Discussion

• @oliviasolon Olivia Solon on x

  “Guy Rosen, Facebook's VP of integrity, referred to the return of the Honduras campaign as a “bummer” [...] but emphasized that the company needed to prioritize influence operations that targeted the US or western Europe” 😲 https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @risj_oxford @risj_oxford on x

  Facebook allowed Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández to artificially inflate the appearance of popularity on his posts for nearly a year after the company was first alerted to the activity, @juliacarriew & @jeffgernst report https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  FB tells you that the job is hard, that cases take time to understand. But there's so much obvious low-hanging fruit. Their caution and indefinite delays slowly become indistinguishable from obstruction. The filibuster is a legislative tool for a reason, after all. (4/6) https://…

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  Despite the harassment, Azeri dissidents don't want to quit Facebook. They want Facebook to enforce its own rules. Ali Karimli, a leading opposition politician, told us what he would say to Mark Zuckerberg if he could. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  Since the government doesn't want to block all of Facebook, it has set its troll farms the task of harassing independent voices on Azeri. The harassment is constant and voluminous. It makes it impossible for actual Azeris to discuss issues on FB. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  Whenever I publish critical reporting on Facebook, I get a messages from people urging everyone to just quit the platform. I hope today's stories about Facebook's failures in Honduras + Azerbaijan will help show why that's such an inadequate response. https://www.theguardian.com/…

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  Facebook's response to our stories has been to say that it continually enforces against networks like this. Here's a post by Azadliq newspaper from this morning. Every comment is from a Page posing as a profile - the same trick the government uses. https://www.theguardian.com/ ..…

• @hillaryclinton Hillary Clinton on x

  A whistleblower reports that Facebook allowed PR concerns to guide where and when it acted on autocrats' manipulation of its platform to mislead citizens. “We simply didn't care enough to stop them,” she wrote. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  FB wasn't too surprised at the revelation. When I presented the situation to public policy leaders in 2018, one of them explained that he'd already been told socially by Hernandez's political consultants that they used troll farms. That should have been my first red flag. (2/6)

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  The idea of FB publicizing takedowns is to embarrass those responsible. In 2019, JOH used soldiers to shoot protesters after police refused. This year, a U.S. court sentenced his brother to life for helping him traffic drugs. This is a man incapable of embarrassment. (5/6)

• @jilliancyork Jillian C. York on x

  Facebook doesn't care about its users if they're not “Western.” Please keep global users in mind, US orgs, when you keep demanding more regulation. https://twitter.com/...

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  A Facebook employee first detected the harassment campaign in August 2019 and alerted the relevant teams and executives. It still took the company 14 months to take it down. But the takedown didn't stick. I found clear evidence that the network is back. https://www.theguardian.co…

• @loisbeckett Lois Beckett on x

  “Everybody knows these comments are from trolls....Sometimes we post an infographic or video and there are 700 hostile comments.” Dissidents from Azerbaijan on the exhausting, endless state-backed harassment campaigns against them, conducted via Facebook: https://www.theguardian.…

• @neilphauer Neil Hauer on x

  And also today, a long read @guardian report on how Azerbaijan's government runs coordinated campaigns of targeted harassment against independent news outlets, activists and opposition politicians in the dictatorship https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @anneapplebaum Anne Applebaum on x

  Can @Facebook keep up with all of the coordinated trolling campaigns on its site? Not in Azerbaijan, it seems. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x

  It took Facebook 14 months to take down a state-backed harassment campaign of dissidents in autocratic Azerbaijan after @szhang_ds uncovered it. Facebook says it “continuously” enforces against recidivism. But the Azeri troll network is obviously back. https://www.theguardian.com…

• @blueheelerguy Blue Heeler Guy on x

  How is it that @guardian can spot state sponsored trolling of #journalists on #Facebook when Facebook themselves cannot. One of the most successful tech companies in the world will not take the time and invest in the people to follow their own policies. https://www.theguardian.co…

• @carapac46808618 Cara Pace on x

  There is a simple solution here: ban all the leading Azerbaijani political figures from FB/twitter until they stop this. They banned Trump: why not Aliev who is far worse? https://www.theguardian.com/ ...

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  In the end, FB has again shown its incompetence. Plenty of these fake pages are still up. From outside, a full tally is almost impossible. Internally, it only takes a minute or two. I know - I wrote the systems to do so, taught others how to use them. But FB doesn't care. https:/…

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  The saddest thing about this case was how the incentives aligned for Facebook to stop caring. Because it was so large, the company was reluctant to spend time investigating. Because Azerbaijan was a dictatorship, there was no urgency felt to protect elections.

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  I do want to highlight Facebook's response Facebook PR implies that I'm lying - but can't find any mistakes with my details. They left the recidivists to return for months, but did a takedown as soon as it entered the press. Yet more proof that FB prioritizes PR over integrity. h…

• @szhang_ds @szhang_ds on x

  I was only 28 when I discovered the Azerbaijani network. I spoke no Azeri, had never been within a thousand miles of the country, and didn't know who Ilham Aliyev was without Google. The Azeri government was still incompetent enough to be caught. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...