DragonI

“I’ve always thought that he wanted to make things right by conservatives”, Republican attendee at Zuck’s dinner

• Giving fake election news higher visibility
• Running Russian ads for Trump
• Running Russian ads against Hillary Clinton
• Facebook confirmed its partner Cambridge Analytica stole data on 87 million users - which the Trump Campaign (Brad Parscale) used the data to target ads

Sheryl Sandberg knew more of Facebook’s work with Definers than she let on

Two weeks after The New York Times revealed Facebook’s controversial work with Republican opposition research firm Definers Public Affairs, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has changed her story in significant ways. The latest revelation: Sandberg herself directed Facebook’s communications team to prob…

techcrunch.com

The truth is that Elliot Schrage could NOT have hired or directed Republican dirty tricksters Definers Public Affairs without the direct approval of his Commander in Chief Mark Zuckerberg or even Facebook’s #2 Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer.

Schrage is not innocent by any means. He ran Facebook’s Communication’s department more like a political party.

The new reporting cites an email between Sandberg and a Facebook senior executive that was circulated more broadly to senior comms and policy staff. “Sheryl sent an email asking if Mr. Soros had shorted Facebook’s stock,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.

Everything that Definers shared with media was approved by a Facebook employee.

“Definers knows where the bodies are buried”, Facebook source

Facebook’s decision to hire Definers, a corporate-facing outgrowth of the Republican America Rising PAC known for its fierce opposition research, proved to be a deeply controversial departure from Silicon Valley ethical norms.

Definers began its work with Facebook through Facebook’s content communications team and Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Andrea Saul, who previously worked under Definers founder Matt Rhoades on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. Saul served as the national press secretary for the campaign from early 2011 to November 2012 under Rhoades, who managed the campaign. After the Romney campaign ended, Saul went to work doing communications for Sheryl Sandberg’s nonprofit LeanIn.org and found her way to Facebook in 2016.

Some members of Facebook’s communications team are former Republican campaign staffers and strategists with ties to the outside firm that Facebook controversially brought in to support its own internal PR efforts. As TechCrunch previously reported, those ties are largely through Romney’s campaign.

Facebook’s relationship with Definers was mostly overseen by Andrea Saul, Tom Reynolds and Ruchika Budhraja in Menlo Park. In Washington D.C., Definers was handled by Andy Stone under Facebook’s chief lobbyist, Joel Kaplan. Kaplan, who worked in the George W. Bush administration with Definers’ founder and its president, was also in the loop given his high level policy role and position as a strong in-house Republican voice among many at Facebook.

We posed as 100 senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them.

On the eve of the 2018 midterms, Facebook's "Paid for by" disclosure for political ads is easily manipulated.

news.vice.com

But on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, a VICE News investigation found the “Paid for by” feature is easily manipulated and appears to allow anyone to lie about who is paying for a political ad, or to pose as someone paying for the ad.

To test it, VICE News applied to buy fake ads on behalf of all 100 sitting U.S. senators, including ads “Paid for by” by Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. Facebook’s approvals were bipartisan: All 100 sailed through the system, indicating that just about anyone can buy an ad identified as “Paid for by” by a major U.S. politician.

But posing as 100 senators didn’t require being smart, creative, or even particularly well-funded. Receiving approval to run an ad “paid for” by a senator typically just took a few minutes. We used 10 fake Facebook pages with no content, and changed the “paid for” disclosure after each senator was approved.

Facebook rolled out the “Paid for by” tool in May “to help prevent abuse, especially during elections.” Rob Leathern underscored its importance. “This will help ensure that you can see who is paying for the ad,” he wrote at the time. “Which is especially important when the Page name doesn’t match the name of the company or person funding the ad.”

His colleague echoed that a few days ago. “When it comes to advertising on Facebook, people should be able to tell who the advertiser is and see the ads they’re running, especially for political ads,” Facebook Vice President of Ads Rob Goldman wrote on Oct. 27.

Why Are We Just Finding Out Now That All Two Billion Facebook Users May Have Been Harvested?

The real story is not Facebook's revelation of two billion harvested profiles - it's why it took until now to confirm, why it was ok before and whether Silicon Valley's mantra of moving fast and breaking things is the wrong mindset in a world in which the things being “broken” are people’s lives.

www.forbes.com|Kalev Leetaru

Basically, the search function of Facebook's apps was so powerful and widely used that if you were a Facebook user and it was turned on — which it was by default — then you should assume someone out there has access to your information, Zuckerberg said.

• Robert Mercer, Rebekah Mercer and Steve Bannon’s Cambridge Analytica
• Aleksandr Kogan who worked with Cambridge AND “received grants from the Russian government to research Facebook users’ emotional states”

Trevelyan: So who is going to own the Facebook content, the person who puts it there, or you?

Zuckerberg: The person who puts the content on Facebook always owns the information, and this is why Facebook is such a special service... This is their information. They own it.

Trevelyan: So just to be clear, you're not going to sell or share any of the information on Facebook?

Zuckerberg: We're not going to share people's information except for with the people that they've asked for it to be shared. 

Facebook’s Safety Check page for the Las Vegas shooting promotes “alt-right news”

In the wake of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas last night that left more than 50 dead and hundreds injured, people around the world are scrambling to get up-to-date information. Technology platforms like Facebook and Google are obviously go-to sources for news updates, but they’re not proving very reliable.

www.fastcompany.com|Cale Guthrie Weissman

On Facebook’s dedicated “Safety Check” page for the Las Vegas massacre–which says it lets users “connect with friends and family and find and give help after a crisis”–one of the top stories earlier today was from a Blogspot titled “Alt-Right News.” The article describes a female person of interest and calls her husband a “Trump-hating Rachel Maddow fan,” thanks to screenshots of a Facebook page.

Yet this information is incorrect. Initially, the police were looking for a woman potentially connected to the shooting, but she is no longer considered a suspect. All the same, right-wing sites like Gateway Pundit published articles without verified information, citing this woman’s husband’s Facebook page as proof of a left-wing agenda. Gateway Pundit has deleted the article, but examples–like this Blogspot–are still around sharing this fake news. And platforms like Facebook are promoting them. A website called “End Time Headlines” was also at the top of the Safety Check page, as were pictures of people fleeing the massacre.