Facebook, as kos keeps saying, is a menace.
Here are a few paragraphs from a recent report MIT Technology Review, Karen Hao
In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages were part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans, according to an internal company report, and achieved that reach not through user choice but primarily as a result of Facebook’s own platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm. ✂️
The report found that troll farms were reaching the same demographic groups singled out by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election, which had targeted Christians, Black Americans, and Native Americans. A 2018 BuzzFeed News investigation found that at least one member of the Russian IRA, indicted for alleged interference in the 2016 US election, had also visited Macedonia around the emergence of its first troll farms, though it didn’t find concrete evidence of a connection. (Facebook said its investigations hadn’t turned up a connection between the IRA and Macedonian troll farms either.)
“This is not normal. This is not healthy,” Allen wrote. “We have empowered inauthentic actors to accumulate huge followings for largely unknown purposes ... The fact that actors with possible ties to the IRA have access to huge audience numbers in the same demographic groups targeted by the IRA poses an enormous risk to the US 2020 election.”
Perhaps you have seen this before, but this is information that bears repeating. We Ds are not good at repeating, but we need to do it anyway.
These troll farms are probably responsible for much of the anti-vaxx movement.
So, what can we do about it?
- Write stories like these
- Complain to our representatives
- Stop using FB and its other apps
- Participate in boycotts
I myself use FB only in the most banal of ways. It helps me keep up with events in a few groups when I am not around, and it helped me locate a half uncle I had been wondering about for decades.
The FB boycott is scheduled for November 10. Now, my not showing up won’t matter a lot, because I do so little there anyway. But I want to trumpet this message.
It’s time to get rid of those trolls!
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: Hunters of the Feather, a story about a thinker-linker crow who wants to save birdkind from extinction, and the sequel, Scavengers of Mind. (They’re really good! They’re really cheap! Buy and review or rate positively! And Hunters is also available on Audible!) Other stories, based on Jane Austen novels — including a new one for lovers of Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies — and others on Greek mythology, can be found here.