Vero and the pop-up restaurant theory of social networks

The head of U.S. Cyber Command warned lawmakers that penalties and other measures have not “changed the calculus or the behavior” of Russia as it seeks to interfere with this year’s midterm elections.

“We’re taking steps, but we’re probably not doing enough,” Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who also directs the National Security Agency, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Russian President Vladimir Putin, he added, “has clearly come to the conclusion that ‘there’s little price to pay here and therefore I can continue this activity.’ ”

Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.”

The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan of attack: Use details gleaned from news reports and other sources to push false information about one of America’s deadliest school shootings.

People outraged by the conspiracy helped to promote it—in some cases far more than the supporters of the story. And algorithms—apparently absent the necessary “sentiment sensitivity” that is needed to tell the context of a piece of content and assess whether it is being shared positively or negatively—see all that noise the same.

This unintended amplification created by outrage-sharing may have helped put the conspiracy in front of more unsuspecting people. This analysis looks at how one story of the crisis actor conspiracy—the claim that David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was a fraud because he had been coached by his father—gained amplification from both its supporters and its opponents.

YouTube’s new moderators, brought in to spot fake, misleading and extreme videos, stumbled in one of their first major tests, mistakenly removing some clips and channels in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control.

After days of external pressure, YouTube has banned the channel of Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group tied to multiple killings. As Motherboard reported today, both Atomwaffen’s primary and backup YouTube channels have been banned for “multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy prohibiting hate speech,” according to a site message. The Daily Beast previously reported that YouTube planned to keep the videos online, simply demonetizing them and adding a warning about offensive content.

Atomwaffen Division, The Right Server, Nordic Resistance Movement, Iron March and European Domas are just some of the servers that were shut down recently as part of Discord’s attempt to purge its platform of hateful content.

“Discord has a Terms of Service (ToS) and Community Guidelines that we ask all of our communities and users to adhere to,” a Discord representative told Polygon. “These specifically prohibit harassment, threatening messages, or calls to violence. Though we do not read people’s private messages, we do investigate and take immediate appropriate action against any reported ToS violation by a server or user. There were a handful of servers that violated these ToS recently and were swiftly removed from the platform.”

When asked whether social media does more to help promote democracy and free speech or does more to hurt democracy and free speech, most Americans (55%) now say social media does more to hurt democracy and free speech than it helps.

British fact-checking charity Full Fact has developed a tool that automatically scans media and Parliament transcripts for claims and matches them against existing fact checks. The Duke Reporters’ Lab and Chequeado have both built similar tools that scan media transcripts for checkable claims, later notifying fact-checkers to potential fact checks.

There are policy experts from tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter, who at one point or another have weighed in on the net neutrality debate but whose fortunes in Washington have worsened as the political winds have shifted against them over the past year. And there are consumer groups, such as Free Press and Public Knowledge, who have waged a grass-roots campaign to keep the FCC from letting Internet providers block or slow websites. Participants of this group spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to shed light on the closed-door gathering.

“It’s getting worse. Since the 2016 election what I’ve come to the realization — horribly, and it’s very depressing — that nothing has gotten better, despite all the rhetoric, all of the money, all of the PR, all of the research. Nothing has really changed with the platforms,” Albright told me. “We’re basically yelling about Russia right now when our technological and communication infrastructure — the ways that we experience reality, the ways we get news — are literally disintegrating around us.”

There “could be some implication on DAUs (daily active users)” because of the coming regulations, Wehner told investors at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference. Investors “may want to watch that,” Wehner said.

The new rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, will take effect in two months. They will require internet companies to get permission from users before collecting or sharing their personal data. 

Facebook Inc. said it found no more activity from Russian accounts using its advertising in the U.K. to influence a 2016 vote to leave the European Union, after it was asked by lawmakers to probe more deeply.

In January 2018, 52 percent of the examined U.S. publishers aired a Facebook Live broadcast, down from a high of 63 percent in November 2016. Similarly, the total number of monthly live videos these publishers posted is down from its peak of more than 21,000 in September 2017, but is still trending up.

“A lot of people are going, ‘Reader revenue, it’s working for The New York Times, it’s working for specialty publications; that’s our path,’” said Vivian Schiller, a former Times and NPR exec. “I’m afraid for most news publishers, it’s going to end in tears.”

Back in 2016, Speiser told The Wall Street Journal that he was highly optimistic about Facebook and its desire to help web publishers. Now, as one source close to the company put it: “Facebook is the destroyer of worlds.”

The cyclical nature of media means that Twitter is enjoying some time in the sun with publishers. According to multiple publishers, Twitter has delivered more video views than usual over the last two months, for some making up for the reach lost on Facebook since it made changes to the news feed.

Job hunters around the world can now use Facebook to search and apply for openings at local businesses. The social network announced today that its job application feature will now be available in more than 40 countries. The feature rolled out to the US and Canada last year.

The company’s also making it easier for businesses to get their listings online by letting them post openings through the Facebook app. Once they’ve posted a job, managers can sift through applicants and directly reach out through Messenger. Job seekers can also subscribe to a company’s listings. 

Twitter is globally launching its Bookmarks feature today, giving users a new way of saving tweets they like and might want to revisit. Before, this could be done by liking a tweet, but now you can save them without tapping the heart and directly engaging with a tweet. Another difference is that with Bookmarks, only you know you’ve saved something; the other user doesn’t.

To bookmark something, you tap or click the new share icon beneath a tweet. (The new icon is where the DM icon was previously.) Alongside the official debut of Bookmarks, Twitter is using this update to move several sharing options to one place. You can share a tweet via direct message, share it elsewhere outside of Twitter, or bookmark it. Your Bookmarks are accessible in the main slide-out menu. And unlike liked tweets, Bookmarks aren’t publicly viewable to other people, so they won’t be an unwelcome and unexpected addition to someone else’s timeline.

The Great Bot Panic, for instance, poses a series of contradictions. It is true that bots are a serious problem. It is also true that the bot problem is exaggerated. It is true that Russian bots are a conspiracy theory that provides a tidy explanation for complicated developments. It is also true that Russian influence efforts may be happening before our eyes without us really knowing the full scope in the moment. It is true that the reflexive blaming of bots suggests that there’s real fear of believing that sentient American human beings (people who might be your neighbor or your kids’ teachers, or even just a 68-year-old in a basement) share incendiary, potentially unsavory political opinions. And yet it is also true that dismissing the problem isn’t acceptable either. Fifteen months after the election, despite the reports and indictments and congressional testimony, we’re not all that much closer to truly understanding the scope or influence of the Russian bots. The only thing both sides of the argument have in common is that they distrust the conclusions and motives of the other and find them dangerous.

This inevitable censorship should matter to you even if you are not a Facebook user, because it won’t just be Facebook that will be forced to censor how you use the Internet. Ever bought or sold something on line? Rented an apartment? Posted or watched a video? Found anything useful through a search engine? Your ability to speak, learn, buy, sell, complain, organize, or do anything else online depends on Internet services being able to depend on Section 230 to let you. It isn’t just the big commercial services like Facebook who need Section 230, but Internet service providers of all sorts of shapes and sizes, including broadband ISPs, email providers, online marketplaces, consumer review sites, fan forums, online publications that host user comments… Section 230 even enables non-commercial sites like Wikipedia. As a giant collection of information other people have provided, if Section 230’s protection evaporates, then so will Wikipedia’s ability to provide this valuable resource.

Family photos including their mother have been stripped from their Instagrams. All past references to her have been removed. The sisters post “family” photos of the four of them, always without their mother.

Last Thanksgiving, the family spent time together, all snapping photos from the same balcony.

Jackie posted a photo of herself and her three sisters without Geller.