533M Facebook users victim to a data leak; the $10 million effort to combat disinformation targeting veterans
This week's latest in disinformation.
This week, the personal data of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries was published on a public hacking forum.
The massive data trove included profile names, phone numbers, emails, locations, and other personally identifying information (PI). While the data is from 2019 and may be slightly outdated, the information is excellent fodder for phishing scams and identity theft by malicious actors.
The data was scraped from Facebook because of a vulnerability in the Facebook address book contacts import feature, a flaw that the company patched in 2019. However, the company failed to notify users at the time because there was no evidence that this flaw had been exploited. This week, PI of 32 million Americans was exposed and now is floating around online—including that of Facebook’s earliest adopters, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
Data scraping off of Facebook’s platform has endangered users’ privacy before. In 2015, Facebook ignored warning signs that Cambridge Analytica was scraping data from 80 million users to target voters in the 2016 election. While the practice violates their community guidelines, little has been done to prevent it. Facebook has yet to take substantive action to prevent ClearView AI, a facial recognition tool used by law enforcement agencies to identify criminal suspects, from scraping user photos on the platform.
If you’ve made a Facebook account before 2019, I recommend you check if your data was exposed as part of the breach on Have I Been Pwned.
Facebook will begin labeling Pages to give users greater context about what kind of content is shared in that community.
Facebook will provide an accurate description of Pages (as many times pages are mis-categorized by group admins) to keep users informed about what kind of information they may encounter there.
At this time, Facebook plans to impose labels that categorize pages as “satire”, “fan page”, and other things. However, this new feature could have additional applications, such as identifying Pages as state-sponsored media or junk news outlets dedicated to spreading falsehoods.
VoteVets, a liberal PAC working to elect veterans to public office, is initiating a $10 million effort to fight disinformation targeting veterans.
This comes in response to many veterans participating in the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.
The effort will entail launching a study to identify veteran communities vulnerable to misinformation, deliver digital literacy training, and track disinformation campaigns targeting vets. Additionally, the group will lobby for regulation that renovates Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 to expand the onus of responsibility on social media companies to clean up their platforms.
US veterans and military service members are frequently targeted by state-sponsored foreign influence operations. These efforts often involve sock puppet accounts impersonating veterans that hijack conversations in online veteran communities, like Facebook Groups and Pages, in an effort to divide and polarize groups by introducing divisive conspiracy theories, mis- and disinformation, and junk news articles.
This week, NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny published an excellent story that sheds light on the downstream effects of the death of local news outlets.
She shines a spotlight on Beaver County, Pennsylvania—a small town situated in a news desert, where a Facebook Group focused on local news has risen to fill the information void.
This story offers a glimpse into the cascading effects of local news dying out in the area, particularly regarding the spread of misinformation.
Plenty of ground is covered: The intrigue and benefits of a Facebook group responsible for reporting local news. The vetting responsibilities of a Facebook Group administrator overseeing an overwhelming information flow. How misinformation about local happenings spread on the medium, infect the community and destroy lives and reputations. How a local fact-checking publication rose to counter the misinformation spread in the Facebook Group.
Beaver County’s case is emblematic of many towns located in areas now without a trusted, local news source. I highly recommend a read.