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Facebook Says US Is the Top Target of Disinformation Campaigns (axios.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the surprise-surprise dept.
Of the 150 disinformation campaigns that Facebook has caught and removed in the past four years, the U.S. has been the most frequent target by far, according to a new threat intelligence report from Facebook. Axios reports: "I think it's significant that while we saw a lot of foreign targeting of the U.S. ahead of 2020 election, there was also a lot of domestic targeting," says Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy. One campaign the company points to was the network operated by a U.S. based marketing firm, working on behalf of its clients, including a pro-Trump organization. In total, the company said there were 16 takedowns of coordinated inauthentic behavior networks, or disinformation campaigns, ahead of the 2020 elections. Of those 16 networks, five originated in Russia, five originated in Iran, and five originated in the the U.S. One originated in China.
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Facebook Says US Is the Top Target of Disinformation Campaigns More

Facebook Says US Is the Top Target of Disinformation Campaigns

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  • THe stories never stop, whats the bet we never hear about #2 or #3.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      The margin will be large. There is a strong self-reinforcing circle of money going around. The money involved is internal to USA. The bad guys are well rewarded for bad behaviour. Fox News being an early recipient.

      Other countries just don't operate at this scale of public view.

    • ....It's right there in he image at the top of the article.

      Of course, that would require RTFA, which never happens around here, but still

      • > Of course, that would require RTFA, which never happens around here, but still
        You missed the point. 99.9% of the words in the article are about USA which is totally out of balance with reality.
    • And they are full of rancid ratshit.

      The method for measuring is based on campaigns which have been taken down. So what happens if you do not take down damaging material in other languages?

      Anyone who reads the net in more than one language (not just English) knows that Facebook does f*ck all regarding conspiracy theories in other languages. The Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, etc language sections of Facebook are full to the brim of anti-vaccine, anti-5G, anti-Wifi, anti-whatever flat earth sh*t and it does

      • Yeah, an indian buddy pointed this out to me the other day that indian facebook is just drenched in covid conspiracy theories and various paranoid nonsenses about pakistan, china, russia, the americans, as well as domestic targets like Modhi (who, granted, is a lunatic), and absolutely nobody in the tech bro world is interested, because hey its only a country o a billion people at stake, as opposed to a country that generates them billions of dollars like , say, the US or China.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Makes sense though: The USA has just recently demonstrated (again) it has a lot of citizens with absolutely no understanding of reality and facts...

      • You yourself are the same, because you somehow think the same is nt true of other places. Newsflash the world is filled with idiots.

  • I wonder why (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    its not like the united states is filled with gullible, entitled, poorly educated people who believe anything they want to be true, to be true.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Looking at the nearly 47% of the popular vote that Trump got during last year's elections one might say the largest part of his electorate is gullible.
      But then, in the present GOP there's hardly anyone else of significance to vote for.

      • 90% of Biden's own party wants M4A but Biden is more opposed to it than Trump is. Dems like to call Trump a racist - because he is - but Biden is *infinitely* worse. Biden has deported or imprisoned millions more people than Trump. Gotten millions more brown people killed in wars than Trump

    • It's not... inaccurate...

      Teach children from birth to blindly accept religion because "we told it to you", and believe in political statements without question based on the source alone, and actively suppress critical thinking in your group, then consult your venn diagram. In the centre you'll find a lot of gullible folks.

      Large swathes of the U.S. populace are completely unequipped when it comes to a decent bullshit detector. Of course they're a target. Were I a purveyor of bullshit they'd be my target too.

      • A whole lotta bluecheck shitlibs who have college degrees still believe the BlueAnon conspiracy theory of Russiagate. And, with no sense of self-awareness, sneer at "stop the steal" Republicans while continuing to insist the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary. Rhodes scholar Russia Madcow is an unholy amalgamation of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.

        Furthermore, the common people having any say in America's actions are minimized by design. The Constitution was written by elitists, for elitists, an

        • Note in my post I said nothing about political parties, conspiracy theorists, or any movements.

          You didn't notice it the first time because your internal struggle slotted you (probably correctly) right in the middle of that diagram and you got defensive about it. Education is no protection against being gullible. Never has been.
          nvenient

  • It's sufficient to fool the bottom supermajority and much cheaper than trying to fool the rest.

    The "not-fooled" are condemned to live under mob rule. #democracy

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      The USA has a peculiar type of democracy.
      I know no other country where elections are decided by the amount of money a candidate raises.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, look at the country. Legalized corruption is one thing, but they have institutionalized it. No surprise everything is going down the drains there and their last president was a murderous (Wars? Amateurs! I get people killed by a pandemic on mass-scale!) expert con-man.

  • Wait wait wait... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @06:59PM (#61445248)

    Wait a minute! Facebook, *the* biggest amplifier of disinformation in recorded history and de-facto gatekeeper to speech in the US, saying the US is the #1 of target misinformation? *shocked pikachu face*

    This is the moment when the Kettle called the Pot black.

    What's next? Titanic sank? Sun rises on the East? Sky's blue-ish?

    Spoiler: We're also apparently the #1 *maker* of disinformation in the world. That we both author and broadcast it has become a Medusa that I don't think can be controlled at this point.

    When the check comes due it'll be a deusy tho. I hope y'all enjoy it, it'll be real horror-show, I imagine.

    Think about it: William Hearst pretty much lit off a war between the US and Spain on his own, with his yellow journalism. Imagine, then, what is being done via Facebook.

    Plan accordingly.

    • "Spoiler: We're also apparently the #1 *maker* of disinformation in the world. That we both author and broadcast it has become a Medusa that I don't think can be controlled at this point."

      Agreed and agreed again. Very few people know about the history of propaganda in the US. Edward Bernays wrote the book on it. One of his students was one Josef Goebbels. For his examples, Bernays discusses the treatment of native Americans in the latter half of the 1800's, and the whitewashing of American history in genera

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      de-facto gatekeeper to speech in the US

      I never go on Facebook and have never had my speech censored or even checked by Facebook before it was published. Okay I'm not in the US but does Facebook really keep tabs on your emails, your tweets, your soapbox over there?

    • Fakebook's definition of disinformation is "wrongthink", basically anything that they disagree with. Kinda like CNN or Pravda.
  • of Disinformation Campaigns". Only because Facebook won't stop!
  • And F Book is the top distributor of this false information. Funny how they blatantly avoid pointing out that fact!!
  • Russians, time to catch up!

  • Why do all these misinformation campaigns lead directly back to the Republican party, is their true agenda so bad they have to lie about it.

  • Lol, I can't help but to be in awe of their chutzpah.

  • - Sun Seen Rising Over East Coast.

    - Bears Discovered Defecating in Woods.

    - Pope Makes Announcement, "I Am A Practicing Catholic."

  • The black kettle (Score:3)

    by shubus ( 1382007 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @09:49PM (#61445602)
    Facebook? A major purveyor of misinformation now complaining about it.
    • Oh but facebook is the victim here, of those nasty people posting all that disinformation. They had no idea that their quest for more clicks regardless of the cost to their users' well-being, worldview, government, and even sanity would lead to n'er-do-wells trying to exploit them. They are valiantly "rooting out" the disinformation as seen here. ( not really. Sarcasm aside, they are making money hand over fist on the ad impressions created by all that scammy disinformation. I would estimate that half o

    • Probably cos they didn't think of it first and someone else beat them to it.

      Or because they haven't figured out how to charge more for such disinformation campaigns.

  • "Facebook Says US Is the Top Target of Disinformation Campaigns".

    It could hardly be otherwise, as Facebook deems the US government's (and other US establishment) narratives to be the sacred, perfect, inviolable truth.

    Inasmuch as any other report or opinion differs from the US establishment narrative, it must necessarily be wrong.

  • As with the propaganda about Russian propaganda, [newyorker.com] this is disinformation about disinformation. Now that shitlibs have decided that the corona lab leak is a real possibility, not CT, Facebook has stopped suppressing discussion of it.

    The platforms, media and politicians who complain the most about "disinformation" are the biggest sources of it. Everything from AOC's couch fainting over the 1/6 protest to NPR acting like National Pentagon Radio to Twitter blocking one of the largest newspapers in the country fo

  • Shooting yourself in the foot in the form of government and media propaganda doesn't count.

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