July 31, 2018

"coordinated inauthentic behavior" — Isn't that the story of human life?

I'm reading "Facebook says it found new covert campaign to spread divisive political messages" (NBC):
Facebook said Tuesday that it had uncovered a new covert campaign to spread divisive political messages on its social network, its first acknowledgment of potential political meddling before this year’s midterm elections.

The company removed 32 pages and accounts from its platform and from Instagram “because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the company said in a statement. The pages and accounts were connected to protests planned in Washington next week, Facebook said.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said that the company could not identify the source of the campaign and that it was still looking into it.
This seems awfully bland! They want a pat on the head for rooting out "coordinated inauthentic behavior"? I think we're entitled to the freedom to be inauthentic and to coordinate. And to protest.

100 comments:

Jack O'Fire said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior" sounds like "Trump Derangement Syndrome"

Confused said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior" describes every left-wing astroturf protest movement of the last 20 years.

Kate said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Molly said...

As Trump tweeted a week ago: I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!"

From the examples printed by the Washington Post, it appears to me that Trump was correct in this assertion. These coordinated efforts were (by and large -- I can't claim to have read them all) to be virulently anti-Trump.

Jim at said...

All this mess because the 'wrong' candidate won in 2016.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

A campaign to spread divisive political messages???

OMG. This would be the first time evah!!! that such a thing has happened.

Doh. This has been going on since people first learned to talk and make fire.

John Borell said...

"The company removed 32 pages and accounts from its platform and from Instagram..."

32 accounts. All this over 32 sockpuppets? Is this all it takes to interfere with U.S. elections? 32 fake accounts? Seriously, the fucking Russians can fuck with our elections just by creating 32 fake accounts?

Why can't we just trust people to evaluate things on their own?

Uugh, I hate everything about all of this.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

FB finally took down the Coffee Party pages?

Jupiter said...

"I think we're entitled to the freedom to be inauthentic and to coordinate. And to protest."

Well, we are. Just not to use FB's resources to do it. But at some point, and I would say it is a point we have already passed, FB's censorship of certain political viewpoints becomes a contribution in kind to one or more political campaigns. And there are laws about that. There should not be, but there are.

Wince said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior."

It's interesting they used the word "behavior" rather than speech.

Ken B said...

32 pages? Sounds like an apocalypse averted.

Anthony said...

Isn't that. . . . convenient.

Bay Area Guy said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior" is now a bad thing?

Jeez -- how many fucking tupper ware parties of my wife's friends did I have to attend.

MadisonMan said...

Facebook can do what they want. I think everyone knows this. If I don't like it, I can skip Facebook altogether.

Darrell said...

Facebook was running their own campaign to get Hillary into office. I only received targeted Hillary ads--never pro-Trump messages.

Explain that, husband-killer Sheryl Sandberg. . .

Ann Althouse said...

“Well, we are. Just not to use FB's resources to do it”

I’m not saying we have a legal right to assert against Facebook, only that I don’t agree with the values that seem to want to be admired for following. They are under pressure to repress free speech so it is important to apply pressure in the other direction too. They’re mostly just trying to be a successful business and they are responsive to pressure.

Narayanan said...

Why not "out"out them.
For now it's only their claim without proof.

n.n said...

Coordinated behavior is a dime a dozen. However, who are the arbiters of inauthentic, the gatekeepers of the First and Fourteenth Amendments? Is it the Press? The diversity racket? The social activists? Foreign agents in Mexico, Britain, etc?

wildswan said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior."

The Kardashian family. I've always thought that.

n.n said...

How many unique humans and bots were witness to the campaign?

Darrell said...

Sandberg's story about what happened in Mexico changed each time I read it, as the weeks went by. I guess no one is curious when a Lefty is involved. Especially a Lefty billionaire,

zefal said...

Someone found the democrats’ playbook?

Paddy O said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior"

When I DVR something, I usually skip past the coordinated inauthentic behavior. I also have a coordinated inauthentic behavior blocker on my browser, so I tend not to see the coordinated inauthentic behaviors.

Which makes me wonder how authentic Facebook's behavior is. Can it block itself in a ruthless attempt to uncoordinate inauthentic behavior? I mean, like my friends are always happy and on vacation and go out to good restaurants.

Paddy O said...

Whenever I see ads on Facebook (like when I'm using my phone) I always flag ads as being fake news.

Darrell said...

If Zucky had declined Obama's pleas to look again after he had proclaimed that FB didn't find any suspicious activity prior to the election, he'd be $100 billion richer today. The Left proclaimed FB the enemy.

Sebastian said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior"

Is Hillary still campaigning?

Francisco D said...

Isn't politics by its nature, divisive and inauthentic?

Color me cynical.

Mike Sylwester said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PM said...

CIB is the mental parsec. It's the greatest distance the mind has to travel to go from Hillary to Trump or vice-versa.

Mike Sylwester said...

I'm still on Facebook, mostly for the purpose of crowing occasionally and divisively about Donald Trump's election to US President. I never get tired of doing so.

All my relatives on Facebook hate Trump, and I enjoy tormenting them about him.

I think I have been unfriended by all of my family, but I still enjoy writing my divisive posts.

My continuing purpose on Facebook is just to be divisive.

tim in vermont said...

What I am most upset about is missing the belly laugh I would have got if the Hillary wrestling Jesus ad had come up.

Hagar said...

Calling Chuck, Inga, Ritmo ...

WisRich said...

So how many views did they get? Likes? Exactly how much money did they spend?

Details seem to be sparse, making it seem big and scary.

Darrell said...

Calling Chuck, Inga, Ritmo ...

Or their coordinated inauthentic behavior sockpuppets.

buwaya said...

I'm not sure who declared Facebook and Twitter the enemy.
Their collapse last week was concurrent. Even worse for Twitter really, it was about a 25% loss.

They are listed separately and their ownership does not seem to have overlapped.

Alphabet (Google) and Apple too, but no way as much. In their case it just wiped out a strong runup from the week before. Maybe they were just along for the ride in the industry category.

Something happened last week that is not obvious.

Rick said...

"Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" reminds me of the 20 or so newspaper who ran the same "reader letter" word for word. The outrage brigade share the same one because they're too lazy to even edit the talking points.

I think we're entitled to the freedom to be inauthentic and to coordinate. And to protest.

Sure. And as soon as the left realizes the right can hold them to any definition they come up withe they will stop this nonsense. But first they're going to keep everything confidential so they can protect the left from enforcement as long as they can.

Yancey Ward said...

What were the protests supposed to be protesting? I have my suspicions about how they lean politically.

WisRich said...

Hold on a sec. Don't liberals consider conservatives and Republicans "inauthentic" ?

Comanche Voter said...

Coordinated inauthentic behavior? Heck those clowns at Facebook have never been through a sorority rush party, and they sure haven't watched the four runnerups crowding around the New Miss America or whatever. Heck I've even managed to be pleasant to my feckless, worthless nephew---before he went too far in insulting another guest, and I forbade him my house.

And of course they never heard of Journolist--and they never had an old drill sarge from Broken Arrow Oklahoma making dang sure that his basic training company "coordinated" their behavior.

You'd think the mothers of these little snowflakes sheltered them from the real world.

Darrell said...

Bullwinkle is a D O P E.

Not that lesson, this lesson.

We learned all the tricks when we were five. We won't be fooled again.

rhhardin said...

Theoror Adorno _The Jargon of Authenticity_

PB said...

Coordinated inauthentic behavior seems stock in trade for a politician.

Vance said...

So what, exactly, is a "divisive political message?" And why is spreading that wrong? And who determined what makes a political message divisive?

I'm pretty sure it means "disagreement with the left" is divisive while promoting theories of assassinating Trump is not divisive.

I'm sure Facebook's content people are like Inga, who took a full year to decide that shooting Republicans is not a good thing. Meanwhile, you are a racist if you disagree with Obama, naturally. On any thing. Unless you disagree from the left--that's ok.

Virgil Hilts said...

From Mirrian-Webster:
Definition of Journolist
1 : group of several hundreds of "journalists" who operate as a public relations arm of the Democratic Party in the United States, typified by coordinated inauthentic behavior such as shared talking points, coordinated and inauthentic spin of any embarrassing story involving the Democratic Party, and coordinated and inauthentic behavioral attacks on the Republican Party and anyone deemed to be on the "right," with the primary purpose of moving the Overton window sharply to the left.
b : (un-capitalized) a so-called writer who pretends to be an independent journalist but who is actually a member of the Journolist.

rehajm said...

When the coordinated inauthentic behavior didn't work we moved on to the insurance policy. Apparently the policy includes Facebook coordinating discovery of coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Darrell said...


Charlie Kirk

@charliekirk11
· 30 Jul
Did you know:

There are thirty-nine fewer staffers dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) than under Obama

There are only five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. forty-four staffers who served Michelle Obama

Mark Roberts

@RobertsforCD2

US House candidate, OR-2
Did you know the First Lady works by the hour? #thinkdirty #hoebag
12:04 PM - Jul 30, 2018

roesch/voltaire said...

DHS Nielsen appeared on Fox News's "The Daily Briefing," where she said the latest use of social media to sow discord illustrates the "very real" threat to American election security.
It is not PC to say Russia so we settle for this?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

There is already work going on to develop open source peer-to-peer social networking software, but I think they are approaching the problem incorrectly. Instead of trying to come up with the code first, they should create a protocol. They need an IETF RFC. Once that is done then the code will follow. There are dozens of mail programs, but they all understand and follow the SMTP protocol.

Fernandinande said...

potential political meddling

LOL. Potential scary Facebook posts, yikes! Yikes I say!

divisive political messages

I feel like I'm back in kindergarten and someone might be writing a naughty word on the blackboard.

inauthentic behavior

Some deplorable wreckers are hoarding again?!?!

Bilwick said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior" makes me think of the Legion of Yuppie Clones I my neighborhood.

Darrell said...

We never had discord in an election before.
We need that vote-counting software that keeps Hillary 50 points ahead all the way through.

narciso said...

So anything that came via fusion, crowdstrike, haklyut, (that would be downer), mifsud, halper are not fakenews,

buwaya said...

"the latest use of social media to sow discord"

The continuous use of the educational system to sow discord over the last half-century was apparently deemed insufficient.

gadfly said...

Rush doesn't believe Zuckerberg or Republican Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein or Republican Special Counsel Robert Mueller but he believes the biggest liar on the planet screaming "No collusion."

RUSH: Now look at this. Facebook says that they have discovered attempts to monkey around with their systems that are similar to what the Russians did in 2016. This is an absolute crock! I don’t believe it for a minute! Facebook had the bottom fall out earlier this week. This is so transparent, it’s sickening!

Facebook wants their customers back, Rush. So they are reporting that they are looking for hackers and Mueller has kept his mouth shut and isn't telling anybody what he has discovered. He has been totally consistent unlike the myriad of Trump and Giuliani lies that change the story daily until new polls beget newer lies

So today Rush attacks Facebook but on July 26 he offers his help to fix the social media giant (now if that is Trumpian, nothing is!)

So my offer… I know that Zuckerberg has had meetings with several so-called conservatives. But he hasn’t met with me, and I am offering right here. I will meet with Zuckerberg or anybody on the Facebook executive panel and explain conservatism to them. Now, they will not take me up on it. They will not even acknowledge that the offer has been made. I understand that. But it’s ridiculous. It is literally ridiculous to have an enterprise this big run by people who are so ignorant.

Sadly, Rush has forgotten how to be a conservative, so he is no longer the guy to teach conservatism.period.

madAsHell said...

It's interesting they used the word "behavior" rather than speech.

I would have loved being a fly-on-the-wall, and watched this phrase evolve as the midnight oil burned.

narciso said...

about this Roberts guy,

https://twitter.com/ThomasWictor/status/1024059633407680513

gadfly said...

Oops , I made a presidential mistake omitting a double negative in describing Rush acting like Trump.

Fernandinande said...

Inauthentic AND very busy.

Darrell said...

I remember when our behavior was sustainable and locally sourced.

narciso said...

in other news:


https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1024383353003360258

MPH said...

The Facebook pages were created by the Russian GRU.

Drago said...

Gadfly, this is not an appropriate forum for you to be sending your love notes to LLR Chuck.

Seeing Red said...

Who comes up with these terms?

walter said...

gadfly said...Sadly, Rush has forgotten how to be a conservative, so he is no longer the guy to teach conservatism.period.
--
Hear that Rush? Gadfly gonna learn ya all bout it.
With clean hands!

Chuck said...



Hagar said...
Calling Chuck, Inga, Ritmo ...
7/31/18, 4:10 PM

...
Darrell said...
Calling Chuck, Inga, Ritmo ...

Or their coordinated inauthentic behavior sockpuppets.
7/31/18, 4:14 PM

...
Drago said...
Gadfly, this is not an appropriate forum for you to be sending your love notes to LLR Chuck.
7/31/18, 5:12 PM


I hadn't posted a single comment, to prompt any one of those obsessive personal attacks.

There's your clutter, Althouse. Yours. Your commenters' clutter. On your comments pages. Own it.

As for whether there is a right to "coordinated inauthentic behavior" for purposes of "protest," I suspect that the First Amendment might rightly protect it. Protect it, that is, from state action. Protected from government-sponsored and government-enacted censorship, removal, or prior restraint. But does Facebook have to allow "coordinated inauthentic behavior"? Why can't Facebook act like the Althouse blog and host, or not host, any speech that they like, based on their own rules? Why can't they ignore their rules at will, the way that Althouse ignored her "don't make personal attacks" rule before simply abandoning it?

dreams said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior"

Yeah, Trump calls that fake news.

narciso said...

how much have you heard of this:


https://babalublog.com/2018/07/31/remember-four-dead-in-ohio-now-its-four-hundred-fifty-dead-in-nicaragua-so-where-have-all-the-flower-children-gone-especially-sandinista-groupie-john-kerry/

walter said...

Chuck,
Why so spaced out? Sticky enter key?

narciso said...

this is one of the grishenko ads, Shirley:

https://twitter.com/DanielLMcAdams/status/1024425011103387651

Francisco D said...

"There's your clutter, Althouse. Yours. Your commenters' clutter. On your comments pages. Own it."

Get a grip, Chuckles.

Althouse is not the professor who flunked you out of law school. If I recall correctly, you were enrolled in a correspondence course. N'est-ce pas?

Meade,

I trust in your self-defense skills, but watch your boiling bunnies on your stove. He is losing it.

Francisco D said...

your = for

autocorrect and incompetent typing is a curse.

Darkisland said...

Poor Chuck.

John Henry

buwaya said...

Good point narciso.

Its the nastiest immediate problem in Latin America and its likely to get much worse.
Venezuela is much larger and on the edge, but Nicaragua has fallen over the edge.

And yes it is extremely inconvenient to all sorts of old 80's leftists - the "sandalistas". The Sandinistas were as bad or worse than the dictator they overthrew, and here they are, proving it again.

narciso said...

westworld looks very genuine compared to cnn:

http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/31/hannity-cnn-shark-week/

Fandor said...

Wow! Facebook protecting the Constitution and our Bill of Rights! Go, Zuckerberg!

buwaya said...

"https://twitter.com/DanielLMcAdams/status/1024425011103387651"

Sounds a lot like my daughters high-school friends feminist poetry.
They had piles and piles of feminist poetry. Some of it good.
If you want tons of of this stuff (hint, Russians, or Serbians, or whatever) I suggest, well, a US high school.

narciso said...

Nicaragua was 1/50th of our population, so that would be about 21000, in our terms,

Fandor said...

Hey, Obama and Biden ate lunch together and had ham sandwiches yesterday. Awesome!

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Hillary was authentic.

stevew said...

Where's the harm? Who believes this stuff? It's a friggin' message board with no proven authority or authenticity. Yawn.

-sw

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

practice random acts of authenticity

Darrell said...

Chuck squealed...
I hadn't posted a single comment, to prompt any one of those obsessive personal attacks.


Your reputation and commenting history proceed you.
Don't worry. It will stop six months after we see a death notice.

Bob Boyd said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior"

Isn't that pretty much the definition of electoral politics?

walter said...

"Coordinated inauthentic behavior" aptly describes the dossier/FISA mess.
Since seeing it himself, Nunes feels the public needs to see the redacted portions of the application(s) before Novemember.
No reason, I'm sure.

Bob Boyd said...

"coordinated inauthentic behavior"

Moby Clique

Lewis Wetzel said...

Unregulated, coordinated political speech on the internet. The American internet!
This is a crisis of lilliputian proportions!

Mike Sylwester said...

When I joined Facebook, I thought it was divisive that there were two similar games -- FarmVille and YoVille.

John Pickering said...

Here Ann's ingenuity, or seeming endorsement, regarding what the complaint says about the coordinated telling of lies, puts her squarely in the propagandist set, ready to take her chances. She doesn't care if what she's told are lies in the service of fraud and betrayal.

That's why Ann and her readers think the Clintons are billionaire international criminals and traitors, and believe Trump to be a clownish but honest and sincere broker of his version of American ideals. Or, they think Rudy is about the best lawyer the president can have, and Mueller is a bumbling fool. Lots of things like that. Someone's wrong. In the meantime, Ann says she's agnostic.

Darrell said...

John Pickering as as concerned about Althouse's immortal soul as Chuck is.
Strange.

Darrell said...

*is*

Jon Ericson said...

I see some "coordinated inauthentic behavior" in this comment section.

Michael said...

Anyone whose vote is influenced by anything she reads on Facebook should be disenfranchised.

Darrell said...

This is the kind of stuff you see on Facebook.

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11112/111120741/5003759-624_1000.gif

Leora said...

It seems to me this is an excellent way for Sandberg to shut down the crazy left demonstrators that will get the Normals out to vote R to protect themselves. Also corporate points for shutting down some leftie sites to use to claim they aren't discriminating against conservatives.

If Facebook shut down all coordinated inauthentic pages, where would their advertising revenue come from?

Lewis Wetzel said...

That's why Ann and her readers think the Clintons are billionaire international criminals and traitors, and believe Trump to be a clownish but honest and sincere broker of his version of American ideals. Or, they think Rudy is about the best lawyer the president can have, and Mueller is a bumbling fool.
I don't think that any commenter here believes this. I know that I don't. I haven't ever heard of or met a conservative who believes anything like this.

Conservative mainstream, pro-trump rhetoric is more like: "The Clintons are unprincipled, corrupt political hacks, Trump is a buffoon and an unprincpled conservative, but right now he is actually fighting for the things previous GOP presidents had claimed to believe in, but had not been willing to fight for, Rudy is whatever rudy is and Mueller is a man who in the past has not allowed lack of evidence to keep him from pursuing and indicting innocent people."

RichardJohnson said...

narciso, John Kerry's making nice with Daniel Ortega prompted me to vote Republican for the first time. It wasn't difficult to find out that the Sandinistas were fanboys of Soviet imperialism. Carlos Fonseca, one of the 6 founders of the FSLN, wrote about his visit to a youth congress in 1957 in Un nicaragüense en Moscú, where he parroted the Soviet line that "Fascists" were behind the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Then there is the joint proclamation the FSLN signed with the CPSU in March 1980, endorsing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.Nicaraguan Biographies/Cadre.

HASSAN Morales, Moises..... With FSLN comandantes Tomas Borge, Henry Ruiz, and Humberto Ortega, Hassan attended the March 1980 signing of the party-to-party agreement between the FSLN and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow. Signed less than 3 months after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the joint public statement read in part: "The Soviet Union and Nicaragua resolutely condemn the campaign that the imperialist and reactionary forces have launched of building up international tension in connection with the events of Afghanistan, a campaign aimed at subverting the inalienable right of the people of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and other peoples of the world to follow the path of progressive transformation."

No surprise the Sandinistas, who shot their way to power, would also shoot to stay in power.

FIDO said...

A butcher whose business fails because he put his thumb on the scale never seems to blame his thumb.

FIDO said...

That's why Ann and her readers think the Clintons are billionaire international criminals and traitors, and believe Trump to be a clownish but honest and sincere broker of his version of American ideals. Or, they think Rudy is about the best lawyer the president can have, and Mueller is a bumbling fool. Lots of things like that. Someone's wrong. In the meantime, Ann says she's agnostic.


No. Conservatives feel that Trump is a corrupt lying narcissist. BUT he is legislating far more Conservatively than Paul Ryan at this time AND he is actually FIGHTING the culture war instead of quivering in defeat.


Just like Democrats KNOW, they KNOW in their heart of hearts that Hillary is as fake as a three dollar bill. She'd steal candy from the mouth of a baby if it gained her a single 'candy stealing' vote from core Democratic voters. She happily took Russian money, stole Haitian money, and women abusing Chinese and Saudi money...because Hillary Clinton cares about Hillary Clinton.

But she does Democrat things AS she steals so they don't care about her morals either.

Bad Lieutenant said...

narciso said...
about this Roberts guy,

https://twitter.com/ThomasWictor/status/1024059633407680513

7/31/18, 4:52 PM


Hmm. Snake oil supplements. Thailand. Man crush on Hogg. Creepy photos. Oregon. A picture emerges.

Shakespeare said "there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face," but I think that if the technology for limitless images and their distribution, ie digital photography and the Internet, had existed in 1500, he might feel differently.

Critter said...

The push to censor content on the internet will not end well. It is simply an extension of the Progressive policy of Repressive Tolerance as expressed by one of their guiding lights - Herbert Marcuse:

I suggested in 'Repressive Tolerance' the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side', I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.

http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/65repressivetolerance.htm