Social media analyst Jonathan Albright got a call from Facebook the day after he published research last week showing that the reach of the Russian disinformation campaign was almost certainly larger than the company had disclosed. While the company had said 10 million people read Russian-bought ads, Albright had data suggesting that the audience was at least double that — and maybe much more — if ordinary free Facebook posts were measured as well.
Albright welcomed the chat with three company officials. But he was not pleased to discover that they had done more than talk about their concerns regarding his research. They also had scrubbed from the Internet nearly everything — thousands of Facebook posts and the related data — that had made the work possible. Never again would he or any other researcher be able to run the kind of analysis he had done just days earlier.
“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 had allowed advertisers to view the metrics concerning the reach of their ads.
Now that Facebook has "fixed" it viewing that information is no longer possible.
I think it is now time to stop viewing Facebook as a benign social media platform who were simply used to help an adversarial foreign government hijack an election.
It appears now that they have revealed their true nature.
NOW??? NOW is the time? where the hell have you all been?? Living in a cave? It has been a monster that buys and sells you, and has been from the start.
ReplyDeleteCentury and counting...
DeleteNever did Facebook.
ReplyDeleteNever will.
If a company requires I access their info through Facebook, I simply don't do business with them.
That also includes, charity groups, media outlets and other social groups. If you don't have a website with the same information, then I won't be part of whatever you're doing, selling or asking.
That also goes for Twitter and Instagram.
Me too - have never done Facebook and have never had a desire to do so! I prefer email closeness w/family and dear friends.
DeleteGood for you.
DeleteFuck Facebook, twitter and all the rest.
Keep your laundry in the laundry hamper.
Was early adopter of both facebook and twitter (yes I'm ashamed but hell it was 2006 and seemed cool then) but it only took a few months until that shit was deleted; just a hassle that I didn't need in my life.
DeleteNot sure what instagram is but I've not done that and have no plans to, but I'm old, 51, retired, so can't think of any reason I need any of it in my life.
Hah! And I thought I was the only one in existence who didn't indulge in any of that social media drek. When asked why I don't, I usually answer, "I have a life." If that sounds smug, I didn't mean it to be.
DeleteWhat about the Wayback Machine? I give modest donations to it for keeping its archive. Moved to Canada after the Trumpagus was elected.
ReplyDeleteI don't even know what that is and you are giving money to "it".
Delete2:`14
DeleteIt's an internet archive.
They moved to Canada so Trump couldn't arrange for any or all of it to "disappear."
You know, like the climate scientists and others archiving all of their information before Trump took office before it was deleted.
The purge of government websites started very soon after he took the oath.
Can't you remember that far back?
They may have deleted it, others have not. Nothing goes away in the digital world. Too bad for them.
ReplyDeleteAnywone else notice the 5th response tweet down in this: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kellyanne-conway-donald-trump-empowering-women_us_59e05e93e4b03a7be57f802f?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
ReplyDeleteYEah, $arah's angling for a cabinet position. This oughtta be good.
Well, $he's certainly moronic enough.
DeleteMoron
Delete"Do you actually have no clue how ridiculous this assertion is?"
Moron:"rump is a moron, he is a moron on a mission ― and with more method to his madness than his enemies understand or want to consider. The tweets are a useful distraction ― a kind of air cover for his carpet bombing of federal policy and programs."
Delete"Trump’s father, who belittled him while repeatedly demanding that he grow up to be a “killer” and a “king,” died at the age of 93. Donald will be 74 in 2020. And he already thinks he is a king."
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-method-madness_us_59e125d7e4b03a7be580b923?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
@5:39 Motherfucker.
Deletehttps://www.yahoo.com/news/killer-king-education-donald-trump-000000711.html
" the need to outdo his father while also seeking his approval; the determination to impress moneyed New Yorkers while also claiming not to care what anyone thinks.
“The answer for every question about him really, no matter what the question is, is ‘dominance’, the need to dominate,”
" “Everything is focused on that, that’s his whole MO, and it all goes back to his dad, and to getting out of the outer boroughs.” “Since he was a child, he’s been vying for his father’s attention and everything else in his disturbed existence is rooted in the crazy need to prove he can outdo his father.”
"Explains Trump’s need to WIN, his seemingly racist, misogynistic and victimized worldview. And his sensitivity to insults and slights — the mark of someone who never felt fully accepted by the powers that be in the world he aspired to join. And it comes as close as anything to predicting Trump’s future — " Friederich drumpf>
" took his accumulated wealth (about $350,000 in today’s dollars) and tried to return home and reclaim his citizenship in Germany, but was banned because his departure years earlier was considered draft dodging. So he sailed back to Queens, with his fortune and a new bride, where he bought more real estate (land and houses this time, not brothel$) and raised a family." $on>
' Fred Trump “joined the ranks of entrepreneurs who constitute one of the oldest fraternities in the Republic: multimillionaires who owe their fortunes to subsidies from a grateful government.”
" “you are a killer … you are a king … you are a killer … you are a king…” As a result, he wrote, Donald came to believe that “he cannot be one without the other."“I used to fight back all the time,” he told journalist Marie Brenner in New York magazine.
“My father respects ME because I stood up to him.” He “stood up” to everyone else around him, as well. He spitballed and bullied other students at school, snuck off to Manhattan to buy switchblades and stink bombs on weekends, acted like “a bRAT” his sister, Maryanne told Tim O’Brien, author of “TrumpNation.” Donald reacted by clamoring for more attention with incorrigible mischief.” “Trump is often ruled by the needy child who resides in his psyche and would rather get negative attention than be ignored.”What it got him, at first, was three years in the New York Military Academy, a high school designed to both toughen and straighten out young men. He thrived at NYMA, Blair wrote, probably because “for the first time [he] was in a place that channeled competitiveness and aggression instead of tamping it down, a place where WINning really mattered.”
"When Donald was 8, his father was investigated by Congress over $4 million in windfall profits on money he took from the Municipal Housing program to build veterans’ housing, the source of his original fortune. When Donald was in college, Fred Sr. was investigated again about similar accusations that he took advantage of the spirit, if not the letter, of government-funded subsidies when building Trump Village (the only one of Fred’s developments to carry his own name.)
"There were no charges filed in either case, but there were months of headlines about
“real estate profiteering” and “milking the government.” And both times, Fred’s defense was essentially that “the system let him do it,”
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/trump-boosting-republicans-just-unleashed-plan-to-obstruct-muellers-russia-investigation/
ReplyDelete"“Accordingly, we respectfully request that one of broth of the Judiciary Committees immediately convene a public and open hearing or series of hearings to bring Mr. Mueller and his team out of the shadows and into the public square.” OK
I just loved this week's South Park, which featured the Zuckerberg facebook dude, and basically made the point that if you let him in you're fucked.
ReplyDeleteSocial media: people just can't help themselves and then are super duper surprised when they lose control of their information and are targeted with ads and worse.
Kochroach'“They were basically acting like Fiore’s personal Gestapo,” McGlade said, referring to the Nazi secret police."
ReplyDelete"“Let’s have a barbecue at the park, and my city council members, staff and everything, we’ll bring the beer and hot {bitch} dogs.”
"“Could you just sit your ass down and be quiet?”"
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/bundy-backing-las-vegas-councilwoman-used-cops-as-private-gestapo-to-silence-critics-at-hoa-meeting/
OT?~OIL!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/saudi-arabia-welcomes-new-trump-strategy-toward-iran/
Mark Z. This. 1935
ReplyDelete"the fact is that they began by discussing American law. The minister of justice presented a memorandum on American race law that included a great deal of detailed discussion of the laws of American states. American law continued to be a principle topic throughout that meeting and beyond. It’s also a startling fact that the most radical lawyers in that meeting — the most vicious among the lawyers present — were the most enthusiastic for the American example."
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/hitlers-american-model-the-united-states-and-the-making-of-nazi-race-law/