Quit Facebook. It’s the only way to fix this problem. The company must be put out of business.
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Change the platform. If it’s an open platform, close it.
2
I can be an average joe and sell out my country? Facebook certainly levelizes the field. Only the rich and powerful could do that before facebook arrived.
4
This sounds like a great way for the NRA to improve their finances next year. They already have lots of friends over there.
1
Only the Russians now are paying to use a “real” person’s account today, in a greedy world tomorrow everyone will be making off of lies and hate spreading.
4
You had just demonstrated how average Joe Shmoe media consumer swallows every claim of Russian evildoing. Unprecedented breach? My goodness, did you sleep through Iraq invasion in 2003? Or through bombing of Serbia in 1999? Did you miss the annexation of Serbian territory? Dipping scandal? Did you sleep through doping scandal in cycling with American cyclist as a mindmaster? Openly undermine through the Government media? Jee, American media does that all the time by publishing unverified stories about foreign leaders. And it is much better than instigating riots as the American Government does. And two agents in London are nothing but creation of the Western media that loves to demonize Russia, and yet too scare to ask their own Government critical questions, as for example, how strong the evidence of Iraqi WMD BEFORE the war, not after, when people were already killed and the country was shattered.
5
We are stuck on a stupid narrative. Every country influences elections. Free speech allows every person, business, country with an interest to voice their opinion.
4
So, this alleged plot is based on the video confession put forth by the Ukranian Security service, the SBU? The same SBU that faked a journalist murder to frame Russia?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/05/ukraine-president-petro-poroshenko-backs-faked-murder-of-russian-journalist
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At this point Facebook should seriously consider just blocking Russia in general. I wonder if what they make in Russia is worth the grief.
4
Maybe Facebook and Twitter should be shut out of Russia. Until Russia agrees not to manipulate it to commit crimes. If China can shut them out, FB and Twitter can self regulate. But then they would lose revenue so that’s never going to happen. Democracy and morality are no match for the moolah
4
I think you miss the point Russia is paying Facebook users to host their Campaign.
So it’s Ukraine UK and US as well as perhaps Australia and Canada who have nearby elections who need to close Facebook what’s app and Twitter.
8
The Russian government (at least under Mr. Putin) will never stop trying to game democracies and technologies to its advantage. It's asymmetric (dis)information warfare, where the more authoritarian, anti-democratic party always has the upper hand.
But we can do something about it. Stop using Facebook and Twitter, or at the very least, don't use them (or friends on them) as your news source. Instead, read independent fact-checked sources like, say, the New York Times. Russia can't game the system if we refuse the play the game.
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@jrinsc
Ukraine is not a democracy. It is the most corrupt state in Europe. Only 1% of Ukrainians themselves, according to polls, believe that the election will be conducted fairly and honestly. It is just stupid to try to influence a corrupt election via Facebook. SBU is just lying as it always does.
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@jrinsc That just subtracts the well-informed people from FaceBookWorld, leaving the great majority of people who get their news from "FB" rather than from any named news site, to wallow in the sludge without outside comment.
All abusers isolate their victims on some level. All of them. Leaving FB is doing their work for them.
That won't happen here. Russia doesn't need to pay Americans to promote its interests and agenda online... as the comments here show, many Americans are willing to step up and volunteer to do it for free.
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Facebook is a scourge on global politics.
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@Joyce Ice
"Facebook is a scourge on global politics."
No more than CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX, PBS, MSNBC et al.
4
Rubbish. FB is almost totally unregulated, they filter out almost exactly 0% of posts. There is no restriction on blatant lies, not even theoretically as an ideal. Pretty much anybody can do pretty much anything.
On the other hand, professional journalists typically spend a year or two doing a postgraduate degree in journalism. What do they learn in that year or two of intensive full-time study? You could look up the syllabus for some of the courses before you make the ridiculous comparison you did.
You could read a book on journalistic ethics, and reflect on what you know and understand that is different to before you read it.
7
After this is discovered in America, will the willing American Conspirators face Treason charges?
We're in a battle for Democracy and American Law. Our current leadership isn't addressing the issue. Before they years turn to bloodshed and tribal violence, we need leadership to address that America is on the verge of collapse, directly from the influence of foreign actors.
America citizens conspiring with those foreign actors are just as guilty as those foreign actors and should be tried and punished as such, no matter where it reaches, no exceptions, no exemptions.
We could use George Washington and Thomas Jefferson now.
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@WI Transplant
"We could use George Washington and Thomas Jefferson now."
No, thanks. I prefer my own judgment and freedom of thought.
Freedom of expression has already been stolen from us by the PC storm front.
3
Bloodshed and tribal violence are desirable outcomes for some participants. Not just the external enemies of the US, there are internal groups who are being manipulated or talking themselves into the position that democracy has failed and civil war is now necessary and desirable.
Cybercrime and Social Media manipulation are tools for warfare going forward. If they can’t hack your data, they’ll hack your preconceived notions and beliefs with dis-information. In short, they want to take everything away from you.
As another commentator has said, yes, Russians, the Average Person, are not evil. Just as Americans are not evil. But Russian leaders are evil, just as Republicans leaders are evil. They want everything you have. And they will not stop until they have all of it.
Typically people do not associate Russians with Republicans, but times have changed. Trump has broken that divide. In fact he boasts of his admiration for Vladimir Putin. The remainder of the GOP, however, wish to keep this admiration their little secret.
Come 2020 election, we know in advance that Russia will try to hack us into next week. And Facebook will be powerless to do anything. Facebook will always be a dollar short and a day late. We know the Russians will try every trick in the book to manipulate us, our institutions and our infrastructure.
What we don’t know is the GOP will be right beside them, every step of the way. Republicans will be in league with Russians to hack the Democrats and their institutions. Basically two peas in a pod.
You won’t be able to stop this carnage but you’ll know it’s happening.
Want to stop it? Vote Democrat.
Tell the Independent next to you to do the same.
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@PC
"They want everything you have."
Exactly the modus operandi of the Democratic constituency, skillfully exploited by the party.
Then of course whoever has the audacity to protest the extortion is bad, evil, bigoted, greedy, white and old, and straight and male, and generally yucky.
4
Last month I applied for work at a temp agency in Minneapolis. I was required to sign a statement authorizing them to perform 'background checks' before they would consider offering me a job. This agency seems to use a lot of shady practices, and at the time the signals that registered in my mind were: "I just authorized this company to steal my identity. The quality engineer job I'm applying for doesn't seem to exist. They're trying to bait and switch me to another job."
Identity theft using employment application data and resumes seems to have been a favorite tool for setting up fake accounts during the 2016 election, too.
9
From the article: "In a video confession published by the S.B.U., Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, a man it identified as the Russian agent said . . ."
It appears that this piece may be yet another example of our media's current and very alarming tendency to uncritically accept and promote any accusation against Russia.
An unnamed individual, identified by the SBU as a Russian agent, appears in a video confession distributed to the public -- and the Times reporters on the story simply *assume* that the assertion by an intelligence agency deeply hostile to Russia is presenting nothing but the unvarnished truth.
What's more, it is virtually certain that the vast majority of readers will eagerly accept the assertion as factual. That is the case because hating and demonizing Russia, and attributing to Russians all manner of evildoing without question, is a requirement of what passes for patriotism -- but is actually groupthink -- in the US today.
As for those who express skepticism, as I am here, well, we're probably agents of the Kremlin, right?
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@Douglas
"It appears that this piece may be yet another example of our media's current and very alarming tendency to uncritically accept and promote any accusation against Russia."
A quote for you, Douglas, from "this piece."
"While Ukrainian officials are often quick to demonize Russia, the case aligns with what Facebook officials say will be the future of disinformation."
Looks to me as they have given the reader the necessary disclaimer about the tentative nature of their report. They do not claim that what the Ukrainians say is true, everything is in quotation marks.
"What's more, it is virtually certain that the vast majority of readers will eagerly accept the assertion as factual."
I didn't. I'm an average Joe-Schmoe-media-consumer.
"...and attributing to Russians all manner of evildoing without question..."
Russia (i.e. Putin) has answered those questions by:
1. Acknowledging the military takeover of another country's region (an unprecedented breach of contemporary international norms).
2. Openly violating the sovereignty of and aggressing against a neighboring country.
3. Openly, through a state-controlled media undermining the government of a neighboring country.
4. Being caught in a doping scheme perpetrated by a state sports official.
5. Sending a couple of "tourist" operatives on a hit mission to a London suburb.
Enough plenty for me.
Until Russia comes clean, not in my life-time for sure, I have no further questions.
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Just like you are claiming in the article that Russia finds random people to influence election through FB, SBU could have found a random person to say whatever they wanted him to say. Provide some proof other than words.
Also why don't you tell that around 3 million Ukrainian citizens who live/work in Russia are unable to vote in the election?
8
>>> "Also why don't you tell that around 3 million Ukrainian citizens who live/work in Russia are unable to vote in the election?"
The reporters might not know that, of course. However, given that our current wave of Russophobia seems to require whitewashing the actions of the extreme right-wing rulers of Ukraine (effectively a US client state), we have to wonder whether it would be included in the reporting even if it were known.
3
@Saucy
"Also why don't you tell that around 3 million Ukrainian citizens who live/work in Russia are unable to vote in the election?"
They are perfectly free to travel to Ukraine and vote if they want.
Or are you expecting Ukrainian officials to verify the identity and ballot validity of 3 mln people residing in a country they are at war with?
5
@Saucy
"Provide some proof other than words."
Dear Saucy, the Moon dweller, al from Boston here.
Did you not notice all the quotation marks in the article? They are there to inform the reader that those words are reported at their face value, which carries no burden of proof.
"Also why don't you tell that around 3 million Ukrainian citizens who live/work in Russia are unable to vote in the election?"
This statement does carry burden of proof. Are you saying that those people are prohibited by law from traveling back to their country and voting? If you are, I think you're making this up or can't see clearly from the Moon.
Letting people residing in a country you are in a military conflict with vote in your national election without showing up would be stupid (no proof required).
Would you expect, say, the British to count votes of British nationals living in Nazi Germany, while hunkering down in bunkers under Luftwaffe's bombs? Or to send their representatives all around Germany to verify the identity of those 'British nationals.'
Only on the Moon. Maybe. Not even.
7