[anarchist23]

It's best to go on the BBC link below.

US Senators have opted to release some, but not all, examples of the posts thought to have been posted by Russia-backed trolls
Further instances of social media posts and ads thought to be part of Russian propaganda efforts to influence the last US presidential election and divide its society have been shared with the public.
The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the imagery following a hearing at which Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were criticised for having underestimated the problem.
The examples are a fraction of the number of posts that have been flagged as being suspicious by the tech companies themselves.
Other cases had been displayed on Capitol Hill earlier in the week.
In addition, the senators released data about how much had been spent promoting the material and how many people had been shown it. They have also provided a long list of Russia-linked Twitter accounts that have now been suspended.
Tech giants berated by senators on Russia
Social-media images shown as evidence of 'Russian trolls'
Can democracy survive Facebook?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41844025

[Heisenberg]

Political ads broadcast on national TV, funded by shady donors and full of untruths, exaggerations, false promises and smears = a vibrant democracy in action.

Facebook posts seen by a few thousand people, funded by "Russian trolls" and full of untruths, exaggerations false promises and smears = a nefarious propaganda effort by Darth Vader himself, designed to destroy the very foundations of democracy as we know it.

[noir]

The Islamophile propaganda spouted for dacades by BBC is far worse. They are the main criminals that corrupted the minds of millions all over the world. They are the reason the world is reached to this junction.

[anarchist23]

Facebook's lead counsel Colin Stretch said the company was pained to learn it was being abused to provoke American discontent
Russian operatives, likely working from St Petersburg, provoked angry Americans to take to the streets, a US Senate committee heard on Wednesday.
The May 2016 protest, arranged by a group named Heart of Texas, was one example of Kremlin-backed efforts to destabilise the American electoral process.
Lawyers for three technology companies - Facebook, Twitter and Google - were told they were grossly underestimating the scale of the problem.
"You just don't get it," said California Senator Dianne Feinstein.
"What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyber-warfare."
She added: "We are not going to go away, gentlemen. This is a very big deal."
In the streets
Facebook said earlier this week that as many as 126 million people might have been reached by Russian propaganda efforts, a combination of paid advertisements and so-called "organic" posts that spread naturally as other users share the content.
It added on Wednesday that an additional 16 million users could have been reached via photo-sharing app Instagram, which the company also owns.
Russian trolls' social-media posts put on display
Facebook uncovers 'Russian-funded' misinformation campaign
It was organic posts that were under the most scrutiny from the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
Senator Mark Warner, the committee's deputy chairman, discussed how the Russian-made Heart of Texas group amassed 250,000 followers.


The Heart of Texas group was managed by Russian operatives based in St Petersburg, Facebook believes
The group then created an event to be held at an Islamic culture centre in Houston. The event was titled "Stop Islamization of Texas".
The protest duly took place, as did a counter-protest. Local media at the time reported that the organisers "could not be found" at the event.
Twitter's Russia briefings 'inadequate'
Can US election hack be traced to Russia?
Another example shared on Wednesday showed an account sharing "benign" posts on Christianity later shifting to anti-Hillary Clinton posts after the group had reached a critical mass of users.
Twitter, too, faced criticism for potentially under-reporting the extent of automated bots on its network.
The firm's lawyer Sean Edgett said Twitter's own research suggested that less than 5% of its 330 million users were bots. Senator Warner, however, said independent research suggested the number was perhaps as high as 12-15%.
Fake news
The companies, speaking individually but agreeing on every issue, said they were "deeply concerned" that they had become the leading platforms for "fake news" on the internet.
"We cannot defeat this evolving shared threat alone," Facebook's top lawyer Colin Stretch said.
However, none of the firms would commit to backing the Honest Ads Act, which would regulate online advertising, focusing on greater transparency around political advertising.
Twitter's Mr Edgett said the companies wanted some "fine-tuning" to the proposals but supported its goals.
Several senators suggested that more hearings and consultation would be needed, expressing their frustration that the companies were not being represented by higher-ranking executives.
"I'm disappointed that you're here, and not your CEOs," said independent senator Angus King.
"If we go through this exercise again we should appreciate seeing the top people."
"I wish your CEOs were here," concurred Democrat senator Joe Manchin.
"They have to answer to this."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41837435

[Political Interest]

The problem is that even Western democracy has limits. Any of these people are free to advocate for their ideas within the limits of the established political institutions and the range of publicy acceptable ideas. However once they start advocating outside this they become dissidents, whether they are left wing or right wing. Any association with Russia will be regarded as a national security threat because according to Western strategic thinking, Russia is the main enemy.

[noir]

Can democracy survive these ass lickers morons

[anarchist23]

"We discovered this week that 126 million Americans could potentially have seen around 80,000 posts originating with the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory emanating from Russia."

Centuries from now, presuming they are still around and have a voice, historians will look back on the second half of the 20th century as a time when democracy flourished.
There were signature, if unstable, victories for people power over Nazism, colonialism, communism and racial injustice in Germany, post-Partition India, post-Soviet Russia, and South Africa respectively. And in the 1960s and 1970s democracy overthrew juntas from Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) to Europe (Spain, Greece).
Yet just as historians will look at the post-war world as a time when democracy thrived, they may come to look at the start of the 21st century as a democratic recession.
The impenetrable grip on power of Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin in Russia has ensured strongman culture, and autocracy, rules in two rivals to Western hegemony. In the Islamic world, there has been democratic retreat in two of the great hopes - Indonesia and Turkey - and the Arab Spring has not fulfilled its early promise.
And it is in the West that democracy has taken the biggest pounding, because it was in the West that it had seemed so well set in. Authoritarians are either in control in several European states (Belarus, Hungary, Poland) or on the march in others (Austria).
But compared to when I started thinking about this subject a few years ago, a radical new threat has appeared. It is one, moreover, that was meant to be a boon to democracy, but threatens to be a burden. I am talking, of course, about big American technology companies, and specifically Facebook.
In De Tocqueville's shadow
When he wrote the seminal work Democracy in America (1835), the French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville found the idea of overthrowing the aristocracy in favour of spreading power among the people utterly irresistible.
Scholars quibble over whether he interpreted the flourishing of democracy as an inevitable fact in America. With the benefit of recent experience, we can say it is nothing of the sort.
Democracy does remain stable in the US, for now: it is competently run at national and state level, and the prospect of people being denied the vote is minimal. But democracy is a rugged fabric with unreliable threads, and in Washington and elsewhere, some are starting to fray.
Voter suppression is a big issue; so too is a hyper-partisan media that prefers heat to light; and a lobbying industry that is rampant and mostly serves the rich. Moreover, the Constitution contains immense wisdom, but needs an update.
And to this list of worries we can now add the use by foreign powers of technology platforms to spread disinformation, sow division and poison the public domain.
Colin Stretch, general counsel at Facebook, is questioned by a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about attempts by Russian operatives to spread disinformation and purchase political ads.
We discovered this week that 126 million Americans could potentially have seen around 80,000 posts originating with the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory emanating from Russia.
That came in leaked testimony ahead of the appearance before Congress of senior executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter.
Google, commenting for the first time on an internal investigation, said it had discovered ads looking suspiciously Russian, and 18 YouTube channels also linked to the Kremlin. Meanwhile Twitter found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian mischief - ten times more than they had previously indicated to lawmakers.
Anti-social media
It is vital to keep a sense of perspective about this. As my distinguished colleague Mark Frankel has pointed out, the large figure of 126 million is the potential reach of these ads.
That doesn't mean all those people saw them - and, vitally, even if they did see them, it doesn't mean that they would have been persuaded to vote differently. In any case, this represents a tiny fraction - 0.004% - of the immense volume of content on Facebook over a two-year period.
Why, then, ask whether Facebook represents a potentially mortal threat to democracy?
For four reasons in fact. Facebook's response to this crisis shows a company grappling with what it has unleashed; the threat from filter bubbles; the immense volume of data online; and because of a pattern of exploitation of this social media platform around the world.
Let's take these in reverse.
In September, it was revealed that Bell Pottinger behaved disgracefully in South Africa, poisoning the well of public debate. The company has apologised profusely and been split up.
What we know is that social media was a vital tool for this propaganda exercise, and it stands to reason that, because Facebook has the most users of any social media platform, it is most attractive to propagandists.
As to the question of data, this weekend John Lanchester wrote the cover piece for The Sunday Times Magazine, in which he argued that Facebook was the biggest surveillance enterprise in history, and could destroy civilisation.
The former is true, the latter is not. It is absolutely the case that Facebook has acquired a volume of personal data which is hard to fathom. This might be seen as more of a worry for those who care about privacy than democracy; but the point about it is it could get into the wrong hands.
Companies like Facebook sell advertisers personal data that we have all readily given them. They say they go to great pains to keep it safe, and would never sell it to unsavoury types. But insiders from Cambridge Analytica to the Kremlin are already using this data to micro-target voters.
As to the threat from online echo chambers, so much has been written about this that I feel I won't add to it here. Suffice to say there is a real danger that people live in walled gardens online, exposed only to information that reinforces their prejudices.
That's why we might call it anti-social media - though of course it's not Facebook's fault that we like to follow who we like to follow.
A pattern emerges
It is in the corporate handling of these unfolding crises that Facebook gives the clear impression of having unleashed something it can't control.
I thought Dylan Byers of CNN put it rather well in a tweet this week. He wrote: "FACEBOOK timeline: - didn't happen; - happened, but was small; - ok, semi-big; - ok, it reached 126 million, but no evidence it influenced them."
Similarly, last year Mark Zuckerberg described as a "pretty crazy idea" the notion that fake news swayed the election. He has subsequently softened his language dramatically - just as, on the question of whether or not Facebook is a media company, his language has evolved extremely quickly.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is making political ads more transparent.
In a series of posts on Facebook, Zuckerberg has explained the measures Facebook is taking to address this issue - primarily by making political ads more transparent.
A clear pattern is emerging, of Facebook responding to criticism by dismissing it while re-stating its founding mission, only to come around and admit that the critics may have had a point.
It is worth saying in defence of the company, that it's declared mission - which Facebook workers are forever repeating - of making the world more open and connected has indeed been hugely successful in achieving those professed aims.
Facebook is a free product, which billions of users enjoy (and indeed are often addicted to), which innovates with extraordinary proficiency, is exceptionally good at selling ads, and which has improved countless lives.
When we criticise Facebook for allowing Russians to influence elections, we should remember that it also connects some of the poorest people on the planet with family on the other side of the world.
And given so much of the information it spreads is of high quality, there are countless ways in which the company has benefitted democracy.
But as they testify before Congress - and note by the way that none of the companies have sent their CEOs - these tech giants are starting to look like they are losing control. That is especially true of Facebook, because it has grown the fastest.
Started just 13 years ago in a Harvard dormitory, the company has created unimaginable oceans of data, acquired phenomenal wealth - and become a platform that can be exploited by those who would subvert the democratic process.
In the long history of the rise and decline of democracy, this is the newest and most unpredicted threat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41833486

[Libertarian353]

Can democracy survive these ass lickers morons

I bet Paul can fuck and suck with the best of them. Look at those fish lips. Is Paul mother a fish, like Kanye mother in that southpark game?



Remember Noir, it was those ass licker morons that gave you democracy and the right to call them "ass licker morons". If those ass licker morons made democracy survive the Cold War, it can survive Islam.

[noir]

Dlt

[Libertarian353]

@noir

Anyway, why do we Whites think we're above Islam, even though we live it everyday? We're violent, rapists, cause wars and slavery worldwide. We're no better than Muslims.

[noir]

It's not the question of who is better. They should stay on their own sphere. Their colonization is destroying our way of life whether it's better or not. The Muslims will not allow a reverse colonization of this scale in their own sphere. No way.

[Libertarian353]

Their colonization is destroying our way of life whether it's better or not. The Muslims will not allow a reverse colonization of this scale in their own sphere. No way.

We destroyed Natives/Africans and even Eastern Europeans way of life. Why should any minority care? Besides I'm an Ancap(so this would happen anyway)

[noir]

Right now, the free world should resist the coming destruction by the creeping Colonization. In the 30's the communists cooperate with the Nazis because of their discontent with the Social Democrats. Today, the "progressives" are repeating the same mistakes.

[mikema63]

Noir is the sort of person who saws off the legs of their bed because they are afraid a Muslim will hide under it and get them at night.

Every post is pure delusional nonsense.

[Libertarian353]

Right now, the free world should resist the coming destruction by the creeping Colonization.

In what way, supporting trump or any right extremist policies count as "free"?

Also where was that logic when British was destroying African cities and enslaving them? Where was that "resist the coming destruction by the creeping Colonization.". Where was that line when Natives(100 million mind you) was killed by the colonizers?

Why should minorities cares about the "free world"? Hell Putin and the Easterners don't.

In the 30's the communists cooperate with the Nazis because of their discontent with the Social Democrats.

And now you're cooperating with Nazi groups and other far right, cause of your discontent of Neo-liberals.

Today, the "progressives" are repeating the same mistakes.

Today, Noir is repeating the same mistakes.

[noir]

Ok

[Libertarian353]

Ok

LOL, that's it?

[noir]

@mikema63

Read again the delusional nonsense after Orlando gay club jihadi attack

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=171367&p=14848275&hilit=Orlando#p14848275

[mikema63]

You are delusional if you think creepily hunting down a personal incident of mine somehow supports your position that Muslims are going to eat our babies.

[skinster]

Right now, the free world should resist the coming destruction by the creeping Colonization.

Says person who loves current settler-colonialist state call Israel (really called Palestine).