rocqua 5 years ago

Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads.

How is this anything but a drop in the ocean? If this is the extent of 'Coordinated inauthentic behavior' I'm rather unimpressed with the capabilities of Russia.

  • ardy42 5 years ago

    > Wow, a grand total of 75 user accounts, and $130 000 of ads.

    > How is this anything but a drop in the ocean?

    It's the tip of the iceberg. You're ignoring second order effects. The people those accounts influence will influence others. Russian agents might have written the first few disinformation articles claiming the US Government created AIDS to attack blacks and gays [1], but once they got the ball rolling on that meme, others did the rest of the work to spread it for them.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo

    • rocqua 5 years ago

      Would Russia really have so few influential accounts that a loss of 75 could hurt them? I don't doubt the effect 75 accounts could have.

      I do doubt the effect reducing Russian inventory of fake accounts by 75 could have.

  • tapoxi 5 years ago

    790,000 followers

    • mensetmanusman 5 years ago

      What % of them do you think get feeds from these russian actors that make it to their main feed. FB has said they filter 99% of the 1000’s of posts happening that you could be following due to overload, so that would be a couple hundred people.

    • richardknop 5 years ago

      How many of them are real? If most followers are fake then the impact was really minuscule if any.

sudoaza 5 years ago

What about "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" from elsewhere? FB is just feeding the coordinated desinformation spread by the US. Billions in ADs, targeted manipulation, phone bots, media monopolies spreading bullshit round the year, but don't worry about that, look Russia...

  • pergadad 5 years ago

    Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a surprise - basic propaganda tactics.

    The things the Russian propaganda machine is spreading are just intense. Misinformation on repeat, with real life consequences. That big US corps manipulate too is another story, but what Russia is doing is clearly at another scale and state sponsored with clear foreign policy aims, most importantly to undermine trust in institutions and the actual news media and secondly to try different alternate narratives and see which ones stick. The key aim of these many sites is to disseminate and diffuse the disinformation to come from 'many sources' at once, to make it more convincing (what we hear often enough we believe).

    This series of bans is a very good initiative, although I'd say far too little too late. Sputnik and co are not media, they are propaganda machines that happen to intersperse some true stories and occasional facts in their package of lies. If you don't believe me- look at the site. Solid news mixed with outlandish conspiracy theories, and all that 100% state sponsored.

    For context I very much recommend anyone interested to take a look at Oxford's excellent computational propaganda research:

    https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/

    This official EU initiative is similar, taking apart individual pieces of disinformation:

    https://euvsdisinfo.eu/

    • zozbot123 5 years ago

      > Top comments all are trying to relativise the stuff Russia is doing, what a surprise - basic propaganda tactics.

      FWIW, the commenting guidelines ask you not to impute astroturfing or shillage in HN comments. Although I do wonder to what extent such a suggestion might apply to this thread - "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" being as good a definition of astroturfing as any - it makes sense to err on the side of caution, if only for the sake of having a productive discussion!

  • notjonmadden 5 years ago

    Much easier to just ignore the US government's documented programs to manipulate social media and pretend only Evil Russia does it.

  • protonfish 5 years ago

    Only "good" propaganda is allowed.

ddebernardy 5 years ago

In case anyone from the FB team behind this is reading: Was stealth banning the relevant accounts considered? If so, curious to know why it was rejected.

  • atemerev 5 years ago

    In such coordinated operations, the impact is usually verified via independent accounts which are not participating in spreading, which are nearly impossible to distinguish from actual victims. So stealthban is not particularly effective. As a part-time consultant on countermeasures for opinion manipulation in social networks, I can say that passive defenses are usually not reliable enough.

Artemis2 5 years ago

“Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior” is a nice euphemism!

  • Udik 5 years ago

    Sounds like a good definition to me. Better than the widely used "troll", which used to mean a different thing, before being appropriated by the mainstream media. Trolls used to mean people provoking emotional reactions with the intent of disrupting communities and ridiculing their members. And unless Putin is doing this for the laugh...

prewett 5 years ago

By calling it “coordinated inauthentic behavior” FB is themselves being inauthentic. Authentic would be to describe actually what it is and what the problem is. Is the problem that it was coordinated? That it was not true to the poster’s personal belief (inauthentic)? Not actually true assertions (not authentic)? Maybe the behavior is the problem? Or some combination? So if the Russian state clearly put out content saying “This is Russia and we think you should vote for X” is that okay (coordinated authentic behavior)? What about all the “CIB” originating from inside the US? Or, how about FB’s own “CIB”, like the link in question?

  • repolfx 5 years ago

    I don't understand their claim it was inauthentic either.

    Their writeup says the pages claimed to be independent, but were actually linked to employees of Sputnik News.

    OK, but all the screenshots they showed (in the first batch) had the word "sputnik news" in the URL. That doesn't look very surreptitious to me, let alone inauthentic. If Sputnik employees are linking to stories they worked on or their employer published, how is that different to journalists tweeting stories from their news outlets on their personal Twitter accounts? Is there some formal rule now that all employees of news agencies have to loudly identify themselves as such before re-sharing content from their employer? If so, where did Facebook announce that?

    The odd way Facebook are describing this action also makes me wonder about their claim the accounts were "linked to" employees of Sputnik. What does that mean exactly? Not owned, if they were owned presumably Facebook would have said so. Rather they are "linked to". This could mean many things.

notjonmadden 5 years ago

> We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people

Right, as long as you don't count American political content and advertising!

  • jmvoodoo 5 years ago

    I had a similar reaction... It seems that's the entire point of the platform. Perhaps more accurate would be "we don't want our service to be used to manipulate people in ways we disagree with/could get in trouble for"

walrus01 5 years ago

I'd be very interested in seeing if there's a similarly worded vkontakte or livejournal post from their admins, about removing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" from american sources.

Edit: I'm not alleging the US is doing such a thing in an organized manner, as the Russian "internet research agency" does, what I'm asking is whether the knee jerk response from Russian Facebook competitors (or state media like RT, Sputnik) will be to make the same allegations but in reverse. And if so, what form that will take.

  • pjc50 5 years ago

    It does beg the question of whether Facebook will, or will be even allowed to, combat covert Western influence operations.

    (I'm OK with overt influence operations that are clearly labelled, like the BBC World Service)

    • walrus01 5 years ago

      In my past experience the US' foreign language government run media operations are pretty transparent. The BBG, broadcasting board of governors, is part of the federal budget and is regularly audited, is subject to FOIA requests, etc.

      BBG is the parent entity of Voice of America, etc.

      The US runs a lot of foreign language media which people might not know exists, if they aren't a native speaker of the target language/culture.

      For example Radio Azadi, which is the VOA/RFE for Dari speakers in Afghanistan. It also produces Pashto content.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Azadi

      And Farda for Iranian Farsi.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Farda

      • pjc50 5 years ago

        The transparent ones are visible, but what about the deniable ones we can't see?

        • walrus01 5 years ago

          Totally personal opinion, but they're more likely funded by private corporations that want to influence society to buy more of their product, or slush funds of lobbying money similar to how the Kochs fund PACs in the USA. Mercer family funds, etc.

          People who have vested interests in organizations such as Saudi Aramco maintaining the status quo.

          • fuzz4lyfe 5 years ago

            It's worth noting that US propaganda operations even on US soil are not unprecedented. During his tenure Obama signed a national defense authorization act[0][1] that some claim has re-legalized propaganda operations on US citizens. The CIA has admitted doing so during Operation Mockingbird[3] and in other situations[4] in the past. Given that I suggest that you remain highly skeptical of all media and independently verify claims as much as possible as it seems historically governmental as well as corporate interests have manipulated the media for their purposes and that is appears it is legal for the CIA to do so today.

            [0]https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-20...

            [1]https://www.rt.com/usa/propaganda-us-smith-amendment-903/

            [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

            [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

            Edit: made comment more clear

            • pjc50 5 years ago

              While what you say is almost certainly true, I note the irony of linking to a Russian propaganda news organisation to support it.

              Even more ironically the only reason people follow RT is that they're often covering things that the western media status quo has a blind spot to.

              • fuzz4lyfe 5 years ago

                I noted that myself, rather suspiciously western media failed to cover it at the time. I can find the text for the bill and prove that he signed it via official government sources but business insider is the only reasonably reputable source that covered in the US to my knowledge. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to assert that it does what they say it does but it leaves me skeptical.

                • tivert 5 years ago

                  > I noted that myself, rather suspiciously western media failed to cover it at the time. I can find the text for the bill and prove that he signed it via official government sources but business insider is the only reasonably reputable source that covered in the US to my knowledge. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to assert that it does what they say it does but it leaves me skeptical.

                  The take you're promoting seems to have originated with Buzzfeed, then got picked up by BusinessInsider and amplified by Russia Today. Given that it's pretty unbelievable that there's a coordinated Western-media conspiracy to suppress it, my bet is that take has some major flaws and/or there's less to it the take makes it seems.

                  Based on some quick Googling, the law that was modified was the one that authorizes The Voice of America and related organizations, and (according to Wikipedia) the prohibitions on its US dissemination were originally put in place because some Congressmen in the 40s thought the State Department was full of commies (really).

                  This NY Times from 2018 gives some perspective (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/technology/facebook-ads-p...). VOA is still not permitted to advertise to Americans, and it characterized the law RT was writing about as:

                  > As with all affiliates of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is governed by the Smith-Mundt Act, a 1948 law that banned government-funded media outlets from disseminating their content inside the United States. The law was amended in 2014 to allow state-funded media organizations to distribute their content “upon request” to American viewers.

                  It seems that it amounted to giving organizations like the VOA permission to send their content to individual Americans who ask for it. It seems like prior to that it was available "for examination only."

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Provis...

                  I would only be skeptical of something based on an RT story if you actually do the digging yourself to see if there's really a there there. In this case, I don't think there is.

                  • fuzz4lyfe 5 years ago

                    That New York Times article is interesting, if it is indeed illegal to target propaganda to American citizens it seems that VOA did so in violation of law and only stopped when caught doing so.

                    That leads me to one of three conclusions:

                    1: Someone working for VOA felt that it was not illegal for them to do this making Business Insiders interpretation of the law at least plausible if not correct.

                    2: VOA knowingly used Facebook to target Americans with illegal propaganda.

                    3: Workers implementing VOA advertising were unable to understand that if you select "United States" as a target in Facebook's geo-targeting tool[0], that advertising indeed will be shown in the US.

                    Three seems the least likely to me personally given the historical context and since being skeptical of news releases is likely good practice anyway I'm not convinced that you shouldn't be.

                    To quote the same article:

                    Weston R. Sager, a lawyer with firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell who has written about anti-propaganda laws, said that it was disturbing to see government-funded news agencies targeting Facebook ads at Americans, no matter their content.

                    “I’m concerned that we’re seeing the beginning of government efforts to try to influence public opinion in the United States through the B.B.G. and its affiliate entities,” Mr. Sager said. “It’s one thing to read a tweet by Donald Trump. It’s another to receive a very polished news story from an organization that holds itself out as objective and fact-based.”

                    [0]https://www.facebook.com/business/help/202297959811696

                    • tivert 5 years ago

                      > That leads me to one of three conclusions:

                      There's a fourth speculative possibility:

                      4. The VOA ad-buyer isn't a robot and bent the rules to target ads at the US for testing purposes (e.g. to see with his own account).

                      You could call such an act "propaganda illegally targeted at American citizens by the US government," and while technically true, it'd also be a hyperventilating overreaction. Especially since:

                      > The ads included several human-interest stories about Russia and a graphic about NATO’s popularity.

                      It's also worth noting a fact about the VOA's history. It was meant as an antidote to Soviet propaganda efforts, which featured heavy censorship and deliberately concocted lies [1] [2], by reporting truthfully according to Western journalistic standards. While that might still arguably be classified as propaganda (in its broadest form, an effort to convince someone of something), I'd find it difficult to honestly condemn it. I've read memoirs of dissidents that spoke very highly of it and its reporting, and they wouldn't have done so if it had been merely censoring and lying with a different bias. In my view, the modern desire to keep it out of the US is mainly born out of tradition and an abundance of caution.

                      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation#Defections_reve...

                      [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infektion

                      > Three seems the least likely to me personally given the historical context and since being skeptical of news releases is likely good practice anyway I'm not convinced that you shouldn't be.

                      I'm appropriately skeptical of news releases, but it's possible to be over-skeptical as well. That over-skeptical state is actually the goal of some forms of propaganda.

          • darkpuma 5 years ago

            > "they're more likely funded by private corporations"

            With the state the American political system, I'm not convinced that's a distinction worth mentioning.

    • sol_invictus 5 years ago

      > overt influence operations that are clearly labelled, like the BBC World Service

      Huh?

      • pjc50 5 years ago

        Until very recently it was funded by the Foreign Office. It effectively serves as a sort of low intensity advertising for Britain and "soft power".

        • sol_invictus 5 years ago

          Interesting, didn't know that. Thanks!

  • loraa 5 years ago

    Exactly, as we are doing the exact same to them.

atemerev 5 years ago

Facebook carefully guards its monopoly on coordinating inauthentic behavior! :)

  • setquk 5 years ago

    Yep. It’s ok when SCL, AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Data Propria etc do it of course!

spamlord 5 years ago

Does Facebook have the same amount of concern for massive "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" campaigns originating from Israel/JIDF and US Intelligence Agencies that dwarf the Russian ones pointed out in this post?