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Facebook has spent so much time on the defensive since 2016 that it can be amazing to see the company profiling itself. But as Europe begins to break away from the open internet and as American lawmakers stir their swords a bit more each day, Facebook launches a kind of regulatory shock campaign: a public effort to reformulate the debate in his own way, to advance his vision of the world and ensure his continued domination.
The campaign, which began during the weekend, has three main themes. The first is to go on the offensive: in the absence of a global agreement on how to regulate major technology platforms, Facebook will try to frame the debate in its own way. The second is to offer concessions: to generate the goodwill of skeptics in government and in the press, society will give up some of its power and income. Finally, Facebook is trying to keep control. Be that as it may, Facebook wants to keep the maximum flexibility to continue to function as such.
Let's see how the campaign is going.
It started seriously on Saturday, when Mark Zuckerberg published an editorial in the Washington Post calling for "new rules" for the Internet. (If you could read this title and do not start immediately to hum Dua Lipa, you are stronger than meMr. Zuckerberg calls for regulation in four areas: "harmful content", electoral integrity, confidentiality and data portability.
In any case, the message is the same: we have already worked a lot, but there is no overall agreement on how to deal with these problems, and it would be better for everyone if there were any. Zuckerberg is taking the offensive here by asking other companies to act like Facebook, by publishing regular reports on the removal of "harmful content," for example. It offers concessions acknowledging that Facebook currently holds "too much power over speech" and calling for privacy legislation inspired by the EU's general data protection regulation.
And if the world acts as he suggests, Zuckerberg keeps control. He may have to offer data portability, for example, but he hopes to do so to replace WhatsApp and Instagram, as demanded by critics like Senator Elizabeth Warren.
On the eve of Zuckerberg's opinion, the company had issued a new pledge for the protection of the European elections against any interference and published a searchable archive of all the advertisements on the platform.
On Saturday, Facebook's director, Sheryl Sandberg, posted a blog stating that the company would consider new restrictions on live streaming due to the misuse of the tool by the New Zealand shooter. On Sunday night, Facebook announced the creation of a tool allowing users to query any message posted in the news feed on why it was published. (The hope is that if Facebook can explain why a user sees something, it will help repair the company's trust deficit.)
On Monday, new regulatory interviews with Nick Clegg, Facebook's new chief policy officer, at Bloomberg; and Kevin Martin, vice president of Facebook for US public policy at Axios. Zuckerberg went to Germany, where he met with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, and met with elected officials. (Watch it before a mysterious Facebook bug removes Zuckerberg's message!) The company has also begun to solicit feedback on the development of its supervisory board, which will resolve disputes over content moderation.
He is now going to Ireland where he will meet members of the Great International Committee on Misinformation and Misinformation.
And speaking of news, Zuckerberg surprised the world on Monday saying that he could be willing to pay for it. By overthrowing a post that he held last year, Zuckerberg told Döpfner that he wanted to create a new tab in Facebook to broadcast high quality information, and potentially pay the publishers whose work appears. He said:
You know, in the news, people come mainly to the service to connect with friends, to get updates on the daily life of people. There is a lot of new news because it is so important. But there are many people who want to have more news … I think there will be one, call it 10, 15, maybe 20% of people in our community, who really want to live in depth and live an experience that is to say they can access all the news that will allow us, hopefully, to significantly increase the distribution and, where appropriate, to monetize the high-quality participants of the ecosystem, which fascinates me personally.
Again, Zuckerberg takes the offensive (with a surprise announcement), makes a concession (in the form of revenue to publishers) and retains control of his platform. Publishers' news will always appear according to Zuckerberg's terms, in the tab and location of his choice. Döpfner valiantly urges Zuckerberg to let publishers use Facebook to develop a direct relationship with their customers – but the company never feels encouraged to do so.
Together, these announcements point to a company that, despite all its challenges over the last two years, has achieved a coherent future regulatory management strategy. Power belongs to lawmakers, but many of them still struggle to understand the issues at stake – and the compromises are so complicated that it will take years to unravel them. (See this good Twitter feed for some of the compromises involved in maintaining the order of "harmful content", which I put in quotation marks to scare, for a reason.)
The chaos, as we have learned from a certain show about to return for its last season, is a ladder. Watching Facebook's regulatory offensive this weekend was watching Mark Zuckerberg do it.
Democracy
Inauthentic activity in India
The Digital Forensics Research Lab badyzes in depth Facebook's announcement today of the removal of a network of publications from India and Pakistan:
Pro-BJP badets held vitriolic positions against opposition leaders and succeeded in generating significant commitment, while INC-related badets pushed satire positions to a moderate commitment.
The fact that supporters on both sides have resorted to such tactics is a troubling feature. This suggests that such inauthentic behavior may increasingly be considered a necessary part of the political campaign, with the hope that the other party will also lead such activity. This, in turn, suggests that platforms and voters will continue to face more challenges in more directions, as they attempt to distinguish authentic content from non-authentic content.
In Ukraine, Russia tests a new tactic on Facebook to falsify the elections
Michael Schwirtz and Sheera Frenkel have a fascinating story about Russia's changing tactics as influence campaigns on Facebook become more difficult – and costly:
In a video published by the SBU, the Ukrainian National Intelligence Service, a man identified as being the Russian agent said that he resided in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and that his collaborators Russians had ordered him to "find on Facebook people in Ukraine who wanted to sell their accounts or rent them temporarily. "
"As I learned," said the man, who was not identified by name, "their purpose was to use these accounts to publish political ads or to create fake articles. "
Facebook Deletes Hundreds of Pages Engaged in "Inauthentic Behavior" in the Philippines
Davey Alba provides a useful context for the removal on Thursday of pages related to the director of social networks of the authoritarian president of the Philippines:
In September 2018, a report by BuzzFeed News showed the Philippines that much of the extreme political rhetoric on Facebook reinforces the authoritarian rule of Philippine President Duterte. According to Gabunada at the time, from the beginning of Duterte's presidential campaign, Facebook was an essential tool to allow Duterte's fans to freely broadcast coordinated messages on Facebook – not least because, thanks to the agreements that the company has made with local carriers, use in the Philippines for anyone with a smartphone.
In his interview with BuzzFeed News, Gabunada insisted that the engagement was "organic" and "volunteer-driven". He also said that Duterte's campaign had not bought any ads on Facebook and that he had occasionally relaunched publications.
Trump ads on Facebook focus on Schumer, Pelosi and the Wall of Borders as Democrats try to catch up
Brandy Zadrozny informs us of the status of advertising in Facebook campaigns:
Trump spent $ 3.6 million on Facebook ads from December 30 to March 23, according to data compiled by the researchers of the Online Advertising Transparency Project, an ongoing study launched by 39, last year at the University of New York following the spending of political advertising in the public archives of Facebook. .
Trump's spending in early 2019 accounted for more than the combined Democratic campaigns, but some candidates have spent it in recent weeks. The former Texas representative, Beto O'Rourke, had exceeded Trump's costs two weeks ago, dropping $ 157,000 on Facebook, against $ 109,000. Last week, Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Spent $ 198,000 on the president's $ 150,000.
Jeff Bezos investigator, Gavin of Becker, discovers that Saudis have obtained private data from Amazon leader
You've probably already read De Becker's remarkable article about his investigation into the theft of Bezos personal information, but I should note here that I had already examined the case of Saudi Arabia on the record in February.
Inside the reaction of Google employees against the Heritage Foundation
Google is creating an external advisory board for artificial intelligence projects, but it has begun to fall apart as a result of complaints that the company included curators who could try to skew its efforts, reports Colin Lecher:
Some members of the new council were immediately examined, including Kay Coles James, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. On social media, some have described this decision as an attempt to satisfy the Conservatives at the expense of real expertise in the field. On Saturday, an invited IA expert on the board of directors had left the group, vaguely noticing that it may not have been the "right forum" for the job.
In private, several Google employees were also discouraged by the decision to include James, according to sources close to the discussions. On internal bulletin boards, employees described James as "intolerant" and the Heritage Foundation as "incredibly false" in their policies on topics such as climate change, immigration and, in particular, issues of 39, equality of LGBTQ. Employees said James's views "do not deserve a platform legitimized by Google and are certainly not part of the discussion about how Google technology should be applied to the world."
YouTube Product Manager on Online Radicalization and Algorithmic Holes in Rabbits
Kevin Roose had a successful interview with Neal Mohan about the rabbit holes on YouTube. Mohan's conclusion is that, uh, each person does not end up radicalizing themselves? D & # 39; AGREEMENT.
MOHAN: What I'm saying is that when a video is played, you'll see a number of videos that are then recommended. Some of these videos may look like you're drifting in one direction or, you know, calling it more extreme. There are other videos going in the opposite direction. And again, our systems do not, because it's not a signal that feeds recommendations. It's just the observation you see in the panel.
I'm not saying that a user can not click on any of these videos that are quote-extreme, consume it, then get another set of recommendations and keep moving in one direction or another. All I'm saying is that it's not inevitable.
Censorship is paying off: the Chinese state newspaper is developing its lucrative online cleaning business
Censorship is proving to be a lucrative business for People.cn, the digital arm of the main propaganda media of the ruling party in China. Lusha Zhang and Ryan Woo have a good report on how stifling dissent enriches a handful of people.
Somewhere else
The dirty job of Facebook in Ireland: "I had to look at pictures of a person beaten to death"
Former Facebook moderator Chris Gray tells his story:
A year later, he says that he can still clearly imagine the content that he moderated: executions by the Islamic State, murders, beatings, child exploitation, animal torture. The stress of exposure to disturbing images and videos was, he added, the pressure needed to make the right decision about how to use it.
"You are constantly in danger of making a bad decision and being penalized for it. This multiplies the stress when you look at difficult content. "
Facebook has secretly explored the construction of bird-sized drones to route data to people with a bad Internet connection ($)
Rob Price describes an unknown Facebook project to provide Internet access to more people:
The idea was to build a fleet of fixed-size bird-size UAVs, equipped with high-density semiconductor storage disks, which can then be used to carry data. These drones would be much smaller than most traditional drones. A source said that they were bigger in size than a sparrow than an eagle.
This could allow people living in areas with low bandwidth Internet connections to consume data-intensive content, such as video streaming, without having to create a new and expensive permanent telecommunication infrastructure. For less data-intensive tasks, such as sending SMS and phone calls, users would use their existing networks.
The most shared story by Facebook in 2019 is a 119-word local crime brief from central Texas.
Will Oremus tells a fascinating story about how a local crime brief of 119 unimportant words has become a sensation:
Although Facebook is not able to accurately determine which aspects of its algorithm helped the story unfold, Savage's criminal record seems to have ticked off almost all the boxes the social network is trying to prioritize. First, it has been shared by a local news organization, making it more likely that people in the Waco area will see it at the top of their net. Second, it generated a large number of comments, which Facebook considers to be "significant interactions". Finally, his sharing was largely dictated by individual Facebook users, rather than by professional publishers with high customer base, which means that he would be helped by the company. focus on posting "friends and family first" messages.
But the joker is perhaps the title of the story. Reading the story, it was clear that it was Waco and central Texas, but the title simply said that the predator was in "our area". Anyone who reads the title without reading the story could reasonably have thought that the story concerned their region, even though they were far from Texas.
Google removes the conversion therapy app from the Play Store
The presence of a homobadual conversion therapy application on the Play Store has resulted in many protests and Google has now removed it, reports Chaim Gartenberg.
How we hang out at work together online now
TikTok, which is good for wasting time at work, has become "an unlikely force of visibility of the workforce," writes John Herrman.
There are hashtags for most major retailers and restaurant chains, full of blame, jokes or comments specific to the employer. There are also more generally relatable sketches. Nobody appreciates the customer who shows up a minute before closing. Many videos are paused. Some are shot from one job to the next. But many others are drawn in a whisper, between customers or during a lull, caring about the close bosses. There are widely applicable hashtags for people like #coworkers, #working, #bluecollar, and #lovemyjob.
Why do people give their Instagram account?
"The app has become the default way to communicate with new friends, dates, or business contacts," Taylor reports.
Tinder has hired a new product manager to keep college kids on the app
Ashley Carman reports that Ravi Mehta, the last clone of TikTok on Lbado for Facebook, will now run the Tinder product.
launches
Online creators and platforms that activate (and exploit) them
This week in The edge we examine the lives of creators as they work to create businesses on secret and powerful platforms. This link already contains a lot of good things and new stories will appear all week.
Take
After filming in New Zealand, ISPs were wrong to block 8chan. Here's why.
April Glaser says social platforms were right to remove videos of the Christchurch mbadacre – but Internet service providers have a responsibility to keep them:
The Christchurch video is horrible. Platforms – especially the very large popular platforms that attract hundreds of millions of users – must do everything in their power to ensure the safety of their communities. But too much blocking of entire sites by Internet service providers, which operate at multiple levels above platforms, will not make the horror disappear. It could strengthen these communities – and give unnecessary powers to companies that nobody asked to do the dirty work.
Why the audience rooms are Kryptonite for Alex Jones
Charlie Warzel says that Alex Jones's testimony exposed him as the dangerous quack that he is so clearly:
In the sea of Alex Jones' viral clips, he always appears larger than life – and, above all, in the tenuous control of the narrative he tells. This control is largely the source of his power over his audience, his employees and his critics.
But this new series of viral clips destroys the myth of Alex Jones and presents him in a situation he can neither manipulate nor transform. He is a man who has lost control of the story.
And finally …
I vaccinate my child in a natural way – with measles
With anti-vaccination fanatics in the news for hijacking various social platforms, I appreciated Justine Cotter's satirical vision in McSweeney's:
Measles is the original measles vaccine. It is a natural method that has existed for centuries. It was enough for my mother and mother of mother and mother before her. After going through coma at the age of seven, Alice's grandmother was stronger than ever despite the loss of hearing and swelling of the brain. Nothing builds character like encephalitis.
Vaccinating with a virus in the air may seem a little unconventional, and according to Dr. Wong, my child's pediatrician, "completely hello", but this is only the opinion of a person supported by many peer reviewed scientific studies. The literature on Facebook and Reddit tells a different story, and honestly, there are many more people on Facebook than the American Medical Associations website, so tell me who the experts are.
Talk to me
Send me tips, comments, questions and new rules for the Internet: [email protected]
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