Courtesy of
Time Magazine:
Facebook said that the 3,000 Russia-linked advertisements it turned over to congressional investigators on Monday were seen on the social network by an estimated 10 million people in the United States.
The social media company said 44% of the ads were seen before the 2016 presidential election, and 56% of the ads were seen after the election.
Facebook turned over the ads this week in the midst of public scrutiny over its role in spreading "fake news" stories that critics say might have influenced the outcome of the election. Russia created fake accounts on Facebook and bought ads with the goal of spreading false stories. And last month, Facebook said nearly 500 accounts that originated in Russia purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads during the 2016 election.
Well that's disturbing.
And what is more disturbing is that Facebook just handed them the tools to pull it off.
Courtesy of
WaPo:
Russian operatives set up an array of misleading Web sites and social media pages to identify American voters susceptible to propaganda, then used a powerful Facebook tool to repeatedly send them messages designed to influence their political behavior, say people familiar with the investigation into foreign meddling in the U.S. election.
The tactic resembles what American businesses and political campaigns have been doing in recent years to deliver messages to potentially interested people online. The Russians exploited this system by creating English-language sites and Facebook pages that closely mimicked those created by U.S. political activists.
The Web sites and Facebook pages displayed ads or other messages focused on such hot-button issues as illegal immigration, African American political activism and the rising prominence of Muslims in the United States. The Russian operatives then used a Facebook “retargeting” tool, called Custom Audiences, to send specific ads and messages to voters who had visited those sites, say people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from an ongoing investigation.
We can blame Facebook for their part in this, that is fair, but we also have to recognize that none of this would have been possible if the American people had not proven to be so susceptible to manipulation.
Now I know from experience that a number of you will say that this is the reason you don't go on Facebook, or use other types of social media, but that misses the point of all this.
It does not solve one single problem that you yourself don't use Facebook, because you are only one person and in the grand scheme of things your choice matters not at all.
The real problem is that multiple millions of people DO use Facebook, and THEY either need to be better educated or Facebook needs to protect them from manipulation.
That second one will simply never happen, because our entire capitalist way of life depends on the ability to manipulate people into buying certain products, adopting new technologies, and trying to live a lifestyle that advertisers convince them is more desirable than the one they are already living.
So that means we are left attempting to educate those who are likely targets of the kind of manipulation that puts people like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin into office.
And that my friends does NOT mean abandoning Facebook. It means sharing factual, informative articles on all social media platforms in an attempt to offset the fake news that is already much too readily available.
Keep in mind that if you are not part of the solution, then you remain part of the problem.
