Facebook...ugh...%$&#ing, Facebook

14 minute read | Last updated 12-Oct-2018 |  Social Media, Privacy

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Bad Robot Transcript

Good morning, everybody. How you doing today? Another episode of mornings is Mark. Thank you as always for joining me today and wanted to talk about everybody’s favorite social network Facebook. Not really. Yay. I am sick of talking about it. I’m sure you are sick of hearing about it, but it’s still an important thing to tackle so late yesterday afternoon on the Washington Post had a great article was picked up through pretty much all the Main outlets on the fact that Facebook took down 800 plus accounts for spreading political too much political information political disinformation, you know standard sort of large range sweep of accounts that were up to Shady activities leading up to the US midterm elections C Twist here was that the majority of these attack accounts the vast majority of them.

We’re actually based in the US. They were not foreign influence. They were a domestic influence. I’m trying to spread different stories about the u.s. Election. So this is the same as we’ve seen time and time again. It’s a disinformation attack. The Playbook is out there. People are using it.

If you start sort of looking at that Gray Line Between political disinformation to spam campaign to aggressive marketing to legitimate marketing to musers trying to use the network. It’s all gray right in this case political disinformation Facebook took down the accounts. The really interesting aspect. Is that domestic peace because especially in the US now again, you know, I’m not a US citizen.

This is just from foreign outside looking in is you don’t domestic Free Speech makes this kind of thing really interesting. The reason why foreign accounts were able to be taken down when it comes to political influence and political ads was because there’s actually election laws in the US. Against foreign organizations for an interest advertising and I’m promoting messages in the election.

There is very strict rules and regulations around it. Not so much for domestic. So the interesting thing here is that you can look at this as a disinformation attack, but it’s one launched against objectively yourself. It happens all the time, you know, you can make the argument on political advertising is all about this is about pushing forward one Viewpoint and put the difference here is that we’ve gone from political where it’s spin into outright this information.

Now that’s a line that a lot of people feel has been blurred over the last little while on the reason why I want to talk about this today wasn’t just that news article actually came up in a conversation. I was having yesterday with Fantastical intelligent person in my community.

I mean, we’re talking about the difficulty helping kids through school projects, ironically enough, but kids reaching the point where they’re doing research online. I’m instead of when you know, I’m old enough to remember. The only option was to go to the library and then read through the encyclopedias. Hope that they can get a book in on the topic you wanted but there was some sort of vetting process to get a book back in those days to have a book published.

There were editor is there illegal check there’s a whole bunch of things that made sure that the information that was in a book or an encyclopedia was relatively verifiable or verified and and reasonably actor. There’s still stuff that ran counter to logic there’s still stuff. That wasn’t correct for the vast majority of things when you walked in your school library or Public Library end of the informational section a reference section the vast majority this stuff their had some level of Credibility I guess is the best word now.

The challenge you have is I can publish anything on demand. I can publish anything online. How do you explain to kids? What is a legitimate source? And what is an initial sort of the talk to the topic of the conversation? We were having and the challenge is a mess because you can say okay.

Well you can check in for University website and see whether that’s you know, that should have a higher standing than me on Joe’s Blog. The one of Joe happens to be a professor amateur has more Nobel Prize winner in the field that you’re actually interested in right? It’s an absolutely immense problem for students in Academia who are focused and looking for legitimate sources not to mention the general public and this is really ties back to this Facebook takedown is that this is a question of how do we verify information in today’s age? Right? We see this all the time with rumors get spread that go like wildfire.

They go again on viral and all of a sudden we think a certain celebrities passed away or a certain thing happened when Show me information wasn’t presented or they all the information wasn’t even available. And that’s really what this takedown of these 800 plus accounts and all these pages on Facebook yesterday shows is that now we’re into an area where when it comes to applying judgement social networks aren’t great about that.

And we the public turns out aren’t so great about that the previous stuff when election meddling with easy because there was a law against that there was a standard for social networks to hold it to him to take. This is a foreign influence or who is trying to attempt, you know, how to influence the election or publishing content that goes strictly against this statute.

We have to take it down when it comes to this information now, we’re into an entire world of Grey who’s making the judgement call. What is the standard of information is it in fact illegal for somebody to basically lie and put out information. Life is free. Speech is a tightly held principal in the United States and Canada.

We also hold free speech very high. But we have different laws around Free Speech. You can’t I promote hate speech in Canada, for example that strictly against the wall. So there’s a little clearer a little more. I’m defined as legal aspects of what you can you can’t say here in Canada.

So it’s really interesting and it’s a really objective Lee if you take out the consequences, it’s a really interesting thing to study from a cybersecurity from a privacy aspect from a using social networks you very much have to be careful what you see online with you trust it with you take action on it.

I’m especially with you vote on it. If you’re basing your information for a vote whether that’s a you know in the states in Canada anywhere else, please please go through the extra effort to verify your sources have to look for legitimate and unbiased sources whenever possible and you want to make sure that you were making a decision.

Based on the information that you can trust not just one that is pushed through on a social network that is designed to amplify the filters that you select input in place. So it’s going to get Messenger from here on out. I got no good news for you on this one.

I think it’s it’s a fascinating area of psychology of mass psychology of organizational psychology. So she when we’re dealing with these systems that are amplifying a meal systems like social networks that are amplifying this information to scales never before has that we had to deal with speed that we’ve never had to deal with before.

What do you think? Let me know a day for those of you on the Block is always in the comments down below and a for everybody but especially our podcast listeners me at Mark and. CA how do you verify sources? I would love to get some tips and tricks on that because I do percent to communities and families quite often and it’s a really tough one to tell him.

I’m sources that I would use, you know, like something like a PubMed or an academic paper art appropriate for teens and social younger team is necessarily. I’m so how do you feel? Sources, how do you help people on social networks verify them? How do you avoid this or if he said she said a disinformation campaign? What do you think of Facebook taking is action, especially when there wasn’t necessarily a clear law to hold those takedowns against let me know what type of discussion that the only way we make it through this.

I hope you are set up for a fantastic day and a wonderful weekend. I will see you on the show on Monday and talk to you online. Good morning, everybody. How you doing today? Another episode of mornings is Mark. Thank you as always for joining me today and wanted to talk about everybody’s favorite social network Facebook.

Not really. Yay. I am sick of talking about it. I’m sure you are sick of hearing about it, but it’s still an important thing to tackle so late yesterday afternoon on the Washington Post had a great article was picked up through pretty much all the Main outlets on the fact that Facebook took down 800 plus accounts for spreading political too much political information political disinformation, you know standard sort of large range sweep of accounts that were up to Shady activities leading up to the US midterm elections C Twist here was that the majority of these attack accounts the vast majority of them.

We’re actually based in the US. They were not foreign influence. They were a domestic influence. I’m trying to spread different stories about the u.s. Election. So this is the same as we’ve seen time and time again. It’s a disinformation attack. The Playbook is out there. People are using it.

If you start sort of looking at that Gray Line Between political disinformation to spam campaign to aggressive marketing to legitimate marketing to musers trying to use the network. It’s all gray right in this case political disinformation Facebook took down the accounts. The really interesting aspect. Is that domestic peace because especially in the US now again, you know, I’m not a US citizen.

This is just from foreign outside looking in is you don’t domestic Free Speech makes this kind of thing really interesting. The reason why foreign accounts were able to be taken down when it comes to political influence and political ads was because there’s actually election laws in the US. Against foreign organizations for an interest advertising and I’m promoting messages in the election.

There is very strict rules and regulations around it. Not so much for domestic. So the interesting thing here is that you can look at this as a disinformation attack, but it’s one launched against objectively yourself. It happens all the time, you know, you can make the argument on political advertising is all about this is about pushing forward one Viewpoint and put the difference here is that we’ve gone from political where it’s spin into outright this information.

Now that’s a line that a lot of people feel has been blurred over the last little while on the reason why I want to talk about this today wasn’t just that news article actually came up in a conversation. I was having yesterday with Fantastical intelligent person in my community.

I mean, we’re talking about the difficulty helping kids through school projects, ironically enough, but kids reaching the point where they’re doing research online. I’m instead of when you know, I’m old enough to remember. The only option was to go to the library and then read through the encyclopedias. Hope that they can get a book in on the topic you wanted but there was some sort of vetting process to get a book back in those days to have a book published.

There were editor is there illegal check there’s a whole bunch of things that made sure that the information that was in a book or an encyclopedia was relatively verifiable or verified and and reasonably actor. There’s still stuff that ran counter to logic there’s still stuff. That wasn’t correct for the vast majority of things when you walked in your school library or Public Library end of the informational section a reference section the vast majority this stuff their had some level of Credibility I guess is the best word now.

The challenge you have is I can publish anything on demand. I can publish anything online. How do you explain to kids? What is a legitimate source? And what is an initial sort of the talk to the topic of the conversation? We were having and the challenge is a mess because you can say okay.

Well you can check in for University website and see whether that’s you know, that should have a higher standing than me on Joe’s Blog. The one of Joe happens to be a professor amateur has more Nobel Prize winner in the field that you’re actually interested in right? It’s an absolutely immense problem for students in Academia who are focused and looking for legitimate sources not to mention the general public and this is really ties back to this Facebook takedown is that this is a question of how do we verify information in today’s age? Right? We see this all the time with rumors get spread that go like wildfire.

They go again on viral and all of a sudden we think a certain celebrities passed away or a certain thing happened when Show me information wasn’t presented or they all the information wasn’t even available. And that’s really what this takedown of these 800 plus accounts and all these pages on Facebook yesterday shows is that now we’re into an area where when it comes to applying judgement social networks aren’t great about that.

And we the public turns out aren’t so great about that the previous stuff when election meddling with easy because there was a law against that there was a standard for social networks to hold it to him to take. This is a foreign influence or who is trying to attempt, you know, how to influence the election or publishing content that goes strictly against this statute.

We have to take it down when it comes to this information now, we’re into an entire world of Grey who’s making the judgement call. What is the standard of information is it in fact illegal for somebody to basically lie and put out information. Life is free. Speech is a tightly held principal in the United States and Canada.

We also hold free speech very high. But we have different laws around Free Speech. You can’t I promote hate speech in Canada, for example that strictly against the wall. So there’s a little clearer a little more. I’m defined as legal aspects of what you can you can’t say here in Canada.

So it’s really interesting and it’s a really objective Lee if you take out the consequences, it’s a really interesting thing to study from a cybersecurity from a privacy aspect from a using social networks you very much have to be careful what you see online with you trust it with you take action on it.

I’m especially with you vote on it. If you’re basing your information for a vote whether that’s a you know in the states in Canada anywhere else, please please go through the extra effort to verify your sources have to look for legitimate and unbiased sources whenever possible and you want to make sure that you were making a decision.

Based on the information that you can trust not just one that is pushed through on a social network that is designed to amplify the filters that you select input in place. So it’s going to get Messenger from here on out. I got no good news for you on this one.

I think it’s it’s a fascinating area of psychology of mass psychology of organizational psychology. So she when we’re dealing with these systems that are amplifying a meal systems like social networks that are amplifying this information to scales never before has that we had to deal with speed that we’ve never had to deal with before.

What do you think? Let me know a day for those of you on the Block is always in the comments down below and a for everybody but especially our podcast listeners me at Mark and. CA how do you verify sources? I would love to get some tips and tricks on that because I do percent to communities and families quite often and it’s a really tough one to tell him.

I’m sources that I would use, you know, like something like a PubMed or an academic paper art appropriate for teens and social younger team is necessarily. I’m so how do you feel? Sources, how do you help people on social networks verify them? How do you avoid this or if he said she said a disinformation campaign? What do you think of Facebook taking is action, especially when there wasn’t necessarily a clear law to hold those takedowns against let me know what type of discussion that the only way we make it through this.

I hope you are set up for a fantastic day and a wonderful weekend. I will see you on the show on Monday and talk to you online.