大约一个月前，《****》披露，Facebook内部有一个专门用于对抗选举干扰的会议室。但这不是一个普通的会议室。。。这是一间作战室。当时正在建设中的“战争室”承诺为Facebook在全世界打击选举干扰的所有努力提供一个中心。当时，我提到，如果有机会，我愿意参观作战室。

读者，是的。

周三早上，我和几十名左右的其他记者一起来到了位于门罗公园的Facebook总部，在介绍了战争室的用途后，我把头探了进去：

On one hand, the war room is just one of many conference rooms in MPK 20, the company’s Menlo Park, CA headquarters. But it’s larger than average, and has been stuffed with people and electronics equipment. There are desks for 24 people, and the room is ringed with 17 screens, each of which highlights a different stream of information Facebook is monitoring.

Employees look for suspicious spikes in spam and hate speech, in some cases using custom software built for the purpose. They look for efforts at voter suppression, such as falsely telling people that lines are long or that the election has been delayed. (The team recently uncovered one such hoax claiming that the Brazilian election date had been delayed a day due to protests, and swiftly removed the offending posts.)

我希望在我实际访问战争室的过程中，会出现一些与选举有关的戏剧——比如说，一条热门的假新闻同时在每个人的屏幕上爆炸——但没有一个这样做。对于一个作战室来说，它是和平的。每个没有盯着屏幕的人都在安静地说话，尽管他们可能只是不想让我无意中听到他们在谈论战争。

无论如何，我们都写下了自己的故事，一些没有被邀请到战争室的媒体对我们议论纷纷，把我们对会议室的报道说成是Facebook公共关系部门的一大胜利。就我个人而言，我认为亲自去看看这个房间，问几个问题，告诉读者Facebook在那里做什么是值得的(简言之：将团队领导紧密联系在一起，以提高关键时刻的决策速度。）

正如我在我的故事中所指出的，战争室被美国和巴西国旗覆盖，以反映两次最紧迫的全球选举。但是，如果说美国的选举干预方面相对平静，那么巴西的情况就相当严重。

问题当然是WhatsApp。当我们欣赏国旗时，巴西报纸Folha公布了一项调查，显示媒体公司正在购买大量电话号码，并在加密的短信应用程序上进行反左翼宣传。虽然WhatsApp经常被当作聊天应用来讨论，但它具有消息转发机制，可以去除发送者的身份，并允许消息以病毒方式传播，几乎不需要承担任何责任。

以下是BuzzFeed的Ryan Broderick关于该计划的介绍：

Media firms that supported far-right frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro used Bolsonaro’s supporter database, as well as third-party databases of phone numbers. Some of these agencies were even offering a breakdown of location and income level. The firms then used a service called “mass shooting” to tran**it thousands of messages.

Folha alleges that some of these firms purchased contracts for up to 12 million reais ($3.2 million USD). Not only is this an abuse of WhatsApp, it is illegal to do this in Brazil. Companies are forbidden from donating to political campaigns, and they are not allowed to procure a candidate’s supporter database.

While it’s impossible to know — seemingly even for WhatsApp’s moderators — what’s going on inside a private conversation or group — it is possible to monitor public groups. A WhatsApp monitor built by local fact-checking group Eleições Sem Fake shows that the platform is just as full of misinformation as Facebook.

让这一计划阴险的是，目前尚不清楚Facebook战争室中的许多屏幕是否能够捕捉Folha描述的活动。错误信息在一个几乎包括Facebook在内的所有人都看不到的平台上以病毒方式传播。

关于Facebook如何让WhatsApp宣传艺术家的生活更艰难，有很多好的想法。在本周《****》发表的一篇专栏文章中，巴西研究人员克里斯蒂娜·塔尔达拉、法布里西奥·贝内维努托和巴勃罗·奥尔泰拉多提出了三个想法：将一条消息的转发次数从20次限制到5次，Facebook在印度已经做到了这一点；大大减少了用户可以发送单个消息的人数，目前限制为256人；并限制选举前几周新成立的组织的规模，以期阻止新的病毒性错误信息暴徒的形成。

我的想法是，应用程序应该能够进行端到端加密，或者病毒共享机制，但不能两者兼而有之。如果暴民要组织民主选举，一般来说应该在显而易见的地方，我们可以看到谁拿着扩音器。我不会拿Facebook的战争室开玩笑，不管它的表现多么戏剧化，因为我认为不同的团队肩并肩坐在一起分享他们的知识是有价值的。但我怀疑这些团队会得出结论，他们在WhatsApp的同事由于故意不作为，正在破坏他们的努力。

民主

Facebook对巴西大选的战地反应感到“高兴”

莎拉·弗里尔（Sarah Frier）和大卫·比勒（David Biller）对比了Facebook高管们的评论，他们“很高兴”能够用巴西人的话迅速处理错误信息(他们说问题在于WhatsApp。）

Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy at the University of Sao Paulo who has studied fake news, said Facebook has made good strides, but isn’t addressing the full scale of the problem. And he thinks the company’s efforts still won’t be enough to tame WhatsApp, where Facebook doesn’t have visibility into exactly what’s being shared.

“All the malicious stuff of the campaigns went through WhatsApp, that’s the problem,” he said in an interview. “Really, that was one of the disasters of this election.”

巴西选举法庭加强假新闻斗争决选迫在眉睫

在其他地方，Biller写到巴西最高**正在采取什么措施来遏制假新闻：

The court known as TSE launched an official website to debunk social media posts challenging the vote’s legitimacy, and has held two video conferences with executives from California-based messaging app WhatsApp, widely used in Brazil. TSE President Rosa Weber was also scheduled to address the issue in a Wednesday meeting with representatives for the candidates, far-right front-runner Jair Bolsonaro and leftist Fernando Haddad, according to the court’s press office.

Facebook发现黑客是垃圾邮件发送者，而不是外国**

罗伯特·麦克米兰（Robert McMillan）和迪帕·西塔拉曼（Deepa Seetharaman）周三晚些时候报告称，Facebook已初步认定其大数据泄露并非外国**所为：

Facebook Inc. believes that the hackers who gained access to the private information of 30 million of its users were spammers looking to make money through deceptive advertising, according to people familiar with the company’s internal investigation.

The preliminary findings suggest that the hackers weren’t affiliated with a nation-state, the people said.

Facebook将非裔美国人、西班牙裔、墨西哥裔广告贴上政治标签

杰西卡·盖恩（Jessica Guynn）在Facebook上发现了几十个提到西班牙裔传统月或“墨西哥”一词的广告，这些广告被标记为“政治”并被屏蔽（因为页面管理员没有注册为政治广告商）。我自己也听到了很多类似这样的轶事故事：

Dozens of advertisements removed from Facebook for being political ahead of the November midterm electi*** did not appear to express any political view, a USA TODAY ****ysis showed. The Facebook ads from businesses, universities, nonprofits and other organizati*** did seem to have something in common: They mentioned “African-American,” “Latino,” “Hispanic,” “Mexican,” “women,” “LGBT” or were written in Spanish.

Even offers of free delivery from Chipotle Mexican Grill were mislabeled as political until an inquiry from USA TODAY. Laurie Schalow, the restaurant chain’s chief communicati*** officer, said Facebook “corrected the error” after being alerted.

在Facebook打击虚假新闻的努力中，人类事实核查人员努力跟上

乔治亚·威尔斯和卢卡斯一世。阿尔伯特报告说，Facebook的合作伙伴FactCheck.org每天揭露的故事不到一个(在故事的其他地方，像《华尔街日报》的作者彼得W。辛格在接受《华尔街日报》采访时表示，将事实核查员带到Facebook“就像带着勺子清理养猪场一样。”）

Out of Factcheck’s full-time staff of eight people, two focus specifically on Facebook. On average, they debunk less than one Facebook post a day. Some of the other third-party groups reported similar volumes. None of the organizati*** said they had received special instructi*** from Facebook ahead of the midterms, or perceived a sense of heightened urgency.

ABC News, which was part of the fact-checking effort when it began early last year, has dropped out. “We did a review, and we couldn’t tell if it was really making any difference; so we decided to reallocate the resources,” said a person familiar with ABC’s decision.

推特问题：共和党人和民主党人在相互阅读时更加两极分化

我们是否因为只和我们一样的人在网上闲逛而变得更加两极分化？还是因为我们经常在网上暴露在*****面前？埃兹拉·克莱因（Ezra Klein）在一篇论文（我在第一次发表时提到过）中指出，后一种解释更具说服力：

“Republican” is an identity. “Democrat” is an identity. When you log on to Twitter and read someone attacking the people you admire, the people you ally with, the people you see as your group, you become defensive of your side and angry at the critics.

One problem in all this is that most political media isn’t designed for persuasion. Some is, of course — Ross Douthat’s column at the New York Times is a soft c***ervative trying to persuade a liberal audience, for instance — but most opinionated political media is written for the side that already agrees with the author. Similarly, most partisan elected officials are tweeting to their supporters, who follow them and fundraise for them, rather than to their critics, who don’t.

谁将赢得社交媒体中期选举？

凯文·鲁斯（Kevin Roose）和基思·柯林斯（Keith Collins）分析了数百名中期选举候选人在Facebook和Instagram上的互动次数。他们发现民主党人在参众两院选举中处于领先地位，而在参议院选举中处于劣势：

Together, the data amounts to a revealing picture of how those candidates’ messages are resonating with a digital audience, and how social media activity both mirrors and departs from more traditional polling methods.

It also shows that Democrats often dominate the conversation on Instagram, but Republican candidates are finding their biggest audiences on Facebook, the largest and most influential social network.

在反对黑客攻击的民主党内部

埃里克·盖勒（Eric Geller）介绍了民主党全国委员会为防止2016年的另一次黑客攻击所做的工作：

The Democratic National Committee has spent 14 months staffing up with tech talent from Silicon Valley, training staff to spot suspicious emails and giving the FBI someone to talk to if it spots signs of hackers targeting the party.

The first concrete sign of success may come in a few weeks, if the Democrats make it through the November midterm electi*** unscathed. But Raffi Krikorian, the DNC’s chief technology officer, is already pointing to one significant accomplishment — what he calls a massive overhaul of digital security at the committee and its sister organizati***.

在别处

推特不会因为路易斯·法拉坎（Louis Farrakhan）将犹太人比作昆虫的推特而暂停使用

推特做出了一个极端的决定，推特决定在今年晚些时候新规则生效之前，你可以把犹太人比作昆虫。

为什么Instagram不能让任何人关心IGTV？

麦迪逊·马龙·基什内尔（Madison Malone Kirchner）是最新一位注意到IGTV启动缓慢的人(她还与一群青少年谈论他们为什么没有使用它。）

It appears, though, that the very creators Instagram promised users would anchor IGTV haven’t even bothered to put in a good-faith effort to get those views. Lauren Riihimaki a.k.a. LaurDIY has just two IGTV videos posted to her channel. One is a three minute “Target haul” — haul is vlogger talk for a video showing off everything you bought on a shopping trip and describing it in excruciating detail — and the other is a 56-second stop-motion clip of Riihimaki walking around Los Angeles. Both were posted on June 20, the same day IGTV launched. JiffPom the dog doesn’t have any IGTV videos posted at present. If creators aren’t creating on the platform, then it only makes sense that users aren’t, well, using it. There’s nothing to watch.

一个被俄罗斯巨魔使用的僵尸网络还在Twitter上休眠，它推广了塔可钟和科切拉

Twitter本周发布了关于平台上俄罗斯巨魔的新信息，Jane Lytvynenko写道，一个僵尸网络睡眠者**藏在显眼的地方：

Jonathon Morgan, the CEO of New Knowledge, a security company that monitors social media misinformation and online influence operati***, told BuzzFeed News that his software identified strange phrases used by some of the IRA accounts released by Twitter. They appeared to be more promotional than political.

“Free Lunch for a Year at Taco Bell,” some accounts posted. “FREE pass to the 2013 Coachella Music Festival!” others tweeted.

Shane Dawson的Jake Paul系列实际上是关于YouTube的心碎

Patricia Hernandez观看了Shane Dawson关于Jake Paul的系列剧，发现这实际上是关于YouTuber与平台激励的较量：

This is not a series about cracking Jake Paul or rehabilitating him — not really. This is Shane Dawson staring into the abyss, knowing full well that he’ll find something familiar lurking in the shadows. Maybe all YouTubers do, on some level. “No matter what somebody thinks about your videos or whatever, everyone can agree how much work it is … having to come up with the craziest shit every time,” Shane says to Jake Paul at one point during the series.

Jake agrees, saying that he feels like he has to top himself with every subsequent upload. “I think that’s where a lot of madness and craziness comes in,” Paul says. This sentiment — the idea that you have to keep going, that the next thing always has to be bigger and better — is at the heart of why so many YouTubers end up feeling burned out.

我把Del.icio.us卖给雅虎是不是犯了错误？

Del.icio.us首席执行官约书亚·沙赫特（Joshua Schachter）反思了将自己钟爱的社交书签网站**给雅虎的事。

Once we were acquired, Yahoo helped us on the tech side, but not as much as it said it would. I think this is common for acquisiti***. Before you’re acquired, you’re an important visionary. Afterward, you’re a crazy person who just wants to burn money.

Any decision was an endless discussion. I remember once, we had to present to a senior vice-president. We had a 105-slide deck prepared, and we didn’t get past the second slide because they rattled on about one ****ing slide. It was a miserable environment.

发射

避开应用商店，Facebook Lite和群组获得即时游戏

据Josh Contine报道，Facebook正在使用HTML5在更多地方推出游戏。对我来说，Facebook上的游戏以Scrabulous开始和结束。Scrabulous真的很有趣！遗憾的是，这完全是非法的。

Facebook正在把MTV的真实世界带回来

Facebook Watch目前还没有什么突破，但现实世界至少是一个可识别的名字，可能会让千禧一代停止滚动并观看几秒钟。

拿

计算机宣传

Renee DiResta写了一篇冗长、冷静、令人不安的文章，讲述了我们如何在信息生态系统中获得如此多的信任：

These technologies will continue to evolve: disinformation campaign content will soon include manufactured video and audio. We can see it coming but are not equipped to prevent it. What will happen when video makes us distrust what we see with our own eyes? If democracy is predicated on an informed citizenry, then the increasing pervasiveness of computational propaganda is a fundamental problem. Through a series of unintended c***equences, algorithms have inadvertently become the invisible rulers that control the destinies of milli***. Now we have to decide what we are going to do about that.

推特误导研究者的障碍

卡拉·阿莱莫说，推特为防止滥用该平台所做的努力使研究滥用该平台的研究人员感到非常困难：

Justin Littman, a software developer at Stanford University Libraries, explained that researchers with advanced software skills used to be able to sign up to write their own software and get the data they needed from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API). In July, the company announced that researchers would have to first request access to the API for such projects order to prevent malicious use of the application. The company also limits how data sets obtained this way can be shared. Users who sign up to use the developer platform also have to agree to Twitter’s policies. One of these imposes restricti*** on studying a range of subjects, including political beliefs and racial and religious topics.

It’s great that Twitter is trying to prevent its data from being used for nefarious purposes, such as interfering in electi***. But it’s disturbing that the company requires researchers using their API to agree to policies that include restricti*** on studying topics like identity politics. A Twitter spokesperson pointed out that access to the basic API is free, but Littman noted that it only provides historical tweets going back a few days. That’s unhelpful for many academics whose studies have longer time frames.

最后。。。

Facebook为向失去亲人的母亲播放育儿广告道歉

对于由广告资助的技术平台，有两种基本观点。一是机器学习的兴起和数据收集技术的改进创造了一个反乌托邦的全景图，在这个全景图中，我们所有人都成了晚期****的无助卒子。另一种观点认为，机器学习的兴起和数据收集技术的改进创造了一个反乌托邦的全景，其中人工智能尚未正常工作，导致人们在技术平台微调广告目标时遭受不必要的痛苦。

以下是后一种观点的展示：

Anna England-Kerr said that after sharing the news on the social network, she continued to see ads for cots, baby blankets and bottles, and more recently IVF treatments, despite changing settings on Facebook that should have blocked such appearances.

“The onus should really be on Facebook to fix this, and not on bereaved parents to remove themselves from social spaces that help them deal with their grief,” England-Kerr said in an interview.

*点头*

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