有些时候，似乎任何数量的主题都可以引导界面。在其他日子里，几乎我们轨道上的每一个主要渠道都在写同一个故事的版本。星期四是其中一个原因：脸谱网可能删除了俄罗斯的虚假信息，使许多现实生活中的美国活动家脱逃，导致合法的**活动从服务中被移除，而我们才开始考虑其影响。

本周早些时候，Facebook宣布删除了32个页面，拥有29万多粉丝。在发现这些活动是影响美国政治的秘密活动的一部分后，这些活动人士被卷入其中。Facebook当时报道说，这些账户比2016年竞选活动中的俄罗斯代理人更难找到。创建它们的人采取了创造性的步骤，使他们的帐户看起来真实可信。这就是为什么Facebook不能肯定地说当前的影响力运动起源于俄罗斯的一个原因，尽管有强烈的信号表明这一点。

伪造账户看起来真实的一种方法是与真实账户关联。根据上述相关报道中的活动人士的说法，这正是这里发生的事情。当Facebook发现这一诡计时，它删除了造假者**的公共活动，尽管成千上万的美国人已经注册参加。

你可以理解为什么Facebook会删除作为扭曲思维的影响力运动的一部分而创建的事件和帖子，你也可以理解为什么**者如此沮丧。以下是《邮报》中的托尼·罗姆、伊丽莎白·德沃斯金和伊莱·罗森伯格：

Facebook has “delegitimized our whole event — and all the work that folks across the D.C. area have put a lot of time and effort into,” said Caleb-Michael Files, an organizer of the March to Confront White Supremacy, a group that was organized after the Charlottesville protests, and a co-host of the counterprotest event page. He said he was much angrier at the social network than at Russia. “Russians might have been there, but Russians are not creating and invoking these feelings. These are real feelings, not Internet-created feelings.”

在TechCrunch，Taylor Hatmaker讲述了安德鲁·巴彻（Andrew Batcher）的故事，他是总部设在华盛顿的活动家，是一个名为“关闭DC”的反仇恨组织的成员。Batcher的团队成为了去年致命的右翼联合**（Unite the Right rally）续集计划中**活动的共同主持人，该**定于本月晚些时候举行。该事件是由隐藏身份的人创建的，但Batcher的团队用合法帖子填充了该事件：

“When we started organizing we talked about making a Facebook page and saw that this already existed,” Batcher said. “It happens pretty regularly in DC knowing how many major events take a place here.

“We asked to be made co-hosts of the event and we put our stuff up on it basically,” Batcher said. That included video calls to action, photos and other content, including the event description. “Everything that was taken down was ours.”

作为一种散播混乱的策略，虚假事件似乎完全等同于虚假新闻。正如未来智库研究所数字情报主任山姆·伍利（Sam Woolley）在《华尔街日报》上所问：“什么是真正的草根活动与虚假的草根活动？”。

五个月前，查理·沃泽尔（Charlie Warzel）写到了信息启示录的威胁：一个事实不再可靠、脱离虚构的时刻。在这样一个世界里，每一次**都被怀疑是由阴暗的、看不见的力量组织起来的，这似乎预示着这样一个时刻的到来。正如凯文·鲁斯在《****》上所说：

A side effect of the disinformation campaigns is that they make social media as a whole seem inherently untrustworthy, and give fodder to those who want to cast doubt on the legitimacy of authentic movements. Already, some partisans have adopted the tactic of sowing doubt about internet-based movements by painting their opponents as Russian trolls or agents of a foreign-influence campaign.

This type of suspicion appears likely to grow, as influence campaigns get harder and harder to distinguish from authentic activity.

对于活动家来说，有明确的教训需要吸取：小心你在网上宣传谁的**活动。坚持和那个新来的令人怀疑的热心**者视频聊天，他们希望你成为他们页面上的管理员。当他们告诉你他们是美国人时，要求看收据。

对于Facebook来说，事件演变成一个新的重大攻击面已经产生了另一大堆艰难的选择。过于激进地删除事件及其相关帖子，会扼杀你承诺保护的言论；执法过于松懈，导致监管和民主的持续衰落。无论你在某一天以何种方式依靠，都会有响亮的声音告诉你，你做得完全错误。

假新闻会**分裂，让你怀疑你正在阅读的文章的合法性。假事件更进一步，让你怀疑周围人的动机。它们会分散你对目标的注意力，消耗你的精力。作为虚假信息的武器，它们可能极其有效。

我去年开始写每日通讯，部分原因是我想看看今年的中期选举中虚假信息将如何演变。作为新假新闻的假事件的出现代表着一个重大的新突变。现在还不清楚我们是否为下一步做好了准备。

民主

俄罗斯的另一支巨魔队

数字取证研究实验室仔细阅读了特别顾问罗伯特·穆勒（Robert Mueller）对俄罗斯特工的起诉，并得出结论，在克里姆林宫著名的互联网研究机构之外，还有第二个团体在社交网络上发动信息战：

The GRU campaign appears to have had two main goals: to mobilize American opini***, especially African-American opini***, against Clinton, and to spread propaganda which served Russian military interests.

It was much **aller and more focused than the Internet Research Agency operation. It seems to have worked much more closely with the hacking units, although its ability to amplify their leaks was limited. Above all, unlike the troll farm, it was conducted by serving officers in Russian military intelligence.

推特首席执行官杰克·多尔西（Jack Dorsey）对影子禁令的指控：“我们不能接受创造这样的文化。”

杰克·多西（Jack Dorsey）与福克斯新闻电台（Fox News Radio）的盖伊·本森（Guy Benson）坐了下来，就推特“影子禁令”保守派的持续恶意指控发表了讲话。

DORSEY: The net of this is we need to do a much better job at explaining how our algorithms work. Ideally opening them up so that people can actually see how they work. This is not easy for anyone to do. In fact there’s a whole field of research in AI called ‘explainability’ that is trying to understand how to make algorithms explain how they make decisi*** in this criteria. We are subscribed to that research. We’re making sure that we can help lead it and fund it, but we’re a far way off. So in the meantime we just need to make sure that we’re pushing ourselves to explain exactly how these things work. How we’re making decisi***. Where we need to make decisi*** as humans vs where the algorithms make decisi*** based on behaviors and signals.

独家报道：共和党众议院领袖说推特首席执行官杰克·多尔西应该作证

这位共和党众议院领袖希望举行另一次听证会，以“指控该平台限制了一些保守派账户的访问范围”。在这一点上，很难将这些听证会称为针对社交网络的恐吓运动。

谷歌为中国开发新闻应用程序

韦恩·马（Wayne Ma）和朱罗·奥萨瓦（Juro Osawa）独家报道了谷歌正在开发的一款新的、经过严格审查的“新闻”应用程序。我非常感兴趣的是，谷歌将如何向中国市场传达其一哄而上的信息，在中国市场，它将经常被要求帮助和教唆一个独裁政权，通常是为了镇压异见：

Google has been working on the app since last year and had been meeting with Chinese regulators to discuss the project, the people said. It is also preparing a mobile app for internet search in China that will comply with local censorship laws, an effort first reported Wednesday by The Intercept. The projects are part of an initiative code-named Dragonfly that marks a reversal for Google, which shut down its search engine in China eight years ago in dramatic fashion due to a growing crackdown on internet content by government authorities.

在别处

Instagram首席执行官Kevin Systrom谈赢得故事战争

Instagram的Snapchat故事克隆版周三满2岁，首席执行官凯文·Systrom在新闻发布会上短暂获胜。我真的很喜欢和Systrom交谈——他非常聪明，是一个很好的倾听者，并且毫不掩饰他的竞争倾向。可悲的是，我们在一起的时光在他还没来得及**新闻之前就结束了，但他确实对上周投资者对广告故事表现不佳的恐慌做出了回应：

“Every brand-new format never monetizes as well as established formats,” he says. “That was true for online advertising for a long time. That was true of mobile advertising. There’s a certain maturity that happens over time, both with advertisers learning how to utilize the format, and we as a company are learning how to optimize the format so it delivers the most value to advertisers.”

流行的music.ly应用程序已更名为TikTok

Music.ly是一个大品牌，在全球拥有超过2亿注册用户。中国公司Bytedance去年收购了它，令人刮目相看的是，该公司正在淘汰Music.ly品牌，并将其拆分为一款更大的应用程序，名为TikTok。这似乎是冒险和浪费，但我对中国社交媒体市场基本一无所知(教育我！）

PSA：从今天起，自动交叉发布推文到Facebook不再有效

我无法想象有谁会特别喜欢看到推特自动发布到推特上。”如果WSER想要在未来将推文分享到Facebook，他们将不得不复制推文的URL，”莎拉·佩雷斯报道。也不要这样做！

Facebook停止自动向个人资料发布WordPress

说到自动发布，你不能再将你的WordPress博客发布到Facebook上。如果你在做这件事，而且它对你有用，请告诉我。

我们帮助当地新闻出版商的下一步

Facebook宣布向支持新闻发布者的程序提供450万美元的新资金。大部分资金用于教育当地出版商如何建立数字订阅业务。他们会接受的！

发射

Facebook正采取第一个严肃的行动，将WhatsApp货币化

由于疏忽，我忘了在昨天的时事通讯中包括我同事Shannon Liao的这一重要内容。企业现在可以向消息用户付费，这为WhatsApp开辟了第一个真正的潜在收入来源——假设有人希望以这种方式与企业互动。考虑到Messenger的表现，我对此表示怀疑。但我也怀疑WhatsApp的野蛮主义者对Snapchat故事的接受是否会成功，它现在是世界上使用最多的此类格式。所以基本上，我相信WhatsApp的任何收入机会。

Facebook终于发布了可玩广告，提高了游戏的盈利能力

****广告商现在可以创建广告，您无需首先安装游戏即可播放广告。有用！

拿

马克·扎克伯格和硅谷昂贵的教育

卡拉·斯威谢尔（披露：她是一位朋友，也是一位个人英雄，昨晚我们去看了《不可能的任务：共同的辐射》）首次登场，她是《****》意见专栏作家，及时反思了社交网络是如何姗姗来迟地意识到他们是新的“军火商”这一事实的：

They have weaponized social media. They have weaponized the First Amendment. They have weaponized civic discourse. And they have weaponized, most of all, politics.

Which is why malevolent actors continue to game the platforms and why there’s still no real solution in sight anytime soon, because they were built to work exactly this way. And ever since, they have grown like some very pernicious kudzu and overtaken their inventors’ best efforts at control. Simply put, the inventors became overwhelmed by their own creati***, which led to what I can only describe as a casual negligence, which led to where we are now.

最后。。。

康卡斯特希望你少用**，然后切换到它的网络

我的一部分感觉是，我应该为康卡斯特公司（披露：Vox Media的投资者）做好准备，将这场花费了大量时间的运动视为一个内容营销机会，并创建一个宣传“**清洗”的网页，同时作为购买康卡斯特额外服务的广告。

读者：我没有准备好：

Also, it should be noted that there’s a hard copy book of the phone cleanse. I don’t know why. But it exists, and you can tweet Xfinity Mobile to get one shipped to you for free.

看完这个网页后，我唯一要做的清洁就是洗澡。

跟我说

向我发送问题、提示、鼓励和假邀请：[email protected]