole. And maybe the government regulating them is not such a bad idea. I assume they cannot investigate facebook for taking money from a foreign government who used their service to run political ads to influence a presidential election. You think a foreign government trying to influence an election and a website being complacent in that would be a bigger issue.
 
Didn't want to show their incompetence/complicity so they covered up just how widespread Russian fake accounts were.

And the country suffered.

Cannot even own up to their own failings.

Are you talking about Facebook or the American electorate?
 
Just deactivated my FB. If I email them to delete it, will they?

I've actually tried to find out if FB allowed users to delete it themselves, but it's only "after you die" or whatever, so clearly they actually can do, but they don't want to give up your information.

I suppose you could pretend to be a relative and claim your demise.
 
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