Facebook said Tuesday that it removed a small network of accounts and pages linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” that has used social media accounts to sow political discord in the U.S. since the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter also suspended five related accounts. The company said the tweets from these Russia-linked accounts“were low quality and spammy” and that most received few if any, likes or retweets.

The people behind the accounts recruited “unwitting” freelance journalists to post in English and Arabic, mainly targeting left-leaning audiences. Facebook said Tuesday the network’s activity focused on the U.S., U.K., Algeria and Egypt and other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The company said it started investigating the network based on information from the FBI about its off-Facebook activities. The network was in the early stages of development, Facebook added and saw “nearly no engagement” on Facebook before it was removed. The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages. About 14,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, though the English-language page had a little over 200 followers, Facebook said.

Still, its presence points to ongoing Russian efforts to disrupt the U.S. election and sow political discord in an already divided country. To evade detection, the people behind the network recruited Americans to do their bidding, likely unknowingly, both as journalists and as people authorized to purchase political advertisements in the U.S.

Facebook said the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the U.S. and the U.K., NATO, the QAnon conspiracy, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in U.S. dollars. However, Facebook said less than $2 worth of those ads targeted the U.S.

The network’s posts directed people to a website called PeaceData, which claims to be a global news organization that, according to a report by research firm Graphika, “took a left-wing stance, opposing what it portrayed as Western imperialism and the excesses of capitalism.”

The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that it provided information to the platforms “to better protect against threats to the nation’s security and our democratic processes.”

“While technology companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their platforms and the safety of their members, the FBI is actively engaged with our federal partners, election officials, and the private sector to mitigate foreign threats to our nation’s security and our elections,” the statement said.

Separately, Twitter said Tuesday it will start adding context to its trending section, which shows some of the most popular topics on the service at any given moment. Experts and even Twitter’s own employees have expressed concerns that the trending section can be gamed to spread misinformation and abuse.

Twitter uses algorithms and human employees to determine what topics are trending — it is not simply the most popular topics, but topics that are newly popular at any given time. But it’s not difficult to artificially elevate trends.

In the coming weeks, Twitter said, users in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, India and several other countries will see brief descriptions added to some trends to add context.

“To be clear, we know there is more work to do to improve trends and the context updates we’re announcing today are just a small step in the right direction,” said Liz Lee, a product trust partner and Frank Oppong, a product manager, in a blog post. “We need to make trends better and we will.”

source:AP

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Twitter's moves to label or hide comments from President Donald Trump have escalated a feud between the social network and the White House, but there could be more to come.

The messaging platform has a range of "enforcement" options for dealing with content in violation of its policies, each of which carries its own potential risks and costs.

Twitter has shown a newfound willingness to enforce its policies," said Daniel Kreiss, a University of North Carolina professor specializing in politics and social media.

"If you're a private company you have a right to regulate content, and it behooves those companies to enforce these policies in a fair and transparent and publicly justifiable way. I think Twitter will do this in a consistent way."

While Twitter could have acted before on Trump's tweets, "I think there has been a gradual shift in thinking at Twitter inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its thinking about misinformation that is harmful," said Tiffany Li, a fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project who specializes in social media.

Twitter, which this week added fact-check labels to two Trump tweets and a violation notice on another, can go further under its enforcement guidelines.

One option would be to "downrank" or limit the visibility of a tweet, or to remove it.

But Twitter's policies also include a "public interest" exception which would require leaving a tweet online but with the possibility of blocking "engagements" such as retweets and likes.

Kreiss said that because of Trump's importance as a public figure, "I don't think you'll see a takedown" of his tweets but "you might see actions preventing these things from being amplified."

Twitter's guidelines note that "world leaders are not above our policies entirely" and that the platform reserves the right to remove tweets that promote terrorism, violence or self-harm, or includes private information about another person.

- Most drastic steps -

Twitter's policies say the company may suspend or delete an account for repeated violations.

Some of Trump's critics have called for him to be "de-platformed" for his conduct, but such a move could create a political firestorm by acting against a leader with 80 million followers.

"They're not going to want to put themselves out on a limb," said Steven Livingston, director of the George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics.

At the same time, Livingston said, Twitter may be making a calculation that it can withstand the pressure as Trump moves further to the extreme.

"The smart people at Twitter are going to want to test the waters to determine if are they putting themselves at political risk by standing up to Trump," he said.

Twitter has already triggered the wrath of Trump, who two days after tweets of his on mail-in voting were tagged as misleading, signed an executive order which could lead to tighter oversight of social media platforms. There are doubts about the order's legality, however.

The San Francisco company carefully weighed its decision this week before labeling Trump's tweets for the first time, according to the news platform OneZero's account of deliberations.

"The company needed to do what's right, and we knew from a comms perspective that all hell would break loose," spokesman Brandon Borrman told OneZero.

Twitter drew an intense backlash not only from the president but from "the internet mob" which directed anger at a specific company executive, according to Li.

"This is troublesome because while Twitter as a company is a relatively strong entity, an individual is more vulnerable," she said.

The dramatic clash between Trump and Twitter may have consequences for both, but both sides may also end up benefitting, according to Kreiss.

"I don't think Trump is going to leave Twitter because this is how he uses it to communicate," Kreiss said.

The conflict "sets up a foil for him and helps him mobilize his base," the researcher said.

"Ironically this is good for Twitter too because it now makes it the center of fundamental debate going into the 2020 election, and it will increase use of the platform."

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Twitter announced on Friday the closure of tens of thousands of Chinese, Russian and Turkish "state-linked" accounts used for propaganda and misinformation.

The social network said it had deactivated a "core" of 23,750 accounts linked to China and relayed by some 150,000 other accounts serving as "amplifiers". Twitter also closed 7,340 accounts linked to Turkey and 1,152 linked to Russia.

All of these accounts have been closed but their content has been saved to a database for scientific research, Twitter said.

The American giant explained that the Chinese account network was discovered using tools put in place last August to erase the accounts linked to Beijing during the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

This network published tweets, mainly in Chinese and probably intended for the diaspora, "diffusing geopolitical theories favorable to the Chinese Communist Party, while supporting misleading theories on the political dynamics in Hong Kong", explained Twitter in a note of analysis.

These thousands of accounts have also served to promote Beijing's views on the fight against the coronavirus, then the anti-racist protests in the United States, said the Australian think tank ASPI, which analyzed the flow of tweets.

"While the Chinese Communist Party does not allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows that it does not hesitate to use it to spread propaganda and misinformation internationally," said one. ASPI officials, Fergus Hanson, in his analysis note.

As for the network of Turkish accounts, detected in early 2020, it was mainly dedicated to the promotion of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling party, according to Twitter. The Russian accounts were also used to promote the ruling party and to attack its critics.

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Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Tuesday said it would stop Australians sharing news content on its platforms if a proposal to make it pay local media outlets for their content becomes law, escalating tension with the Australian government.

Under Australia’s closely watched internet reform, the country will become the first to make the social media behemoth and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google pay for news sourced from local providers under a royalty-style system.

Facebook’s plan to block the sharing of news on Australian user accounts, rather than pay royalties, puts the firm broadly in step with Google on the matter and pushes the prospect of an agreement with the government further out of reach.

“Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram,” Facebook Australia Managing Director Will Easton said in a blog post, referring to two Facebook-owned platforms.

“This is not our first choice - it is our last. It is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector”.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday said the proposed law was in the national interest, followed 18 months of a public inquiry, and would create a more sustainable local media industry where the original content was paid for.

“We don’t respond to coercion or heavy-handed threats wherever they come from,” Frydenberg said in an emailed response to Reuters’ request for comment.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair Rod Sims, who is overseeing the proposed law, said Facebook’s response was “ill-timed and misconceived”, and that the proposal “simply aims to bring fairness and transparency to Facebook and Google’s relationships with Australian news media businesses”.

“As the ACCC and the Government work to finalize the draft legislation, we hope all parties will engage in constructive discussions,” Sims said in a statement.

Bridget Fair, chief executive of Free TV Australia, a lobby group for free-to-air broadcasters, said Facebook’s plan amounted to “bullying” and that the U.S. firm would “say and do anything to avoid making a fair payment for news content”.

“Australian Facebook users are being held to ransom as a tactic to intimidate the Australian government into backing down on this issue,” she said in a statement.

The proposed law was “the only reasonable way to even up the bargaining power between Facebook, Google, and Australian News Media Businesses,” Fair said.

Facebook’s Easton in his blog post called the proposed law “unprecedented in its reach”, and said the company could either remove news entirely or agree to pay publishers for as much content as they wanted at a price with no clear limits.

“Unfortunately, no business can operate that way,” he wrote.

Like in most countries, Australia’s traditional media companies in recent years have seen their mainstay advertising income streams eroded by online competitors, and consumers shy away from paid subscriptions.

Last month, Google began an advertising campaign using pop-up ads on its main search page that said its free service would be “at-risk” and users’ personal data could be shared if the firm is made to pay news organizations for their content. The ACCC called the statements “misinformation”.

Source: Reuters

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