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Government Canada Facebook

Canadian Government Teams With Facebook To Protect Election Integrity (vice.com) 118

Posted by EditorDavid from the votes-vs-upvotes dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: There are nearly as many Canadians who use Facebook daily as there are people in this country who are registered to vote -- which is why the federal government is working with Facebook to protect its next federal election... Facebook is now facing perhaps its biggest test as it looks to curb foreign electoral interference and the rampant disinformation on its platform, both of which undermine the nature of democracy. Facebook Canada's election integrity project includes a partnership with a local digital news media literacy organization MediaSmarts, as well as a "cyberhygiene guide" that highlights particular vulnerabilities such as phishing and page-admin authentication. Facebook also has a crisis email line to help politicians and parties with hacking concerns... Kevin Chan, Facebook Canada's head of public policy, said the social media company is working on preventing bad actors from interfering with the democratic process. "At Facebook we take our responsibilities seriously," Chan said. "We don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy."
At the launch of "the Canadian Election Integrity Initiative," Canada's Minister of Democratic Institutions argued that social media sites "must begin to view themselves as actors in shaping the democratic discourse."

The article points out Facebook "has promised to hire thousands of workers globally to help review flagged and suspicious content, as well as use machine learning to identify suspicious patterns of behavior on its platform."
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Canadian Government Teams With Facebook To Protect Election Integrity More

Canadian Government Teams With Facebook To Protect Election Integrity

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  • Wow, that's not Orwellian at all.

    Strat

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yea it's a fucking Orwellian shitshow.

      In Germany we have Facebook deletion centers whose only task is to delete controversial content. They are staffed with hundreds of people and they stocked up before the election. Said centers are being coached by hard left foundations and staffed with hard left staff that happily deletes posts that aren't violating any laws but don't suit their political worldview.

      An ex employee recently reported they actively target the AfD, a conservative/right party that's been gaini

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        AfD is anti-German because it panders to the pro-Nazi and extreme right who blame everyone else for their problems. Germany post-war is incredibly successful as pro-diversity and pro-immigration as it is what taps into our natural advantage in the center of the EU for travel and trade. We know the lineage of hate and see its defects readily. We also know the failures of the last group to hate immigrants and will never be fooled by them or shallow Russian schemes to retake former Soviet occupied territories

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Wonderful! So what if assaults are up 200%, murders are up 50% and rapes are up 1000%? The average woman rape victim is thanking us because of how diverse their rapists are!

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Jzanu ( 668651 )
            Look into some details [dw.com]. The crime reporting rate is higher than for crimes by Germans, and the immigrant camps are stratified by immigration eligibility with only overbearing environmental influences breaking the trend of non-violence for immigration. The idiots who bandy about idiotic nationalist rhetoric [haaretz.com] are one goose-step away from outright Nazism only because that would put them in prison.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mashiki ( 184564 )

              The crime reporting rate is higher than for crimes by Germans, and the immigrant camps are stratified by immigration eligibility with only overbearing environmental influences breaking the trend of non-violence for immigration.

              Your article and you are missing something critical. When you apply and are accepted for immigration status(application accepted), you automatically become a german in the crime statistics. If you're applying, you are still labeled as an immigrant. And now you learn how to easily massage criminal statistics.

      • Hopefully the German people can put a stop to that. For myself, I just stay off Facebook entirely and I haven't suffered for it yet. I don't have to worry about local governments deleting controversial posts, or foreign troll farms making controversial posts. I'm not concerning myself with either the Kardashians or the idiots down the road. I'm living one step further outside of the filter bubble and the alt-whatever memesters. Taking the red pill means plugging out of the matrix, not into it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Said centers are being coached by hard left foundations and staffed with hard left staff that happily deletes posts that aren't violating any laws but don't suit their political worldview.

        You wouldn't know "hard left" if Zombie Lenin and Zombie Stalin took turns biting you on the ass. It's just an empty headed pejorative for you to sling around.

    • talk to the legal u.s. citizens that voted for trump if you want to protect election integrity. we all know he will do 2 terms.

  • "Election Integrity" LOL (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    By "election integrity" they mean making sure the correct candidate gets elected by votes ore stolen election. We can't have another donald trump or other populist candidate win. Facebook's censorship will really help them out!

  • Wouldn't that have the opposite effect? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Once you introduce a third party to "manage information" then it's already compromised.

  • I feel so much better. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I feel so much better, to know that our esteemed tech companies like Facebook are acting to protect us and keep us safe.

  • Canada's next federal election will likely be 2 years away on October 21, 2019. The federal government can sometimes be very competent in areas like this. They can also fail spectacularly but as long as this effort doesn't get to much media or political attention it will likely do well.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      The Federal Liberals are likely far more scared considering what's happening in provincial politics right now. The largest voting block is Ontario, and the provincial liberals are polling at 11% vs Conservatives at 33% and the NDP at 20%. The policies of the provincial liberals(green energy boon dongle, massive corruption, sanctuary city BS) and so on are pissing people off. Round that out with Trudeaus "oh we'll take the illegals..." really pissed people off. The last time 80% of Canadians agreed on po

  • I'm excited to see any and all conservative views removed to maintain "electoral integrity"... for the liberals.

  • Elections, Integrity and FaceBook.

  • If the Russians ever tried anything, Canada has an elite force of eskimos on snowmobiles who have .303 rifles and it would be very bad for Putin.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • If the Russians ever tried anything, Canada has an elite force of eskimos on snowmobiles who have .303 rifles and it would be very bad for Putin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Trump is going to get rid of those damn immigrant Eskimos when we invade Canada.

    • If the Russians ever tried anything, Canada has an elite force of eskimos on snowmobiles who have .303 rifles and it would be very bad for Putin.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The sad part is you have no idea how effective that program is. It's actually much more effective than trying to get 6 F-35s into Arctic airspace, and costs a miniscule fraction to provide a far more effective result.

      • I thought it was just a make work/welfare program for aboriginals and poor white people living in the middle of nowhere.

        • Nope. Do you know how difficult and expensive it is to build and operate Arctic bases with full military observation readiness? Just keeping one plane up with a minimal range means you need a set of crews, have to maintain a long supply line, and have to provide all the support services.

          Local people who understand conditions, and adapt well to observation, are a very reliable investment.

          • In recent years Canada has been asserting it's sovereignty in the North because of conflicting claims, mostly with Russia over future resources. As part of that effort there's a largely token force to show their presence. There's 1500 Rangers to cover the Yukon, Nunavut and North West territories. That's over 1.5 million square miles. Ninety percent of which have no roads because there's nothing for hundreds of miles at a stretch. Every now and again Canada has to say "Nope, we're still here!" to those who

  • I'd rather have my content modified... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Sunday October 22, 2017 @12:48PM (#55413567) Homepage

    ...by an open process run by a government than a closed process run by a private corporation the size of a government with no responsibility to the public whatsoever.

    Because of the open process, this is going to timidly filter out a little of the worst of the worst, and that's about it.

    • an open process run by a government

      This seems like a contradiction in terms.

      Because of the open process, this is going to timidly filter out a little of the worst of the worst, and that's about it.

      As if those with the power to censor speech won't redefine what constitutes as 'extreme'. There's no such thing as a slippery slope, is there? Your optimism and faith in government bureaucrats that this power won't be abused is remarkable.

  • Farmer teams with fox to protect chicken integrity.

    • Farmer teams with fox to protect chicken integrity.

      I'd thought that, but it seemed so...understated. I'd go for "Great White Shark invited to assist with Kiddie Pool protection".

  • Why don't they help us with single-payer insurance first!!
  • This is not just an oxymoron, it is a hydroxymoron or something like that. What are they thinking? As a Brit, I've always felt that our cousins were pretty sane too.

  • Fancy wording for "Censoring" (Score:3)

    by gotan ( 60103 ) on Monday October 23, 2017 @05:43AM (#55416627) Homepage

    So some Canadian parties claim a monopoly on "democratic" positions and want to ban anything and anyone contradicting their views.

    The censoring is outsourced to private companies like Facebook to circumvent pesky anti-censoring laws. That has the additional benefit, that there is no constitutional oversight and no address for anyone wronged by out of hand censoring.

    This authoritarian approach is justified with talk of "Fake-News" and "Hate-Speech", but what it comes down to is censoring of unwanted political viewpoints or even uncomfortable truths. A few hand picked extreme cases are presented to justify implementing censorship.

    Here is a nice wired article, how Facebook "learned" to do "the right thing (TM)" ahead of German elections:
    https://www.wired.com/story/fa... [wired.com]
    In Germany a law threatening up to 50M fines to companies like Facebook was rushed through legislation just before elections. It's not hard to imagine how FB in response will crack down on anything deemed "politically incorrect".

    And please spare me the "private companies can do as they like" drivel. Companies like Facebook and Google are nowadays at the hub of information flow. It's ridiculous to make a big deal about the alleged "Russians" influence on public opinion and elections by means of RT and a few bots, but turn a blind eye when FB or google push a political agenda (either of their own accord or because they are instrumentalized by political parties).

  • While on the surface the decision seems benign and unbiased, it is very hard to do anything that is not.

    Basically at least in Canada the way demographics and voters go, is the further left of center you are, the younger you probably are, and the more likely you use social media like Facebook. So the use of Facebook in any way is going to disproportionately impact some political parties over others. The current Liberal government is centrist left. So one might argue this is simply a political ploy to improve

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