The borscht thickens.
Who else knew about the unusual activity Facebook detected on its platform and when—and what did they do to try to stop it?
Zucker was too busy making his billions to be concerned about “stopping” anything. As I recall he’s quite the conservative business boy wonder.
What did Facebook know and when did they know it?
So they contacted the FBI about fake accounts (which presumably violated their TOS) but didn’t actually take the accounts down?
I prefer the clear version myself, with lots of fresh ground pepper, but I’ll take this batch thickening!
Facebook’s cybersecurity team told the FBI in June 2016 that it believed the Russian hacking team APT 28… was active on the platform.
Unfortunately, the FBI was unable to read the full report without accepting the Facebook cybersecurity team’s friend request.
And agreeing to let the facebook app collect data from its internal network.
Just wait… Trump will eventually admit that the Russkies were engaging in a full-out press to pervert the American electoral system, and it’s all Obama’s fault that he was elected.
Ah yes, no shock that Facebook knew about all this, as Zuck and FB support chose to ignore all the complaints and reporting about all the bots and fake accounts. And folks included the ads as well … to me it shows that the $100,000 was more important to Zuck than people or truth. But God Forbid, a drag queen should have an account using her stage name - they shut those down really quickly…SMH 
This probably is totally unrelated, but, in May 2016, Gizmodo reported first that Facebook’s Trending Topics section was human-curated, and wasn’t just a list of the current most popular news topics on Facebook, and then that Facebook’s news curators were not neutrally listing the most popular news topics and were both deliberately and subconsciously suppressing conservative news topics and conservative news sources.
I don’t remember what coverage this may have received on TPM, but it was a huge issue in the conservative media and conservative sites/communities online. A quick search shows that the mainstream media covered it as well.
I mention the Facebook Trending Topics hubbub for two reasons.
First, a careful read of the Gizmodo articles shows that the claims of deliberate bias come from a single anonymous former curator who made claims qualitatively different from those of other former curators (who also were anonymous). The overall story appears to be that Facebook had solid business reasons for its actions: it didn’t want Facebook customers to notice that some stories getting prominent coverage on conventional news media were missing from Trending Topics; and Facebook preferred topics that had been vetted by major new sources, and it preferred those major sources over sources that elevated advocacy over accuracy. A better-sourced piece in the NYT a week and a half after the Gizmodo bias story does not support any claims of deliberate bias against conservative topics.
Second, this thinly sourced Gizmodo piece became a big deal before the end of the day it was published. By the next day, Sen. Thune, in his official capacity as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, had written a letter to Facebook’s Zuckerberg, demanding information about the company’s policies and actions. Conservatives continued to criticize the company and demand changes.
By late August, the human curators were gone and computer algorithms were placing fake news stories in Trending Topics.
The beet goes on.
Trump and nothing.
Note the date: June 2016
The drip-drip-drip also slowly coming out is also showing how much Obama and the Administration knew in the summer 2016, and yet he failed to let the the American people know that their election was being hacked by the Russians in collusion with the Trump campaign.
Because, apparently, he was afraid of big bad Mitch and the Republicans making it a “partisan issue.” I guess when one party is colluding with the Russians to hack an election, then it is a partisan issue.
Biggest national security failure in our history.
But he is making his $400,000 speeches to Wall Street, so all good. Because he deserves it, right?
Calling James Comey! James Comey? Where was your public announcement about Russian infiltration of FB before the election?
Hey, @ottnott, I actually got a copy of the Trending guidelines and wrote a folo on that Gizmodo story when I was at the Guardian, a little while before Mike Isaac’s excellent column: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-trending-news-leaked-documents-editor-guidelines
And then another follow-up after they subsequently fired the Trending team:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-fires-trending-topics-team-algorithm
I agree with Mike’s analysis; I didn’t write anything trying to make sense of Facebook’s corporate strategy in light of the two events (I probably should have) but my impression is that the company is trying to rein in machine learning for the very good reason that machines learn things about human behavior that humans are trying to unlearn. Check out Tay for another example: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist
LOL. I read both of your Guardian articles without noticing the byline (it was off to the side, where my eyes never strayed). It was probably just chance that I didn’t link to them in my post.
I don’t use social media and don’t watch cable, so I only became aware of the “controversy” over Trending Topics when an investing blog I’d been following for years suddenly went full crazy: posting all the nutty stuff about Clinton; adopting the Kremlin’s position on Syria; blaming the world’s ills on “the establishment” and international institutions; finding constant “evidence” of a strong pro-Clinton bias in all media other than Fox, Breitbart, and Alex Jones; etc. The Facebook issue was one of the topics that came up.
Thanks for your reply and your links. You are a great addition to TPM.
Thank you! No snark intended there, just shameless self-promotion.