Facebook admitts that Governments are running Desinformation on their Network
For the first time Facebook openly admitts that Govenments and their executive Organs are running Desinformation Campains and are altering public Opinion with fake accounts and bots on their Network.
Exerpt from their own Report:
False Amplifiers
A false amplifier's7 motivation is ideological rather than financial. Networks of politically-motivated false amplifiers and financially-motivated fake accounts have sometimes been observed commingling and can exhibit similar behaviors; in all cases, however, the shared attribute is the inauthenticity of the accounts. False amplifier accounts manifest differently around the globe and even within regions. In some instances dedicated, professional groups attempt to influence political opinions on social media with large numbers of sparsely populated fake accounts that are used to share and engage with content at high volumes. In other cases, the networks may involve behavior by a smaller number of carefully curated accounts that exhibit authentic characteristics with welldeveloped online personas.
The inauthentic nature of these social interactions obscures and impairs the space Facebook and other platforms aim to create for people to connect and communicate with one another. In the long-term, these inauthentic networks and accounts may drown out valid stories and even deter some people from engaging at all.
While sometimes the goal of these negative amplifying efforts is to push a specific narrative, the underlying intent and motivation of the coordinators and sponsors of this kind of activity can be more complex. Although motivations vary, the strategic objectives of the organizers generally involve one or more of the following components: • Promoting or denigrating a specific cause or issue: This is the most straightforward manifestation of false amplifiers. It may include the use of disinformation, memes, and/or false news. There is frequently a specific hook or wedge issue that the actors exploit and amplify, depending on the targeted market or region. This can include topics around political figures or parties, divisive policies, religion, national governments, nations and/or ethnicities, institutions, or current events. • Sowing distrust in political institutions: In this case, fake account operators may not have a topical focus, but rather seek to undermine the status quo of political or civil society institutions on a more strategic level. • Spreading confusion: The directors of networks of fake accounts may have a longer-term objective of purposefully muddying civic discourse and pitting rival factions against one another. In several instances, we identified malicious actors on Facebook who, via inauthentic accounts, actively engaged across the political spectrum with the apparent intent of increasing tensions between supporters of these groups and fracturing their supportive base.
7 A fake account aimed at manipulating public opinion.
9 Information Operations and Facebook
What does false amplification look like? • Fake account creation, sometimes en masse; • Coordinated sharing of content and repeated, rapid posts across multiple surfaces (e.g., on their profile, or in several groups at once); • Coordinated or repeated comments, some of which may be harassing in nature; • Coordinated “likes” or reactions; • Creation of “astroturf”8 groups. These groups may initially be populated by fake accounts, but can become self-sustaining as others become participants; • Creation of Groups or Pages with the specific intent to spread sensationalistic or heavily biased news or headlines, often distorting facts to fit a narrative. Sometimes these Pages include legitimate and unrelated content, ostensibly to deflect from their real purpose; • Creation of inflammatory and sometimes racist memes, or manipulated photos and video content. There is some public discussion of false amplifiers being solely driven by “social bots,” which suggests automation. In the case of Facebook, we have observed that most false amplification in the context of information operations is not driven by automated processes, but by coordinated people who are dedicated to operating inauthentic accounts. We have observed many actions by fake account operators that could only be performed by people with language skills and a basic knowledge of the political situation in the target countries, suggesting a higher level of coordination and forethought. Some of the lower-skilled actors may even provide content guidance and outlines to their false amplifiers, which can give the impression of automation.
This kind of wide-scale coordinated human interaction with Facebook is not unique to information operations. Various groups regularly attempt to use such techniques to further financial goals, and Facebook continues to innovate in this area to detect such inauthentic activity.9 The area of information operations does provide a unique challenge, however, in that those sponsoring such operations are often not constrained by per-unit economic realities in the same way as spammers and click fraudsters, which increases the complexity of deterrence.
Download PDF:
https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress...rations-v1.pdf
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