Here are all the Facebook Papers stories (by David Pierce and Anna Kramer, published October 25, 2021 on protocol.com)

 https://www.protocol.com/facebook-papers?fbclid=IwAR3Nq7SozwOLXo2X-4H6twbOZMLqvBsExeFuBt27Hgh-n0KZ5iCgBh1dh3A

 

 

Monday morning's news drop was a doozy. There was story after story about the goings-on inside Facebook, thanks to thousands of leaked documents from Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who wants the information within those files to spread far and wide. Haugen is also set to speak in front of the British Parliament on Monday, continuing the story that is becoming known as The Facebook Papers.

Before it was The Facebook Papers, of course, it was The Facebook Files, a Wall Street Journal series that included the first looks at many of Haugen's documents. (You can read the backstory of that name change, along with more details on the consortium of journalists that worked together on the Papers stories, from The New York Times.)

The stories started to publish last Friday night, but landed with a bang Monday morning and have been coming out ever since. Since they're spread across lots of publications, we've rounded them all up in one place (in no particular order), to make them easier to find and read. We've tried to focus on the stories about the documents themselves, rather than about the fallout or the PR spin or any of the other Facebook issues from this week. And we'll keep adding stories here as new ones publish. 

 

Facebook's internal chat boards show politics often at center of decision making — The Wall Street Journal

Facebook's hiring crisis: Engineers are turning down offers, internal docs show — Protocol

Facebook wrestles with the features it used to define social networking — The New York Times

Internal alarm, public shrugs: Facebook's employees dissect its election role — The New York Times

In India, Facebook grapples with an amplified version of its problems — The New York Times

In Poland's politics, a 'social civil war' brewed as Facebook rewarded online anger — The Washington Post

The case against Mark Zuckerberg: Insiders say Facebook's CEO chose growth over safety — The Washington Post

How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India — The Washington Post

Five points for anger, one for a 'like': How Facebook's formula fostered rage and misinformation — The Washington Post

Inside Facebook, Jan. 6 violence fueled anger, regret over missed warning signs — The Washington Post

How Facebook shapes your feed — The Washington Post

Facebook documents offer a treasure trove for Washington's antitrust war — POLITICO

'This is NOT normal': Facebook employees vent their anguish — POLITICO

 Facebook's Jan. 6 problem: A thin playbook for false election claims — POLITICO

How Facebook users wield multiple accounts to spread toxic politics — POLITICO

Facebook's 'fatal flaw': Staff spar over the sway of their lobbyists — POLITICO

Facebook did little to moderate posts in the world's most violent countries — POLITICO

The Facebook Papers: Documents reveal internal fury and dissent over site's policies — NBC News

'Carol's Journey': What Facebook knew about how it radicalized users — NBC News

The Facebook Papers: Documents reveal internal fury and dissent over site's policies — CNBC

The Facebook Papers may be the biggest crisis in the company's history — CNN

Facebook knew it was being used to incite violence in Ethiopia. It did little to stop the spread, documents show — CNN

Facebook has known it has a human trafficking problem for years. It still hasn't fully fixed it — CNN

Facebook has language blind spots around the world that allow hate speech to flourish — CNN

Not stopping 'Stop the Steal:' Facebook Papers paint damning picture of company's role in insurrection — CNN

Facebook is having a tougher time managing vaccine misinformation than it is letting on, leaks suggest — CNN

Inside Facebook's struggle to keep young people — The Verge

Facebook's leaked tier list: how the company decides which countries need protection — The Verge

Hey, kid, wanna see some leaked Facebook docs? — Gizmodo

The Climate Denial Is Coming From Inside Facebook's House — Gizmodo

 

Facebook Has No Clue How to Solve Its Image Problem, Leaked Doc Shows — Gizmodo

How the 2019 Christchurch Massacre Changed Facebook Forever — Gizmodo

Facebook is everywhere; its moderation is nowhere close — Wired

How to fix Facebook, according to Facebook employees — Wired

Facebook failed the people who tried to improve it — Wired

Facebook's language gaps weaken screening of hate, terrorism — Associated Press

America 'on fire': Facebook watched as Trump ignited hate — Associated Press

Facebook dithered in curbing divisive user content in India — Associated Press

Apple once threatened Facebook ban over Mideast maid abuse — Associated Press

People or profit? Facebook papers show deep conflict within — Associated Press

Facebook froze as anti-vaccine comments swarmed users – Associated Press

The Facebook Papers: What you need to know — NPR

Employees pleaded with Facebook to stop letting politicians bend rules — The Financial Times

Facebook bungled efforts to curb explosion of hate speech ahead of Capitol attack — The Financial Times

The Facebook Papers: social network shaken by content, user woe — Bloomberg

Facebook, alarmed by teen usage drop, left investors in the dark — Bloomberg

Facebook Privately Worried About Hate Speech Spawning Violence — Bloomberg

Facebook staff say core products make misinformation worse — Bloomberg

Facebook hobbled team tasked with stemming harmful content — Bloomberg

Facebook Papers: 'history will not judge us kindly' — The Atlantic

How Facebook failed the world — The Atlantic

What happened when Facebook became boomerbook — The Atlantic

 Facebook knew about, failed to police, abusive content globally — Reuters

November 14, 2016 - the message from Anonymous re Assange and Wikileaks (sent via mail, posted on blog and in Facebook Intelgroup)

From my mailbox, but was also available on: http://www.anonintelgroup.com/?p=108

Please note that I was not subscribed to the blog where the message was posted.

Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2017 2:36 AM Subject: [New post] 108-2

New post on #ANONYMOUS #INTELGROUP

108-2 by XadminX

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect on #IntelGroup. We have a responsibility to present information to our readers regardless of personal opinions. The following post was released by @YouAnonCentral Greetings world, We are Anonymous. It is with great concern that we find ourselves still associated in the eyes of the public with Julian Assange and what has become Wikiileaks. We do not support nor do we endorse Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin, or Donald Trump. We reject fascism and all who promote it. Wikileaks under Julian Assange is a front for several corrupt state actors like Russia and the Assad regime in Syria which the majority of Anonymous have always opposed. Some people didn’t seem to notice that Assange’s Wikileaks party backed the right wing and visited Assad in 2012. We did. Wikileaks under Julian Assange is celebrated by all we oppose. In 2010, Wikileaks was helped by a lot of very good people who all left or were arrested long ago. Julian Assange has managed to drive out everyone good, who were of service to the people and a better world. He has used their efforts and the previous support from Anonymous to further an agenda in complete opposition to their and our beliefs. He and an army of bots promote Russia, Assad, Wikileaks and Trump in the name of Anonymous and ride off a humanitarian reputation that was not created by Assange or anyone currently with the organization. We have tried to bring the public as much information as possible during the recent US election and every election. We tried to expose Trump’s very real links to child trafficking and mafia circles and had our work drowned out by an asinine story about ‘spirit cooking’ pushed by Assange onto our hashtags. He used the megaphone we all built to promote a man who will normalize fascism and hate across the globe. He suppressed information in the Syria files about 2 billion dollars in payments from Russia to Syria. He vilified Panama Papers for being ‘biased’ against Russia (after stealing credit for their work). He jeered at Parisians under attack as he is now jeering at women and minorities in the US fearing for their safety Julian Assange and his current band of sycophants and handlers have turned Wikileaks into a symbol of fascism and disillusionment to those who worked hard and risked their very lives to create and protect it. They work to discredit and silence all who oppose Julian Assange but supported the 2010 Wikileaks. They scream asylum for “Assange and Snowden” who are not in prison but ignore refugees and our Anonymous comrades and other brave fighters actually in prison. Jeremy Hammond and Chelesea Manning are frequently in solitary confinement (torture) and have their human rights taken from them constantly. They and others gave Wikileaks their lives with the idea that it would help reveal the truth and spark steps towards justice. Julian Assange has taken every opportunity to destroy their work, smear their credbility, and rewrite a history where those who did the work do not exist, only a cult hero named Julian Assange does. We reject tyrant coups, including the one Julian Assange has attempted to conduct over Wikileaks and Anonymous. We reject Julian Assange and everything he stands for. We strongly discourage anyone from leaking to him, listening to him or giving him money. Free Jeremy Hammond. Free Chelsea Manning. We are Anonymous. We are everywhere. We are legion. We are those you have left without a home. We are those you have tortured. We are those you have murdered. We are voiceless no more. The world will change. We will change it. Tyrants of the World, Expect Us! 

XadminX | November 14, 2016 at 12:33 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/p71yR0-1K 

“Seeded in Social Media”: Jailed Philippine Journalist Says Facebook is Partly Responsible for Her Predicament (PBS in partnership with Washington Post) 25 February, 2019

 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/seeded-in-social-media-jailed-philippine-journalist-says-facebook-is-partly-responsible-for-her-predicament/?fbclid=IwAR1KkE8zAQt2lQsvqsJucEY26aOo36esbF0F9LzNxrnbTZUZB4XOOKDnjng

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

by

Dana Priest

The arrest this month of Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, which experts believe is a retaliatory move for exposing violence-inciting fake accounts on Facebook linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, raises the question of the company’s culpability for her dangerous predicament.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights said last week that Facebook bears some responsibility because it failed to follow its policies and remove false and violence-inciting accounts in a timely manner. “Certainly Maria deserves that, even though it’s probably far too late,” said Rapporteur David Kaye, who has spoken to her about the situation. “She has suffered severe consequences.”

Ressa, who was featured on the cover of Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, identified 26 accounts that reached more than 3 million Facebook users in mid-2016. That October, she asked Facebook to remove them, she said, arguing it would be too dangerous for her news outlet to publish the findings first.

She feared for her safety and that of her colleagues because social media mobs had already silenced other journalists and civic leaders who criticized the extrajudicial killings of drug addicts and dealers that Duterte was promoting. “I gave the data to Facebook because I was hoping they would fix it and then we could do the story,” Ressa said, who added that the executives looked “shocked” at what she told them.

Ressa had intended to write a story about Facebook taking down the accounts. But when Facebook did not act, her publication, Rappler, readied a three-part series. An avalanche of threats and lawsuits followed its publication, culminating in Ressa’s arrest and overnight detention in a cyber libel case against her. She is free on bail awaiting arraignment March 1 and has been forced to increase security for herself and Rappler. “If Facebook had taken action in 2016, I wouldn’t be in this position,” said Ressa.

Kaye said in an interview there is no legal mechanism to hold the company accountable. Countries have given Facebook legal immunity for the content it publishes.

Simon Milner, vice president of public policy in the Asia Pacific region, said, “Keeping our community, especially those who are at risk, safe is our top priority.”

In the Philippines, Milner said, the company has increased the number of people policing content, built better technology to report abuse more quickly and expanded digital literacy efforts. It has also invested more in training news outlets in best practices and analytics.

“There is always more to do, and that’s why we have a dedicated team of product, policy and partnerships experts who are focused on helping keep our community in the Philippines safe,” he said. The dedicated team was put in place only last year after widespread criticism of Facebook surfaced following the 2016 U.S. election when Russia was easily able to use the platform for disinformation and to help elect Donald Trump as president.

Ressa said she gave the executives the account names at the first meeting and assumed they relayed them because they were taking notes. Ressa said she gave the executives the account names at the first meeting and assumed they relayed them because they were taking notes. Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja defended the company’s response to Ressa by saying executives had asked the journalist for the internet addresses of the fake accounts but that she didn’t send them until weeks after publication. Facebook, Budhraja said, “took action on some of these accounts in October, but we only had the article to go on.” After Ressa sent them all 26 accounts in November, “we took action on the remainder of accounts that violated our policies.”

Ressa’s discoveries showed Facebook’s failure to enforce its own policies against fake accounts and calls for violence. Rappler’s series described how “sock puppets,” fake accounts controlled by a network of Duterte supporters, engaged real people online and spread lies, misleading photos and false incidents of rampant crime, to drum up support for Duterte’s hardline anti-drug policies. The accounts called for violence against legislators, civic activists and journalists who spoke up against Duterte’s tactics. Ressa was among them.

It is against Facebook’s policy to create and use accounts using false identities, as these accounts did, and to use the platform to call for violence against individuals or groups, as many of these accounts also did. Facebook has said it was “too slow” to develop the technology and to employ enough people to spot large quantities of bad content and either remove it or reprogram its algorithm to push it down so low in a consumer’s Facebook feed as to make it unlikely to be seen.

Ressa’s legal troubles and the continuing violent threats against the 55-year-old journalist are widely viewed as the government’s way to shut down Rappler and drive her out of the business of revealing government wrongdoing. As she predicted, “the online threats increased exponentially after we published our three-part series,” she said. “The charges for the cases later filed were seeded in social media, repeated exponentially. A lie told a million times becomes truth.”

Ressa did not stop pursuing Facebook executives after the initial 2016 meeting. In a recent interview with FRONTLINE, she described meeting with more than 50 employees, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to urge them to stop the systematic abuse taking place on Facebook’s pages.

In April, Facebook hired Rappler to become part of its new news verification program, which fact checks on behalf of the social media giant. Ressa said the company is doing a better job than it did before. Neither would discuss the financial arrangement. Rappler staff has been overwhelmed by the volume of false information still flooding the platform.

Last month, Zuckerberg said he had “fundamentally changed how we run this company” in response to the dangers its technology has enabled, although there is no independent way to verify those assertions.

The human rights case against Facebook is growing. Last year, U.N. human rights investigators found it had played a “determining role” in the genocide of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya by allowing its platform to be used to incite widespread violence against the minority group. Sri Lankan authorities temporarily banned Facebook last year when calls to kills Muslims circulated freely, inciting riots and killings.

After Rappler’s series, threatening, hate-filled Facebook posts poured into Ressa’s page at a rate of 90 hate messages an hour, Ressa said. She again pressed the company to do more and was told she needed to formally report the messages. She said such a task would have taken her 24 hours a day because of the high volume. At that point, Facebook also told her there was nothing more it could do because it considered her a public figure, she said. Facebook has since lowered its threshold for removing threats against journalists, the spokeswoman said.

About 90 percent of Facebook’s market is overseas. In the Philippines, 95 percent of people online use it, a popularity seen in other developing countries where it has become the primary way to communicate. To grow the Philippine market, Facebook trained then-presidential candidate Duterte and his campaign staff how to use its technology. They gave similar training to many other political leaders, including autocrats in Egypt, Myanmar, Turkey and elsewhere.

Ressa said she had been one of Facebook’s biggest fans back then. She believed its campaign efforts would empower more citizens to take part in the political process. “I thought there was great potential.” She invited Facebook executives on her television show to promote the platform’s use during the presidential campaign. But shortly after Duterte’s election, when he began his draconian anti-drug crusade and massive disinformation campaign, Rappler began investigating.

Ressa was already steeped in social network analysis. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, as a CNN correspondent, she traced the Al Qaeda terrorist group’s network around the Philippines and across Southeast Asia. Her journalism was sometimes ground-breaking, disclosing connections that authorities were unaware of.

Rappler’s October 2016 series offered, in retrospect, a surprisingly accurate blueprint for the Russian disinformation operation already in full bloom in the U.S. presidential campaign and using the similar digital techniques. U.S. disinformation in 2016 was foreign, not domestic, and didn’t call for violence so much as sow social discord.

Ressa still holds Facebook responsible for allowing the scale of false information in the Philippines to grow so fast. “They built this. It’s theirs,” she told FRONTLINE. “It seems like they just gave everyone the guns and they said, ‘Whomever…kills the most people, wins.’ There were no rules.”

The United Nations’ Kaye said Facebook must be more transparent about its actions and decision-making so the public can debate and perhaps revise options for holding it accountable. “Right now,” he said, “we really rely on the company to do the right thing.” In Ressa’s case, Kaye said, “She told them, ‘They are threatening me.’ She didn’t hear anything. It was radio silence.”

Neurotechnology, Elon Musk and the goal of human enhancement (The Guardian, January 1, 2018)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/01/elon-musk-neurotechnology-human-enhancement-brain-computer-interfaces #musk #neuralink #facebook #kernel #darpa Facebook has been hiring neuroscientists for an undisclosed project at its secretive hardware division, #Building8. In the UK, research is ongoing. Davide Valeriani, senior research officer at University of Essex’s BCI-NE Lab, is using an electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI to tap into the unconscious minds of people as they make decisions. Musk created Neuralink, with the intention of connecting computers directly to human brains. He wants to do this using “neural lace” technology – implanting tiny electrodes into the brain for direct computing capabilities. Bryan Johnson has also been testing “neural lace”. He founded Kernel, a startup to enhance human intelligence by developing brain implants linking people’s thoughts to computers. At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February, Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said that people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in an artificial intelligence age. He said that a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence” would be necessary to ensure we stay economically valuable. Soon afterwards, the serial entrepreneur created Neuralink, with the intention of connecting computers directly to human brains. He wants to do this using “neural lace” technology – implanting tiny electrodes into the brain for direct computing capabilities. Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) aren’t a new idea. Various forms of BCI are already available, from ones that sit on top of your head and measure brain signals to devices that are implanted into your brain tissue. They are mainly one-directional, with the most common uses enabling motor control and communication tools for people with brain injuries. In March, a man who was paralysed from below the neck moved his hand using the power of concentration. Cognitive enhancement But Musk’s plans go beyond this: he wants to use BCIs in a bi-directional capacity, so that plugging in could make us smarter, improve our memory, help with decision-making and eventually provide an extension of the human mind. “Musk’s goals of cognitive enhancement relate to healthy or able-bodied subjects, because he is afraid of AI and that computers will ultimately become more intelligent than the humans who made the computers,” explains BCI expert Professor Pedram Mohseni of Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, who sold the rights to the name Neuralink to Musk. He wants to directly tap into the brain, effectively bypassing mechanisms such as speaking or texting. Musk has the credibility to talk about these things Pedram Mohseni “He wants to directly tap into the brain to read out thoughts, effectively bypassing low-bandwidth mechanisms such as speaking or texting to convey the thoughts. This is pie-in-the-sky stuff, but Musk has the credibility to talk about these things,” he adds. Musk is not alone in believing that “neurotechnology” could be the next big thing. Silicon Valley is abuzz with similar projects. Bryan Johnson, for example, has also been testing “neural lace”. He founded Kernel, a startup to enhance human intelligence by developing brain implants linking people’s thoughts to computers. In 2015, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that people will one day be able to share “full sensory and emotional experiences” online – not just photos and videos. Facebook has been hiring neuroscientists for an undisclosed project at its secretive hardware division, Building 8. However, it is unlikely this technology will be available anytime soon, and some of the more ambitious projects may be unrealistic, according to Mohseni. Pie-in-the-sky “In my opinion, we are at least 10 to 15 years away from the cognitive enhancement goals in healthy, able-bodied subjects. It certainly appears to be, from the more immediate goals of Neuralink, that the neurotechnology focus will continue to be on patients with various neurological injuries or diseases,” he says. Mohseni says one of the best current examples of cognitive enhancement is the work of Professor Ted Berger, of the University of Southern California, who has been working on a memory prosthesis to replace the damaged parts of the hippocampus in patients who have lost their memory due to, for example, Alzheimer’s disease. Human Brain Project: Henry Markram plans to spend €1bn building a perfect model of the human brain Read more “In this case, a computer is to be implanted in the brain that acts similaly to the biological hippocampus from an input and output perspective,” he says. “Berger has results from both rodents and non-human primate models, as well as preliminary results in several human subjects.” Mohseni adds: “The [US government’s] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) currently has a programme that aims to do cognitive enhancement in their soldiers – ie enhance learning of a wide range of cognitive skills, through various mechanisms of peripheral nerve stimulation that facilitate and encourage neural plasticity in the brain. This would be another example of cognitive enhancement in able-bodied subjects, but it is quite pie-in-the-sky, which is exactly how DARPA operates.” Understanding the brain In the UK, research is ongoing. Davide Valeriani, senior research officer at University of Essex’s BCI-NE Lab, is using an electroencephalogram (EEG)-based BCI to tap into the unconscious minds of people as they make decisions. BCIs could be a fundamental tool for going beyond human limits, hence improving everyone’s life Davide Valeriani “Everyone who makes decisions wears the EEG cap, which is part of a BCI, a tool to help measure EEG activity ... it measures electrical activity to gather patterns associated with confident or non-confident decisions,” says Valeriani. “We train the BCI – the computer basically – by asking people to make decisions without knowing the answer and then tell the machine, ‘Look, in this case we know the decision made by the user is correct, so associate those patterns to confident decisions’ – as we know that confidence is related to probability of being correct. So during training the machine knows which answers were correct and which one were not. The user doesn’t know all the time.” Valeriani adds: “I hope more resources will be put into supporting this very promising area of research. BCIs are not only an invaluable tool for people with disabilities, but they could be a fundamental tool for going beyond human limits, hence improving everyone’s life.” He notes, however, that one of the biggest challenges with this technology is that first we need to better understand how the human brain works before deciding where and how to apply BCI. “This is why many agencies have been investing in basic neuroscience research – for example, the Brain initiative in the US and the Human Brain Project in the EU.” Whenever there is talk of enhancing humans, moral questions remain – particularly around where the human ends and the machine begins. “In my opinion, one way to overcome these ethical concerns is to let humans decide whether they want to use a BCI to augment their capabilities,” Valeriani says. “Neuroethicists are working to give advice to policymakers about what should be regulated. I am quite confident that, in the future, we will be more open to the possibility of using BCIs if such systems provide a clear and tangible advantage to our lives.”