Two-thirds of all Facebook users who join extremist groups are guided to them by Facebook itself.

[G_j]

Why Facebook Won’t Stop Pushing Propaganda


https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/08/why-facebook-wont-stop-pushing-propaganda/

Joyce Jones’ Facebook page is almost an archetype of what the social network is supposed to look like: Pictures of her kids, her kids’ friends, her sports teams, her kids’ friends’ sports teams. Videos of her husband’s sermons at New Mount Moriah Baptist Church. Memes celebrating achievement and solidarity, holiday greetings, public health messages. It’s what Mark Zuckerberg extols when he talks about how his company is all about “bringing people together.”

So when Jones decided to run for mayor in her Alabama town last year, it seemed obvious that she’d try to bring people together on Facebook. Her bid to be Montevallo’s first Black mayor, challenging a 12-year City Council incumbent, drew an enthusiastic, diverse crew of volunteers. They put up a campaign page, One Montevallo, and started posting cheery endorsements alongside recycling updates and plugs for drive-in movies.

It was a historic moment for Montevallo, whose population (7,000) is two-thirds white and which sits in Shelby County, the infamous plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. It was also a turning point for Jones, who grew up in the shotgun house her father had built on a dirt road far from the neighborhood where her grandmother cleaned houses. “My cousins and I would come with her,” the 45-year-old recalls. “We would do yardwork in the houses that she worked in. We never ever thought that living here was an option.”

-snip-

Jones is not quite sure how the rumors started, but she remembers how fast they spread. Facebook accounts popped up and shared posts to Montevallo community groups, implying she wanted to defund police (she does not). Someone made up a report of a burglary at her home, referencing her landlord’s name—to highlight that she was renting, she believes. Another account dredged up a bounced check she’d written for groceries as her family struggled during the 2008 recession.

..more..

[lagomorph777]

1. I would assume so.

My wife is always spouting garbage that I know she saw on Facebook. That is a fucking cesspool.

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

The technical term for this is algorithmic amplification, and it means just that: What you see on Facebook has been amplified, and pushed into your feed, by the company’s proprietary algorithm. When you (or Mother Jones, or Trump) create a post, it’s visible to no one except those who deliberately seek out your page. But within instants, the algorithm analyzes your post, factoring in who you and your connections are, what you’ve looked at or shared before, and myriad other data points. Then it decides whether to show that post in someone else’s News Feed, the primary page you see when you log on. Think of it as a speed-reading robot that curates everything you see.

The way social media companies tell it, their robots are benevolent, serving only your best interests. You’ve clicked on your cousin’s recipes but not your friend’s fitness bragging? Here is more pasta and less Chloe Ting. You’ve shown an interest in Trump and also fanciful pottery? Here are some MAGA garden gnomes. The founding narrative of social media companies is that they merely provide a space for you, dear user, to do and see what you want.

In reality, as the people who work at these companies know quite well, technology reflects the biases of those who make it. And when those who make it are corporations, it reflects corporate imperatives. In Facebook’s case, those imperatives—chief among them, to grow faster than anyone else—have played out with especially high stakes, making the company one of the world’s most significant threats to democracy, human rights, and decency.

Facebook has been proved to be a vehicle for election disinformation in many countries (see: Brexit, Trump, Duterte). It has been an organizing space and megaphone for violent extremism and genocidal hate (see: Kenosha, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan). Its power is so far-reaching, it shapes elections in small-town Alabama and helps launch mobs into the Capitol. It reaches you whether or not you are on social media, because, as Jones says, what happens on Facebook doesn’t stay on Facebook.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Youtube, on which I watch music and movie clips, is now pushing me a bunch of RW conspiracy crap.

I don't know how I got on this "list", but it is kind of scary.

It's like they have detected an unseen darkness in me, and they are trying to reach out to it.

[Scrivener7]

4. Yup.

[CrackityJones75]

5. While Facebook has some part in it

While Facebook has some part in it I am not willing to pin this shit on them. I get suggestions to join diabetes care groups and products. You get suggestions based on activity. Nobody at facebook is watching and suggesting to people with no interest to go and join militia groups.

With that said some of this shit just shouldn’t be on facebook to begin with in order to stop people with similar interests from being given suggestions to join them.

[FakeNoose]

7. These rightwing groups are paying Facebook to post their ads

Their "ads" aren't really advertising at all, they are outrage-engendering fake news stories. Unfounded lies that are quickly shared as memes with other Facebook accounts, and also sent out as emails and posted on other MSM boards.

Facebook does know who they are, and Facebook won't stop them because they're getting paid by them. That's what the slimy Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want anyone to know. He could stop it at any time, he could have stopped it 10 years ago.

[2naSalit]

6. fb needs to die. ...nt