In a statement, Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne said: “The company has already been investigating these issues.” Since then, we have formed teams, developed new policies, and collaborated with industry partners to address these networks. We have taken strong enforcement action against such foreign and domestic uncertified groups and we have publicly shared the results quarterly.
Shortly before this story was published, a review of MIT’s technology found that five of the Troy-farming pages mentioned in the report were active.
The report states that during the 2016 election, the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency (IRA) was targeting similar groups of Christians, black Americans and Native Americans. A.D. A BuzzFeed news investigation in 2018 also visited Macedonia during the appearance of the first troll farms in Russia, which is accused of interfering in at least the 2016 US election. . (Facebook says the investigations did not link the IRA and the Macedonian trolley.)
“This is not normal. This is not healthy. ” It gave us the power of the wrong actors to accumulate a lot of followers for the most part unknown purposes … from Results. Choice ”
As long as trolley farms are successful using these methods, any other bad actor can do the same. The IRA currently has a large audience there.
Allen wrote the report in the fourth and final year of a year and a half of efforts to understand troll farms. The former Facebook employee, who submitted the report, left the company later that month after the management said he had “neglected” his research work. Allen refused to comment.
Despite public hopes for a speedy resumption of repeated election interventions, the report shows the shocking state of Facebook leadership for years. This is because the MIT Technology Revision has revised the entire report in the name of staff for the benefit of the public.
Its manifestations include:
- Since October 2019, Facebook pages with a large US audience have been declining among the worst actors in the 2016 election in Kosovo and Macedonia.
- Overall, the report states that for one comparative purposes, those trolley farms reach 140 million US users each month and 360 million global users each week. Walmart’s page has reached America’s second largest audience of 100 million.
- The trolley farm pages are also linked:
- The largest Christian-American page on Facebook is 20 times larger than the next – it reaches 75 million US users every month, 95% of whom have never followed any page.
- The largest African-American page on Facebook is three times larger than the next: 30 million US users a month, 85% of them never follow any pages.
- Facebook, the second largest Native American site, reaches 400,000 users every month, 90% of whom never follow any pages.
- On Facebook, the fifth largest women’s page, with 60 million US users a month, 90% never follow any pages.
- Trolley farms mainly affect the United States, but also target Britain, Australia, India, and Central and South America.
- Facebook has done a lot of research to prove that the chances of user engagement (likes, comments and shares) are higher than what is considered bad. The company continues to rank content in consumer news outlets with high participation.
- It prohibits Facebook pages from posting content that is copied and pasted only from other parts of the forum, but does not impose a policy on known bad actors. This makes it easy for foreign actors who do not speak the local language to post fully recorded content and still reach a large audience. At one time, up to 40% of page views on US pages went primarily to those with non-original content or limited original content.
- Troll Farms has already joined Facebook’s instant articles and advertising partnerships designed to help news organizations and other publishers generate revenue through their articles and videos. At one time, due to a lack of basic quality checks, up to 60% of the reading of the snapshots was moving to a repetitive content. This made it easier for them to join trolley farms and even receive payments from Facebook.
How Facebook stimulates trolley farms and grows their audience
The report focuses on trolley farms in Kosovo and Macedonia, led by those who do not understand American politics. However, the way in which Facebook news awards are designed can still have a significant impact on political discourse.