election interference – Page 2

January 28, 2021January 28, 2021

Facebook Vows to Permanently Stop Recommending Political Groups

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the platform will stop recommending political and civic groups to its users, in an effort to “turn down the temperature and discourage divisive conversations.”

The social media company announced in October that it had taken “emergency measures” to stop recommending those groups to U.S. users in the run-up to the presidential election. According to an analysis by tech site The Markup, however, the platform continued to recommend political groups to its users throughout December, most often to Trump voters.

Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the policy will be made permanent and apply to the users in the rest of the world.

“We’re continuing to fine-tune how this works, but now we plan to keep civic and political groups out of recommendations for the long term, and we plan to expand that policy globally,” Zuckerberg said during a conference call.

“This is a continuation of work we’ve been doing for a while to turn down the temperature and discourage divisive conversations.”

The CEO also vowed to take steps to reduce the overall amount of political content that users see in their news feed.

Zuckerberg said although political posts only account for a “pretty small minority” of Facebook’s content, he felt “a lot of things” have become politicized and that politics has “had a way of creeping into everything.”

“One of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” he said.

Zuckerberg’s renewed promise comes after Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) condemned certain political groups on Facebook as “breeding grounds for hate” and “venues for coordination of violence.”

“Facebook must explain the apparent discrepancy between its promises to stop recommending political groups and what it has delivered,” Markey wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg, citing The Markup’s report that found 12 of the top 100 groups pushed by Facebook were political.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it was removing all content that contains “stop the steal,” a phrase used by supporters of former President Donald Trump to question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.

The social media company said that the move was an attempt to remove content that “could incite further violence” ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue,” Facebook officials Guy Rosen and Monika Bickert said in a statement. “But with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the U.S. presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in D.C., we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration.”

Source: Facebook Vows to Permanently Stop Recommending Political Groups

January 27, 2021January 27, 2021

Facebook Hires Biden Transition, Obama Admin Official as VP of ‘Civil Rights’

White House Deputy Assistant to the President for the Office of Urban Affairs, Justice and Opportunity Roy Austin at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11, 2015. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Facebook has hired Roy Austin, former Obama administration official and a member of President Joe Biden’s transition team, as the social media company’s vice president of Civil Rights and deputy general counsel.

Austin used to serve as civil rights prosecutor and supervisor in the Department of Justice (DOJ) before becoming a deputy assistant to President Barack Obama for the Office of Urban Affairs, Justice and Opportunity in 2014. In 2017, he went into private practice as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis. In November, Biden named him as one of the volunteers on the Agency Review Team for the DOJ in his transition.

It’s not clear what will be Austin’s specific responsibilities at Facebook. The company didn’t respond to a request for further details and an attempt to reach Austin for comment was unsuccessful.

“I am delighted to welcome Roy to Facebook as our VP of Civil Rights. Roy has proved throughout his career that he is a passionate and principled advocate for civil rights—whether it is in the courtroom or the White House,” said Facebook General Counsel Jennifer Newstead in a Jan. 11 release.

“I know he will bring the same wisdom, integrity, and dedication to Facebook. It’s hard to imagine anyone better qualified to help us strengthen and advance civil rights on our platform and in our company.”

Austin’s appointment underscores the closeness of Facebook to the Biden administration.

Former Facebook associate general counsel Jessica Hertz was the Biden transition’s general counsel and is his new White House staff secretary. Jeffrey Zients—Biden’s coronavirus czar—used to serve on Facebook’s board of directors in 2018-2020. Austin Lin, a former program manager at Facebook, was on one of Biden’s agency review teams before reportedly being tapped for a deputy role at White House’s Office of Management and Administration. Erskine Bowles, a former Facebook board member, reportedly advised the transition team.

Hertz, Zients, and Lin used to hold roles in the Obama administration. Bowles served as President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, gave $500 million to election officials ahead of the 2020 election for measures such as ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting described as tools to make voting safer amidst the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. The grants violated election laws and were distributed unevenly, favoring Democrat-heavy areas, according to The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, a constitutional litigation organization.

Austin was to start his role at Facebook on Jan. 19, based in Washington, D.C., the company said.

“I am excited to join Facebook at this moment when there is a national and global awakening happening around civil rights,” Austin said in the release.

“Technology plays a role in nearly every part of our lives, and it’s important that it be used to overcome the historic discrimination and hate which so many underrepresented groups have faced, rather than to exacerbate it. I could not pass up the opportunity to join a company whose products are used by so many and which impacts the civil rights and liberties of billions of people, in order to help steer a better way forward.”

His referral to “underrepresented groups” raises the ghost of political bias, as the underlying reasoning has been tied to tech companies enforcing their content rules unevenly.

Facebook moderators were told, for instance, that prohibited “Hate Speech” against certain groups was to be left alone under some circumstances as long as it aligned with the company’s agenda, according to a 2018 memo to moderators working at Cognizant, a firm that at the time contracted with Facebook to shoulder part of the content policing.

“Anything that is DELETE per our Hate Speech policies, but is intended to raise awareness for Pride/LGBTQ” was to be temporarily allowed, the post stated, specifying that “this may occur especially in terms of attacking straight white males.”

In 2019, Facebook updated its policy to allow “threats that could lead to death” against those on the company’s list of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.”

Aside from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and individuals tied to Nazism, Facebook also placed on the list people such as populist commentator Paul Joseph Watson and conservative activist Laura Loomer.

After backlash, Facebook quietly removed the exception from the publicly available version of its policy, but this change was never communicated to its content moderators, and, in practice, the exception remained in place, according to Zach McElroy, who used to work as a Facebook moderator at Cognizant.

Facebook isn’t the only tech company that seems to interpret its own policies unevenly.

Google tweaked its products to promote what the company considered the interests of “historically marginalized” groups, according to insider documents and recordings.

The approach aligns with the tenets of the quasi-Marxist critical theory, which divides society into oppressors and the historically oppressed based on characteristics such as race and gender along the lines of Marxism’s class division.

Source: Facebook Hires Biden Transition, Obama Admin Official as VP of ‘Civil Rights’

January 17, 2021

China ‘Sought to Influence’ 2020 US Election, Director of National Intelligence Assesses

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe assessed that Chinainterfered in the 2020 federal elections, according to a letter transmitted to Congress.

In the letter (pdf), Ratcliffe alleges that intelligence about China’s election interference was suppressed by management at the CIA, which pressured analysts to withdraw their support for the view.

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Citing a report by the Intelligence Community Analytic Ombudsman Barry Zulauf, the director of national intelligence said some analysts were reluctant to describe China’s actions as election interference because they disagreed with the policies of President Donald Trump.

The Washington Examiner published Ratcliffe’s letter and the ombudsman report on Jan. 17, ten days after publishing an original report on the documents. The ODNI did not respond to requests from The Epoch Times to authenticate the documents.

“Based on all available sources of intelligence, with definitions consistently applied, and reached independent of political considerations or undue pressure—that the People’s Republic of China sought to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe wrote.

The report by Zulauf, the intelligence community analytic ombudsman, was sent to Congress on Jan. 7 alongside an intelligence community assessment of interference in the 2020 election. In the report (pdf), Zulauf states the analysts working on Russia and China applied different standards to their reporting on election interference. While labeling Russia’s activity as clear election interference, the analysts were reluctant to do the same for China.

“Given analytic differences in the way Russia and China analysts examined their targets, China analysts appeared hesitant to assess Chinese actions as undue influence or interference,” Zulauf wrote. “These analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward because they tended to disagree with the Administration’s policies, saying in effect, I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.”

Neither the ombudsman report nor the letter from Ratcliffe includes details on China’s meddling. Zulauf redirected an interview request to the ODNI, which did not respond to an emailed request.

The analytic ombudsman’s report assesses that politicization occurred in relation to both Russia’s and China’s election interference. Zulauf assessed that neither intelligence community leaders nor analysts are at fault, blaming the hyperpartisan atmosphere in the United States instead.

“In most cases, what we see is the entire system responding to and resisting pressures from outside, rather than attempts to politicize intelligence by our leaders or analysts.

The report states that the analysts who assessed Russia’s election interference had complained that the intelligence community management was reluctant to deliver their assessments to government clients because the work was not “well received.”

“Analysts saw this as suppression of intelligence, bordering on politicization of intelligence from above,” Zulauf wrote.

The Epoch Times had previously documented a multi-pronged election influence campaign linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In a Dec. 3 op-ed, Ratcliffe said the CCP “poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II.”

“The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically,” he wrote. “Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Congress certified Joe Biden as the president-elect on Jan. 7. In the two months leading up to the certification, Trump challenged the outcome of the election in seven states, citing unconstitutional changes to election laws and potentially illegally cast votes.

Source: China ‘Sought to Influence’ 2020 US Election, Director of National Intelligence Assesses