Top Facebook pages for US Christians run by Russian troll farms

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows

In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages were part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans, according to an internal company report, and achieved that reach not through user choice but primarily as a result of Facebook’s own platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm.

The report, written in October 2019 and obtained by MIT Technology Review from a former Facebook employee not involved in researching it, found that after the 2016 election, Facebook failed to prioritize fundamental changes to how its platform promotes and distributes information. The company instead pursued a whack-a-mole strategy that involved monitoring and quashing the activity of bad actors when they engaged in political discourse, and adding some guardrails that prevented “the worst of the worst.”

But this approach did little to stem the underlying problem, the report noted. Troll farms—professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networks—were still building massive audiences by running networks of Facebook pages. Their content was reaching 140 million US users per month—75% of whom had never followed any of the pages. They were seeing the content because Facebook’s content-recommendation system had pushed it into their news feeds.

As a result, in October 2019, all 15 of the top pages targeting Christian Americans, 10 of the top 15 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans, and four of the top 12 Facebook pages targeting Native Americans were being run by troll farms.

Whatever Zuckerberg's intentions, his company is a de facto Russian propaganda operation.

[Person Man]

Fraud, Espionage, and Solicitation is not speech.

[Sir Mohamed]

The US govt should launch major hacking attacks against Russian troll farms. Or, if they do already, get a lot smarter about it. Their disinformation campaigns are a huge problem and solving this through kind diplomacy isn't working at all. Time to get a lot tougher here.

[ProudModerate2]

No wonder why Fuzzy was so pro-Russian during the trump presidency.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1444853194970984455

Facebook is an existential threat to the United States of America.

[Hammy]

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1444853194970984455

Facebook is an existential threat to the United States of America.

Not defending facebook here, but it's time to stop pretending social media content is doing anything short of profiting from existing public demand--a country that wants angry, hateful content in the first place is not a healthy, civilized society, and we were there before social media.

[Crumpets]

[Surprised Cheburashka]

[Joe Republic]

That awkward feeling when you create a dorky web page to rate the hotness of the girls on your college campus, and you end up imploding global democracy.  Oops!

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1444853194970984455

Facebook is an existential threat to the United States of America.

Not defending facebook here, but it's time to stop pretending social media content is doing anything short of profiting from existing public demand--a country that wants angry, hateful content in the first place is not a healthy, civilized society, and we were there before social media.

I think it’s even worse than that (although that’s certainly part of it and definitely true of Twitter as well).  As a society, we’ve forgotten the value of privacy and for social media companies, the real money is in data collection (so they can sell their users’ personal info).  Promoting hate-driven misinformation is simply one of many ways that they bait the hook. 

I think something Zuckerburg said in a subsequently leaked e-mail during the early days of FB (when bragging to a friend that he could send him the personal data of any girl he wanted upon request) is especially on point: “It’s crazy!  Everyone just gives me all their personal information for free.  They trust me for some reason.  Dumb f***s.” 

If anyone’s interested in learning more about FB, An Ugly Truth (my source for that quote) was too dry for my taste, but it’s thoroughly researched and probably the definitive book about FaceBook, its leadership, and the company’s countless scandals.

[Person Man]

That awkward feeling when you create a dorky web page to rate the hotness of the girls on your college campus, and you end up imploding global democracy.  Oops!

To some, trying to figure out the order in which they want to get their classmates pregnant is totally worth it.

That said, outside of antitrust action, can there be lawsuits and federal prosecutions for aiding and abetting fraudulent activities?

Maybe DeSantis was on to something if the law he had actually went after were the illegal things that social media did instead of the legal things.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1444853194970984455

Facebook is an existential threat to the United States of America.

Not defending facebook here, but it's time to stop pretending social media content is doing anything short of profiting from existing public demand--a country that wants angry, hateful content in the first place is not a healthy, civilized society, and we were there before social media.

But it's not just that. It's like smoking. Yes, people willingly engaged in a self-destructive vice. But the people selling the product deliberately made it more addictive, and hid data about how dangerous it was. 

[darklordoftech]

we were there before social media.

Before social media, people believed whatever Fox News and Rush Limbaugh told them. Did social media cause the Waco Siege or the OK City bombing? Did Did social media cause the rise of Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich in the 90s? Did social media convince people that the Iraq War was a good idea?

[emailking]

Facebook and Instagram have been down for an hour and a half, their biggest outage since the near all day outage in 2019.

[Utah Neolib]

Facebook represents America in many ways. While a very good portion of Facebook discussion is apolitical, the political portion is filled with misinformation and Russian trolls which have influenced the 2016 and 2020 election. Facebook posts (I’m specifically talking about the US here) represent the crazy, and average parts of the US. A normal surface, and a conspiracy-ridden depths.

[OSR stands with Israel]

No wonder why Fuzzy was so pro-Russian during the trump presidency.

Why are  you so obsessed with attacking Fuzzy Bear . You can give your opinion on this story without attacking Fuzzy

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Facebook's new whistleblower is renewing scrutiny of the social media giant

So far the newspaper has revealed how anti-COVID-19 vaccine information flourished on Facebook. It also reported how separate rules allegedly apply to celebrities and politicians on the site. Facebook allowed VIP users to, for a time, avoid penalties for bad behavior, according to the report.

Haugen has also detailed how she says Facebook quickly disbanded its civic integrity team — responsible for protecting the democratic process and tackling misinformation — after the 2020 U.S. election. Shortly afterward came the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which organizers used Facebook to help plan.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/IssitaLopez/status/1445089035941072909

[John Dule]

You can only sow division in fertile soil.

[ProudModerate2]

No wonder why Fuzzy was so pro-Russian during the trump presidency.

Why are  you so obsessed with attacking Fuzzy Bear . You can give your opinion on this story without attacking Fuzzy

It was sarcasm ... a joke.
But since you brought it up, we are you so obsessed with always defending Fuzzy and calling him your ultimate-friend-of-all-time. You praise him like he is your lover or something.

[Person Man]

You can only sow division in fertile soil.

There is, of course, a matter of degree.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Yet Facebook will tell us that there are no problems. Such as making obnoxious ads that hilariously make it seem like people still use the site to relate to each other and share in their interests rather than to induce chaos and disarray.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Why this Facebook scandal is different

Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic integrity team, shared documents that were the basis of an explosive series of articles in the Wall Street Journal. The reports revealed that the company knew its products can cause meaningful harm — including negatively impacting the mental health of teens — but it still has not made major changes to fix such problems.

[Badger]

No wonder why Fuzzy was so pro-Russian during the trump presidency.

Why are  you so obsessed with attacking Fuzzy Bear . You can give your opinion on this story without attacking Fuzzy

It was sarcasm ... a joke.
But since you brought it up, we are you so obsessed with always defending Fuzzy and calling him your ultimate-friend-of-all-time. You praise him like he is your lover or something.

OSR has a well-documented history of vociferously knee-jerk defending even the most reality denying, nonsense spouting,  and generally foolish posters so long as they're on his ideological team. Tbf, though, he's hardly alone among blue avatars and their allies here.