This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
Facebook on Wednesday briefed journalists on its latest attempt to stop fake news during the election season, offering an exclusive tour of a windowless conference room at its California headquarters, packed with millennials monitoring Facebook user behavior trends around the clock, said The Verge.
This is Facebook’s first ever “war room,” designed to bring leaders from 20 teams, representing 20,000 global employees working on safety and security, in one room to lead a crusade against conservatives misinformation on the platform as political campaigning shifts into hyperdrive in the final weeks leading up to November’s US midterm elections. The team includes threat intelligence, data science engineering, research, legal, operations, policy, communications, and representatives from Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram.
“We know when it comes to an election, every moment counts,” said Samidh Chakrabarti, head of civic engagement at Facebook, who oversees operations in the war room.
“So if there are late-breaking issues we see on the platform, we need to be able to detect and respond to them in real time, as quickly as possible.”
This public demonstration of Facebook’s internal efforts comes after a series of security breaches and user hacks, dating back to the 2016 presidential elections. Since the announcement of the Cambridge Analytics privacy scandal in March, Facebook shares have plunged -14.5% It seems the war room is nothing more than a public relations stunt, which the company is desperately trying to regain control of the narrative and avoid more negative headlines.
The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct. 22, social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders from 20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls, fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference.
Facebook needed to fight misinformation and malicious activity — so it started this election war room pic.twitter.com/gAzewS8m1i
— TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) October 18, 2018
Nathan Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, told CNBC the company wants fair elections, and that “debate around the election be authentic. … The biggest concern is any type of effort to manipulate that.”
In the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, Facebook’s war room identified an effort to suppress voter turnout:
“Content that was telling people that due to protest, that the election would be delayed a day,” said Chakrabarti. “This was not true, completely false. So we were able to detect that using AI and machine learning. The war room was alerted to it. Our data scientist looked into what was behind it and then they passed it to our engineers and operations specialist to be able to remove this at scale from our platform before it could go viral.”
The war room has been focused on the US and Brazilian elections because it says misinformation in elections is a global problem that never ends. Gleicher warns that Facebook is observing an increased effort to manipulate the public debate ahead of US midterms.
Facebook creates 'war room' to combat fake news ahead of US midterms https://t.co/nYzK20pcqe pic.twitter.com/iNtbchvdoL
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) October 18, 2018
“Part of the reason we have this war room up and running, is so that as these threats develop, not only do we respond to them quickly, but we continue to speed up our response, and make our response more effective and efficient.” Gleicher adds that it is not just foreign interference but also domestic “bad actors” who are hiding their identity, using fake accounts to spread misinformation.
“This is always going to be an arms race, so the adversaries that we’re facing who seek to meddle in elections, they are sophisticated and well-funded,” said Chakrabarti.
“That is the reason we’ve made huge investments both in people and technology to stay ahead and secure our platforms.”
Big Brother is watching you: surveillance by corporations is the new America.
Really, who gets their news from facebook or for that matter any social media site?
A billion people. Thats why Mark Zuckerberg is in the top 100 wealthiest people in the US.
Kevin2, FB and all the supposed social media junk as well as Google and APPL are straight up control mechanisms created for the purpose of controlling the masses. Nothing new at all here in USA today !
http://www.downtoearththinking.com/the-matrix-is-very-real-in-usa-today–.html
http://www.downtoearththinking.com/our-government-created-google-and-facebook-.html
And of course Tyler Durden is NOT a real person and the fight club died a long time go except at my site ? It is all too obvious !
Morons do, and there are plenty of them. They are why Fuckerburg is so rich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wsMEj2ZfW8
Infidel, indeed
Corporate censorship is government censorship. They are one and the same.
Google-Youtube-Facebook who funded them?
D A R P A — C I A
ALL OF THE TECH is to Surviel you.
Snoop on you. Profile you. Index you.
Snitch you out. And to TARGET you. You will become a Targeted Individual. Look up what is happening to people targeted. Now it is only experimental. Just wait until the system is fully operational. Google is NOW building the system in China. You will see it in USA soon. Maybe already here?
And one day all of that data mining will be used to TARGET and ELIMINATE you. Maybe it is already happening.
Siri-Alexa-FaceBook-Shopper loyalty Cards-Cell phone-RFID credit cards, NONE OF this tech should be allowed in your life. The puprose is to find targets and eliminate anyone who is a problem. These Techie leftist are a very real danger to liberty.
If you have Traditional Pro American, common sense values. Then the Tech mafia consider you a problem.
Why can’t you people see what is before you?
Why doesn’t web sites like this address this very near future? Hell is upon us. Robotics will take your jobs. Then the “elite” will use the tech to kill you. Many engineers believe the 5G phone network is a survielence/kill grid.
PS–
ARREST George Sorros.
Anonymous, spot on !
Anonymous, my website has been addressing it bigly for years bow and one if the few !
See the comment and links above about who created FB and Google and why ! Those links are getting close to 5 years old and still the most critical information on the web ! That is why they oppress me bigly ! There is nobody else doing what I do , not even close.
And they both have “war” rooms! SICK!!!
Him , absolutely positively the very same people in government and the corporatocracy ! Just a revolving of door of the same people, the elites, with the initials behind their names as a sort of credence or verification of authority ? Note most are in fact lawyers, the destroyers of decency and laws !
As I often mention the American people are dumb as stumps and very slow to see what has been done to them !
Fascism: the merging of corporate and state power; which ultimately leads to a one-party totalitarian system and centralized government where all production is privately owned (by the billionaires), but controlled by the state. (a dictator)
“… but controlled by the state. (a dictator)”
Now its dictatorial in effect but wrapped in the veneer of “democracy”. Unlike fascism w/o technology of Mussolini, the modern version manipulates public opinion making their idea, your idea. The sheep willingly assist the rancher and ultimately the slaughterhouse.
JJ , that isi precisely what we all live in today here in USA !
One man’s lie is another man’s truth.
Hate speech is speech one hates to hear.
Freedom is just another word for “nothing left to lose”.
That’s debatable.
_
B from CA, no it is NOT all relative as you suggest. Far from it.
War room director Samidh Chakrabarti = former Google employee and CEO of a data mining company.
Nuff said…GTFO
Why do all the Indian stores charge sales tax on groceries in states where groceries are tax exempt ? Data mine that Hodgi!
Free speech is the bird that just flew out of the window. The building of the social credit score for speech worthy of being heard in America, just like in China. Free speech is the enemy of government so who can believe any election result is not fixed?
Aljamo, good points, but free speech is still alive and well within my home and within me so it’s not going anywhere. Neither fraudbook nor any other social media tell me wtf to do.
What they call fake is real, and what they call real is actually fake.
I don’t need Facebook or a corporation telling me what is or isn’t fake news. I can figure it out on my own. Same applies to government.
Remember, Facebook is not necessary for any one.
Don’t use the service
Have no use for it
I (usually) don’t proselytize the disinterested. I block what annoys me, or if that person or group is useful, they are no longer allowed to post on my timeline.
Talk about being a cog in a machine. The most personal item I noticed in the pix was a bottle of hand sanitizer and what might be a hat hung off the end of one monitor. And such close quarters; if one person sneezes, everyone is sick. When I worked at XXXX, Ops personnel weren’t crowded in like sardines in a can. (Our networks were worldwide so not a two bit enterprise.)
Niche, sales, and hobby groups are useful in a Craigslist / People of Walmart kind-of way. Best if they pay for shipping confirmation and never come to your house, ever. Do not tell fb whether you have sold it, or not. Just remove the ad, as needed.