Careless People: A Story Of Where I Used to Work By Sarah Wynn-Williams Review – A Former Disciple Unfriends Facebook

Sarah Wynn-Williams. Photograph: Sarah Wynn-Williams

BY STUART JEFFRIES

Shortly after her waters broke, Sarah Wynn-Williams was lying in hospital with her feet in stirrups, typing a work memo on her laptop between contractions. Facebook’s director of global public policy needed to send talking points from her recent trip to oversee the tech giant’s bid to launch operations in Myanmar to her boss Sheryl Sandberg. Then she would give birth to her first child.

Wynn-Williams’s husband, a journalist called Tom, was livid but, as men tend to be in labour rooms, impotent. The doctor gently closed her laptop. “Please let me push send,” whimpered Sarah. “You should be pushing,” retorted the doctor with improbable timing. “But not ‘send’.”

This incident typifies how, in this 400-page memoir of her seven years at Facebook from 2011 – as it mutated from niche social network to global power able to swing elections, target body-shamed teens with beauty products and monetise millions of humans’ hitherto private data – Wynn-Williams had become part of what reads like a diabolical cult run by emotionally stunted men babies, institutionally enabled sexual harassers and hypocritical virtue-signalling narcissists.

The cult vibe of this birthing story is made stronger by Wynn-Williams channelling Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She quotes Sandberg’s injunction to pregnant working women – “Don’t leave before you leave” – taking its implication to be that she should work right up to the point that the baby’s head emerges into this fallen world. It doesn’t occur to her that Lean In feminism might serve as a fig leaf covering self-exploitation and soul-depleting workaholism.

A couple of pages earlier, Wynn-Williams writes like a wide-eyed convert: “It still feels exciting and important to spread this tool around the world and improve people’s lives.” An evidently clever former New Zealand diplomat, she was ideal fodder to help spread Facebook’s secular gospel, as her backstory reveals. After surviving a shark attack as a teenager, she resolved to spend her working life helping humanity. Upon witnessing how the nascent Facebook kept Kiwis connected in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she believed that Mark Zuckerberg’s company could make a difference – but in a good way – to social bonds, and that she could be part of that utopian project.

Her naive faith reminds me of what Jon Ronson wrote about in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: at their inception both the internet and social media seemed, to some, unalloyed good things. It’s instructive for someone like me – who disdains social media and sees in tech giants the lucrative weaponising of hate masquerading as free speech, and the asphyxiation of democracy by the enabling of post-truth populists – to encounter such cockeyed optimism.

The “tool” Wynn-Williams talks about is not Facebook per se, but Zuckerberg’s cherished internet.org app (which has operated under the name Free Basics since 2015), devised to deliver the internet to connectivity-deprived countries, such as Myanmar, as part of what sounds like a system upgrade of Britain’s oxymoronic imperial mission to civilise black and brown persons.

What internet.org involves for countries that adopt it is a Facebook-controlled monopoly of access to the internet, whereby to get online at all you have to log in to a Facebook account. When the scales fall from Wynn-Williams’s eyes she realises there is nothing morally worthwhile in Zuckerberg’s initiative, nothing empowering to the most deprived of global citizens, but rather his tool involves “delivering a crap version of the internet to two-thirds of the world”.

But Facebook’s impact in the developing world proves worse than crap. In Myanmar, as Wynn-Williams recounts at the end of the book, Facebook facilitated the military junta to post hate speech, thereby fomenting sexual violence and attempted genocide of the country’s Muslim minority. “Myanmar,” she writes with a lapsed believer’s rue, “would have been a better place if Facebook had not arrived.” And what is true of Myanmar, you can’t help but reflect, applies globally.

Before she was disabused, Wynn-Williams fawningly adored Sandberg, as the pair crisscrossed the globe in private jets, bringing the good news of Facebook to foreign leaders. “The tears streaming down her face,” Wynn-Williams writes unctuously as she reports on Sandberg’s meeting with Shinzo Abe to convince the then Japanese premier to allow politicians to use Facebook in political campaigning, “somehow make her even more impossibly lovely.”

She approvingly quotes another Lean In message, that you should “bring your authentic self to work”. But what that means in Facebook reality becomes clear when, in her first performance review after giving birth, Wynn-Williams is told that co-workers are uneasy that her baby can be heard on business calls. The poor poppets. “Be smart and hire a Filipina nanny,” counsels Sandberg. Wynn-Williams does just that, but then something shocking happens. One day, Tom is checking the home camera when he notices a firefighter in their living room: the nanny has locked herself out and the baby inside the flat. But when Wynn-Williams later relates this disturbing event to colleagues, she feels as though she has made a faux pas – distracting them from their noble mission with personal guff. “The expectation of Facebook is that mothering is invisible,” she writes. Facebook cannot tolerate too much authenticity.

The book’s title comes from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.” For Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things” philosophy is just such entitled carelessness, leaving Facebook staff and their customers to sweep up the wreckage. But the Facebook she describes is not run by careless people, not really, but rather by wittingly amoral ones who use technical genius and business acumen to profit from human vulnerability. For instance, she claims Facebook – now Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp – identified teenage girls who had deleted selfies on its platforms, and then supplied the data to companies to target them with ads for putatively tummy-flattening teas or beauty products.

Wynn-Williams’s shtick, often presenting herself as the only conscience in the room, does wear thin. I tired of reading of how shocked she was at some Facebook policy, while continuing to spread its values worldwide. “I’m astounded at the role money plays in elections in the US,” she writes at one point, as the 2016 Trump campaign gears up with political ads and targeted misinformation from which Facebook massively profited. Are you really so naive? I wrote in the margin. “I’m also against exporting this value system. But Facebook is effectively bringing this in globally by stealth.” And you’re part of it! I wrote in the margin. If only she’d taken to heart the critical messages of, say, David Fincher’s movie The Social Network or Dave Eggers’s novel The Circle, she might have leaned out earlier.

And yet her memoir is valuable, not just as indictment of the Facebook cult but of bosses’ entitled behaviour that will resonate for many. She depicts Zuckerberg as a tech-bro Henry VIII, a thin-skinned angry child whose courtiers let win at the board game Settlers of Catan during flights on his private jet. She charges him with lying to Congress about the extent of Facebook’s compromises to woo China and allow it to operate there, suggesting that his company was developing technology and tools to meet Chinese requirements that would allow it to censor users’ content and access their data. He was, she claims, much more in cahoots with Xi Jinping’s authoritarian regime than he let on to US senators.

On another private jet, relates Wynn-Williams, Sandberg imperiously invited her to sleep in the same bed. Wynn-Williams declined, but thereafter worried that she had upset her boss by not yielding to a presumably sexual demand, which she depicts in the book as the ex-Facebook COO’s entitled modus operandi with several women subordinates.

And then there’s what Joel Kaplan, currently Meta’s chief global affairs officer, allegedly did to Wynn-Williams at a boozy corporate shindig in 2017. She claimed that he called her “sultry” and rubbed his body against hers on the dancefloor. This wasn’t a one-off incident, she claims: indeed, there was a group at Facebook called Feminist Fight Club, whose members compared notes on such reportedly prevalent cases of sexual harassment by execs. An internal investigation cleared Kaplan of impropriety and soon after Wynn-Williams was fired for making misleading harassment allegations.

Last week, Meta responded to this book, calling it “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”. The company has denounced its former employee, claiming that she was not a whistleblower but a disgruntled activist trying to sell books. Most likely she is both.

Wynn-Williams notes that Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. “But leopards don’t change their spots. The DNA of the company remains the same. And the more power they grab, the less responsible they become.” That culture of irresponsibility and carelessness should worry us more than ever, she suggests at the end of the book, as Zuckerberg’s Meta is at the forefront of artificial intelligence, a technology even more potentially calamitous than the one he dreamed up in his Harvard dorm a couple of decades ago.

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Meta Takes Down Thousands Of Facebook, Instagram Accounts Running Sextortion Scams From Nigeria

A Meta Portal Go is displayed during a preview of the Meta Store in Burlingame, Calif., on May 4, 2022. 4. A deep dive into political ads on Facebook by researchers at Syracuse University has revealed a sprawling web of advertisements that contain misleading information or scams. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

BY BARBARA ORTUTAY

Meta said Wednesday that it has taken down about 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria running sexual extortion scams and has removed thousands of Facebook groups and pages that were trying to organize, recruit and train new scammers.

Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favors. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.

There has been a marked rise in sextortion cases in recent years, fueled in part by a loosely organized group called the Yahoo Boys, operating mainly out of Nigeria, Meta said. It added that it applied its “dangerous organizations and individuals” policy to remove Facebook accounts and groups run by the group.

Meta said Wednesday that it has taken down about 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria running sexual extortion scams and has removed thousands of Facebook groups and pages that were trying to organize, recruit and train new scammers.

Sexual extortion, or sextortion, involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favors. Recent high-profile cases include two Nigerian brothers who pleaded guilty to sexually extorting teen boys and young men in Michigan, including one who took his own life, and a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who sexually extorted and kidnapped a 15-year-old girl.

There has been a marked rise in sextortion cases in recent years, fueled in part by a loosely organized group called the Yahoo Boys, operating mainly out of Nigeria, Meta said. It added that it applied its “dangerous organizations and individuals” policy to remove Facebook accounts and groups run by the group.

“Because they’re driven by money, they’re targeting can be indiscriminate,” said Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety. “So in other words, think of this as a little bit of a scattershot approach: get out there and send many, many, requests out to individuals and see who may who may respond.”

In January, the FBI warned of a “huge increase” in sextortion cases targeting children. The targeted victims are primarily boys between the ages of 14 to 17, but the FBI said any child can become a victim.

Meta said its investigation found that the majority of the scammers’ attempts did not succeed and mostly targeted adult men in the U.S., but added that it did see “some” try to target minors, which Meta says it reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The removed accounts included a “coordinated network” of about 2,500 accounts linked to a group of about 20 people who were running them, Meta said.

In April, Meta announced it was deploying new tools in Instagram to protect young people and combat sexual extortion, including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages. Meta is still testing out the features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of “image abuse,” and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens.

Davis said users should look out for messages from people with “highly stylized” photos, people who are “exceptionally good looking” or have never sent you a message before.

“That should give you pause,” she said. Users should also take a pause if somebody sends an image first — scammers often use this tactic to try to gain trust and bait unsuspecting people into sending them back a photo of themselves.

“This is one of the one of these areas where if you have any sort of suspicion, I would urge caution,” she said.

States Sue Meta For knowingly Hurting Teens With Facebook And Instagram − Here Are The Harms Researchers Have Documented

THE CONVERSATION

Instagram’s emphasis on filtered photos of bodies harms girls’ self-image. Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision via Getty Images

BY CHRISTIA SPEAR BROWN

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against Meta on Oct. 24, 2023, alleging that the company intentionally designed Facebook and Instagram with features that harm teens and young users.

Meta officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram – the social media platform most used by adolescents after TikTok – is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being. But the company swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a Sept. 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report. The report was based on documents provided by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Meta’s record of pursuing profits regardless of documented harm has sparked comparisons to Big Tobacco, which knew in the 1950s that its products were carcinogenic but publicly denied it into the 21st century. Those of us who study social media use by teens didn’t need a suppressed internal research study to know that Instagram can harm teens. Plenty of peer-reviewed research papers show the same thing.

Understanding the impact of social media on teens is important because almost all teens go online daily. A Pew Research Center poll shows that 77% of teens report they use social media daily.

Teens are more likely to log on to Instagram than any other social media site except TikTok. It is a ubiquitous part of adolescent life. Yet studies consistently show that the more often teens use Instagram, the worse their overall well-being, self-esteem, life satisfaction, mood and body image. One study found that the more that college students used Instagram on any given day, the worse their mood and life satisfaction were that day.

Unhealthy comparisons

But Instagram isn’t problematic simply because it is popular. There are two key features of Instagram that seem to make it particularly risky. First, it allows users to follow both celebrities and peers, both of whom can present a manipulated, filtered picture of an unrealistic body along with a highly curated impression of a perfect life.

While all social media allows users to be selective in what they show the world, Instagram is notorious for its photo editing and filtering capabilities. Plus, the platform is popular among celebrities, models and influencers. Facebook has been relegated to the uncool soccer moms and grandparents. For teens, this seamless integration of celebrities and retouched versions of real-life peers presents a ripe environment for upward social comparison, or comparing yourself to someone who is “better” in some respect.

People, as a general rule, look to others to know how to fit in and judge their own lives. Teens are especially vulnerable to these social comparisons. Just about everyone can remember worrying about fitting in in high school. Instagram exacerbates that worry. It is hard enough to compare yourself to a supermodel who looks fantastic (albeit filtered); it can be even worse when the filtered comparison is Natalie down the hall.

Negatively comparing themselves to others leads people to feel envious of others’ seemingly better lives and bodies. Recently, researchers even tried to combat this effect by reminding Instagram users that the posts were unrealistic.

It didn’t work. Negative comparisons, which were nearly impossible to stop, still led to envy and lowered self-esteem. Even in studies in which participants knew the photos they were shown on Instagram were retouched and reshaped, adolescent girls still felt worse about their bodies after viewing them. For girls who tend to make a lot of social comparisons, these effects are even worse.

Objectification and body image

Instagram is also risky for teens because its emphasis on pictures of the body leads users to focus on how their bodies look to others. My colleagues’ and my research shows that for teen girls – and increasingly teen boys – thinking about their own bodies as the object of a photo increases worrying thoughts about how they look to others, and that leads to feeling shame about their bodies. Just taking a selfie to be posted later makes them feel worse about how they look to others.

Being an object for others to view doesn’t help the “selfie generation” feel empowered and sure of themselves – it can do exactly the opposite. These are not insignificant health concerns, because body dissatisfaction during the teen years is a powerful and consistent predictor of later eating disorder symptoms.

Meta has acknowledged internally what researchers have been documenting for years: Instagram can be harmful to teens. Parents can help by repeatedly talking to their teens about the difference between appearance and reality, by encouraging their teens to interact with peers face-to-face, and to use their bodies in active ways instead of focusing on the selfie.

The big question will be how Meta handles these damaging results. History and the courts have been less than forgiving of the head-in-the-sand approach of Big Tobacco.

This story has been updated to include news of state attorneys general filing lawsuits against Meta claiming the company knowingly put children at risk.

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Ethiopians file lawsuit against Meta over hate speech in war

BY CARA ANNA

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — Two Ethiopians have filed a lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, over hate speech they say was allowed and even promoted on the social media platform amid heated rhetoric over their country’s deadly Tigray conflict.

Former Amnesty International human rights researcher Fisseha Tekle is one petitioner in the case filed Wednesday and the other is the son of university professor Meareg Amare, who was killed weeks after posts on Facebook inciting violence against him.

The case was filed in neighboring Kenya, home to the platform’s content moderation operations related to Ethiopia. The lawsuit alleges that Meta hasn’t hired enough content moderators there, that it uses an algorithm that prioritizes hateful content and that it acts more slowly to crises in Africa than elsewhere in the world.

The lawsuit, also backed by Kenya-based legal organization the Katiba Institute, seeks the creation of a $1.6 billion fund for victims of hate speech.

A Facebook spokesman, Ben Walters, told The Associated Press they could not comment on the lawsuit because they haven’t received it. He shared a general statement: “We have strict rules which outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. Hate speech and incitement to violence are against these rules and we invest heavily in teams and technology to help us find and remove this content.” Facebook continues to develop its capabilities to catch violating content in Ethiopia’s most widely spoken languages, it said.

Ethiopia’s two-year Tigray conflict is thought to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The warring sides signed a peace deal last month.

“This legal action is a significant step in holding Meta to account for its harmful business model,” said Flavia Mwangovya of Amnesty International in a statement pointing out that the Facebook posts targeting its former researcher and the professor were not isolated cases.

The AP and more than a dozen other media outlets last year explored how Facebook had failed to quickly and effectively moderate hate speech in cases around the world, including in Ethiopia. The reports were based on internal documents obtained by whistleblower Frances Haugen.

Nigeria Regulator Seeks $70M Penalty In Lawsuit Against Meta

FILE - The exterior of the Meta Store is seen in Burlingame, Calif., on May 4, 2022. A Nigerian advertising regulator has accused Meta of publishing unauthorized adverts in the country, according to a suit in which it sought 30 billion naira ($70 million) sanction against the Facebook and Whatsapp owner .(AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

BY CHINEDU ASADU

ABUJA, NIGERIA (AP) — A Nigerian advertising regulator has sued Meta, accusing the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp of publishing unauthorized ads and seeking a 30 billion naira ($70 million) fine.

The lawsuit filed in a local court by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria, or ARCON, is the regulator’s latest action that analysts say could hurt businesses highly dependent on digital ads for their growth.

Nigerian advertising laws require the regulator to approve ads based on certain criteria with the involvement of an advertising practitioner in Africa’s largest economy.

“Before you put out anything, it should be vetted and approved by ARCON first before exposure,” the agency said Tuesday. “Anything that has not been vetted and approved by ARCON is a violation of our law.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on ongoing legal claims.

The regulator published some details from the court filings, including a request for a declaration “that the continued publication and exposure of various advertisements directed at the Nigerian market through Facebook and Instagram platforms by Meta Platforms Incorporated without ensuring same is vetted and approved before exposure is illegal, unlawful and a violation of the extant advertising Law in Nigeria.”

The Nigerian government said Meta displaying unvetted ads has cost the country a loss of revenue, without providing details.

The agency warned against “unethical and irresponsible advertising on Nigeria’s advertising space,” raising questions over what constitutes such advertising.

The court case against Meta comes about a year after the Nigerian government began moves to get social media networks to run local offices in the country. That followed a seven-month ban on Twitter, which the government had accused of allowing “persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”

Associated Press journalist Kelvin Chan contributed from London.

Twitter, Facebook Ban Fake Users; Some Had AI-created Photos

Image: IFTTT

BY MAE ANDERSON

NEW YORK (AP) — Twitter has identified and removed nearly 6,000 accounts that it said were part of a coordinated effort by Saudi government agencies and individuals to advance the country’s geopolitical interests.

Separately, Facebook said it removed hundreds of Facebook accounts, groups and pages linked to inauthentic behavior from two separate groups, one originating in the country of Georgia and one in Vietnam, which targeted people both in Vietnam and in the U.S.

Facebook said some of the accounts used profile photos generated by artificial intelligence and masqueraded as Americans. It is one of the first such misinformation efforts to use material generated by AI.

Tech companies have stepped up efforts to tackle misinformation on their services ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential elections. The efforts followed revelations that Russians bankrolled thousands of fake political ads during the 2016 elections to sow dissent among Americans.

Twitter’s and Facebook’s announcements underscore the fact that misinformation concerns aren’t limited to the U.S. and Russia.

In a blog post Friday, Twitter said the removed Saudi accounts were amplifying messages favorable to Saudi authorities, mainly through “aggressive liking, retweeting and replying.” While the majority of the content was in Arabic, Twitter said the tweets also amplified discussions about sanctions in Iran and appearances by Saudi government officials in Western media.

“Governments have started to launch influence campaigns the same ways commercial enterprises launch campaigns to sell detergent or cars,” said James Ludes, a national defense expert who teaches international relations and public policy at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.

He said the Russian efforts in 2016 showed it was possible to “actually change public attitudes through the targeted use of social media.”

While the attempts to root out the campaigns may seem like a game of whack-a-mole, he said companies have at least shown progress in taking steps to identify and root out manipulation campaigns run by foreign powers.

Twitter began archiving tweets and media it deems to be associated with known state-backed information operations in 2018. It shut 200,000 Chinese accounts that targeted Hong Kong protests in August.

The 5,929 accounts removed and added to the archives are part of a larger group of 88,000 accounts engaged in “spammy behavior” across a wide range of topics. But Twitter isn’t disclosing all of them because some might be legitimate accounts taken over through hacking.

The Twitter accounts were linked to a social media marketing firm in Saudi Arabia called Smaat that managed many government departments in Saudi Arabia. The accounts used third-party automated tools to amplify non-political content at high volumes. Twitter said that activity was used to mask the political maneuverings of the same accounts.

Samuel Woolley, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies disinformation, said that while the Saudi campaign used basic manipulation techniques, including the use of likes and retweets to give the illusion of popularity, the campaign’s size and scale were unusual. The existence of a thousands-strong army of Saudi accounts also show that social media companies still don’t have a good solution, he said, despite the progress they have made at identifying state-backed accounts.

“It’s really clear we have to do something about it,” he said. “It can’t just be after the fact. We have to get better about detecting in real time.”

Messages left with Saudi officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the country’s embassy in Washington were not immediately returned.

The Saudi government has used different tactics to control speech and keep reformers and others from organizing, including employing troll armies to harass and intimidate users online. It has also arrested and imprisoned Twitter users.

In September, Twitter suspended the account of the crown prince’s former top adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, who also served as director of the cyber security federation. As with Friday’s announcement, Twitter said that account had violated the company’s platform manipulation policy.

Last month, two former Twitter employees were charged with acting as agents of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government. The complaint details a coordinated effort by Saudi government officials to recruit employees at the social media giant to look up the private data of Twitter accounts, including email addresses linked to the accounts and internet protocol addresses that can give up a user’s location.

In terms of Facebook’s actions, Facebook said the Georgia group targeted domestic audiences and the Vietnam group focused mainly in the U.S., as well as Vietnamese-, Spanish- and Chinese-speaking audiences around the world.

The company said they created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing. To evade detection, they used a combination of fake and real accounts of people in the U.S. to manage pages and groups, the company said.

“We are making progress rooting out this abuse, but as we’ve said before, it’s an ongoing challenge,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post.

AP writers David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, and Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Zuckerberg Meets With Trump, Faces Tough Questions From Senators

Image: Zach Gibson/Getty

BY JOHN D. MCKINNON, LINDSAY WISE, REBECCA BALLHAUS

WASHINGTON (WALL STREE JOURNAL)—With his company under a regulatory spotlight, Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg scored a meeting at the White House with President Trump Thursday—but faced a chillier reception from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

A spokesman for Facebook said Mr. Zuckerberg was visiting Washington to meet with policy makers “to hear their concerns and talk about future internet regulation.” The spokesman said Mr. Zuckerberg’s meeting with the president was “constructive.”

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and White House social media director Dan Scavino also joined the meeting, a person familiar with the meeting said.

“Nice meeting with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in the Oval Office today,” Mr. Trump posted Thursday night on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, along with a photo of the president and Mr. Zuckerberg shaking hands.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Zuckerberg received an earful of complaints, and two and two influential lawmakers couldn’t find the time to meet with him.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said he challenged Mr. Zuckerberg to spin off its Instagram and WhatsApp units—two acquisitions that are now part of a government antitrust probe into Facebook.

“I said to him, ‘Prove that you’re serious…sell WhatsApp, and sell Instagram,’” Mr. Hawley said following his afternoon meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg. “I think it’s safe to say that he was not receptive to those suggestions,” he added.

Mr. Zuckerberg, clad in a dark suit and tie, was trailed throughout his Capitol Hill visit by a swarm of reporters and camera crews. He declined to comment.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Zuckerberg kicked off the trip by sparring with a group of senators at a private dinner. One attendee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), described the meeting as a mix of criticism and constructive dialogue over the tech industry’s “repeated failures” to protect election security and consumer privacy.

“We had [a] serious, substantive conversation even when we may have differed,” Mr. Blumenthal said in a statement. He added that he welcomed “the strong, constructive interest shown by Mr. Zuckerberg.”

Mr. Blumenthal has been sharply critical of Facebook, particularly over its privacy and election missteps of recent years.

Facebook declined to comment beyond a statement it issued on Wednesday saying that Mr. Zuckerberg would be in Washington “to meet with policy makers and talk about future internet regulation.”

Mr. Zuckerberg even had a few expected get-togethers fall through, mainly because Senate leaders decided not to hold votes on Thursday, leading many senators to head for the airport.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.), who heads the Senate consumer protection subcommittee, had planned to meet with Mr. Zuckerberg but decided to catch an early flight home instead. “They will definitely try and meet the next time he [Mr. Zuckerberg] is here,” a spokesman said.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii), the top Democrat on the Senate’s technology and internet subcommittee, also had been expected to meet with Mr. Zuckerberg, but they were unable to find a time to get together due to scheduling conflicts. Mr. Schatz had recently met with Mr. Zuckerberg in the senator’s Honolulu office, however.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s meetings were aimed at giving the Facebook co-founder a chance to pitch his own vision for moderate internet regulation and seek to placate lawmakers who are weighing stricter standards for lightly regulated platforms.

In the wake of a series of disclosures about questionable practices at Facebook and other internet companies, lawmakers have been considering stringent new regulation of platforms in areas such as user privacy and content moderation.

No action appears imminent on any of the measures. But one idea that has gained attention is placing new limits on the sweeping legal immunity that platforms enjoy for harms caused by their users. Mr. Hawley has been among those advocating such an approach.

Mr. Zuckerberg was also expected to pitch lawmakers on a different vision of internet regulation, one that includes more self-regulation by the companies. The visit also gave Mr. Zuckerberg a chance to tout progress in Facebook’s compliance with a recently announced $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy missteps.

Among the lawmakers who met with Mr. Zuckerberg was Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who is chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee. Facebook is under antitrust investigation by the FTC, and could soon face a separate investigation by the Justice Department. Mr. Lee has raised concerns about possible duplication of effort by the federal agencies.

Mr. Zuckerberg also met with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), the top Democrat on the powerful Commerce Committee. The two discussed data privacy and election security.

The visit represents Mr. Zuckerberg’s first foray into Capitol Hill since two days of hearings in spring 2018. At the time, following damaging revelations about Facebook’s privacy practices, Mr. Zuckerberg said that it was “inevitable that there will need to be some regulation.” But he also cautioned lawmakers, “You have to be careful about what regulations you put in place.”

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com and Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com

SOURCE: WSJ

Facebook Connected Her To A Tattooed Soldier In Iraq. Or So She Thought.

Akinola Bolaji, 35, in Lagos, Nigeria, said he has posed on Facebook as an American fisherman named Robert. Image: The New York Times.

BY JACK NICAS

FORT PIERCE, FLORIDA. (THE NEW YORK TIMES) — On a Monday afternoon in June 2017, Renee Holland was draped in an American flag at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting for a soldier she had befriended on Facebook.

The married 56-year-old had driven two hours from Delaware to pick him up. Their blossoming online friendship had prompted her to send him a care package and thousands of dollars in gift cards. She also wired him $5,000 for plane tickets to return home.

Now she was looking for a buff, tattooed man in uniform, just like in his Facebook photos. But his flight was not on the airport arrivals board. Then a ticket agent told her the flight didn’t exist.

From there, Ms. Holland said, it was a daze. She walked to her car, with “Welcome Home” written on the windows, and sobbed. She had spent much of her family’s savings on the phantom soldier. “There’s no way I can go home and tell my husband,” she remembered telling herself. She drove to a strip mall, bought sleeping pills and vodka, and downed them.

The man in the Facebook pictures had no idea who Ms. Holland was. His real identity was Sgt. Daniel Anonsen of the Marine Corps, and he had joined the social network a decade earlier to keep in touch with friends and family in Maryland. Now he was contending with dozens of Facebook impostor accounts using stolen photos of him at the gym, at his brother’s wedding and in Afghanistan.

“For every one that I deleted, there was 10 more that were popping up,” he said. “It turns my stomach.”

Ms. Holland and Mr. Anonsen represent two sides of a fraud that has flourished on Facebook and Instagram, where scammers impersonate real American service members to cheat vulnerable and lonely women out of their money. The deception has entangled the United States military, defrauded thousands of victims and smeared the reputations of soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. It has also sometimes led to tragedy.

The scheme stands out for its audacity. While fraud has proliferated on Facebook for years, those running the military romance scams are taking on not only one of the world’s most influential companies, but also the most powerful military — and succeeding. Many scammers operate from their phones in Nigeria and other African nations, working several victims at the same time. In interviews in Nigeria, six men told The New York Times that the love hoaxes were lucrative and low risk.

© Provided by The New York Times Company Messages between Maria and “Jacob Barrett.” The texts have been altered to redact identifying information.
“Definitely there is always conscience,” said Akinola Bolaji, 35, who has conned people online since he was 15, including by posing on Facebook as an American fisherman named Robert. “But poverty will not make you feel the pain.”

Facebook has long had a mission to “connect the world.” But in the process, it has created a global gathering place where the crooks outnumber the cops.

For digital criminals, Facebook has become a one-stop shop. It has plenty of photos of American service members. Creating an impostor account can be easy. Facebook groups for single women and widows are full of targets. Scammers can message hundreds of potential victims. And they congregate in their own Facebook groups to sell fake accounts, Photoshopped images and scripts for pulling off the cons.

“There are so many people out there that are lonely, newly divorced, maybe widowed,” said Kathy Waters, head of a group called Advocating Against Romance Scams. “Everybody wants somebody to love and to listen to them and hear them. And these scammers know the right words to say.”

Facebook said it requires people to use their real identities on its sites. To eliminate impostor accounts, it has invested in technology and more human reviewers. The company works with the authorities to prosecute scammers. Billions of fake Facebook accounts have been blocked over the past year, the company said, though its estimate for the number of active fakes has steadily risen to about 120 million. It declined to disclose a figure for Instagram.

“That job is not finished and we are committed to sharing our progress,” Facebook said in a statement.

Kim Joiner, a deputy assistant to the secretary of defense who oversees the military’s social media accounts, said her team works with Facebook to remove impostors and was pleased with the company’s response. “I’m absolutely satisfied,” she said.

When shown that searches by The Times for three top American generals on Facebook and Instagram had yielded more than 120 impersonators, Ms. Joiner said it was “disturbing.” She said she did not know why the fakes were not eradicated.

“I mean, the numbers are astounding,” she said.

‘My wife’

To her friends and family, Ms. Holland was known as trusting and impulsive. Born in Philadelphia, she had spent time in Arizona and Missouri, working as a gardener and in an auto shop. She met her fifth husband, Mark Holland, when she offered him a ride off the side of the road.

In 2001, she moved to Delaware to care for her sick mother. When her mother died in September 2016, Ms. Holland found herself depressed and with free time. She noticed her sister glued to her smartphone, scrolling through Facebook. So she bought a smartphone, too, and created a Facebook profile.

A few weeks later, Ms. Holland got a Facebook message from a stranger. The profile showed a man in uniform named Michael Chris. He told her he disarmed bombs in Iraq.

Ms. Holland said she initially felt uneasy, but the conversation flowed. Mr. Chris told her about life at war. She made him laugh.

“He kept saying, ‘You’re really funny. And you make it easier for me just to know that somebody is at home that I can talk to,” she said. “How cool is this that I could really make somebody feel better?”

Over several months, their relationship deepened. Ms. Holland said she felt motherly. Mr. Chris began calling her “my wife.”

What Ms. Holland did not know was that the man in Mr. Chris’s photos was actually Mr. Anonsen — and that his images were all over the internet.

Mr. Anonsen grew up in suburban Maryland, about two hours from Ms. Holland’s Delaware home. The oldest of four boys, he said he had “wanted to be in the military since the day I could remember.” After graduating high school in 2006, he joined the Marines.

In 2010, while browsing Facebook, he discovered hundreds of unsolicited messages from women he did not know. Many said they loved him. They asked why, after months of correspondence, he was not responding. They implored him to write back.

Confused, Mr. Anonsen searched for his name on Facebook and found dozens of impostor accounts. The problem quickly mushroomed. The women who thought he had duped them harassed his parents online. A new real-life girlfriend grew suspicious.

“She started questioning everything about what I was doing,” said Mr. Anonsen, now 31. “It actually ended our relationship.”

Mostly searching variations of his name, The Times found 65 profiles on Facebook and Instagram that used Mr. Anonsen’s photos. When The Times reported the fakes to the sites, 24 were removed over more than six months.

Many more accounts have used Mr. Anonsen’s photos with different names. One used the name Michael Chris — and began messaging Ms. Holland in late 2016.

Several months into their online chats, Mr. Chris asked Ms. Holland for money. She bought him iTunes gift cards so, he said, he could buy more minutes on his cellphone. She sent money for beer for his birthday. And she paid for medicine for what he said was a sick daughter, Annabelle, in California.

In June 2017, she wired $5,000 for Mr. Chris and a friend to fly to Philadelphia from Iraq. She sneaked the money from a pile of cash she and her husband hid in their bedroom, which represented their life savings. Mr. Chris promised to pay her back when he got there. He never arrived.

That was when Ms. Holland took the sleeping pills and vodka. Days later, she awoke in a hospital bed. “You open your eyes, and the person you didn’t want to face the most is sitting next to you,” she said. “Mark.”

Mr. Holland knew about his wife’s Facebook friend. An Army Airborne veteran himself, with tours in Honduras and South Korea, he once helped Ms. Holland prepare a care package of snacks, underwear and foot powder for Mr. Chris. (The package was returned.) Now he said he realized his wife’s relationship with this man had gone further than he understood.

“I had a lot of anger,” Mr. Holland, 53, said in an interview last year. “But I also had a little bit of compassion because I knew how bad she felt.”

When Ms. Holland returned home from the hospital, her relationship with her husband and her then 82-year-old father, whom she was caring for, was strained. One person kept talking to her: Mr. Chris.

“He wanted to make it up to me,” she said. “He was going to sit there, look my husband in the eye and tell him how sorry he was and pay him back.”

Ms. Holland said she had been convinced that it was a scam. But Mr. Chris swore to her that he had been delayed by a military operation. She received an email from someone claiming to be Gen. Stephen Townsend of the Army, confirming the story. There were soon new photos of Mr. Chris injured in war, documents showing he was due big insurance payments and promises she would be reimbursed for more than she had lost.

She just needed to get him home.

Twice more, Ms. Holland sent money for airfare, partly with credit cards, without her husband’s knowledge. Mr. Chris never showed.

The Hollands lost $26,000 to $30,000. To start afresh, they moved to Fort Pierce last year.

But the strains remained. Mr. Holland was arrested on domestic violence charges in August 2018, according to a police report. Ms. Holland dropped the charges. She said in an interview last year that there had been another incident in 2017.

On Dec. 23, 2018, Mr. Holland shot and killed Ms. Holland and her father at their new home. Mr. Holland then turned the gun on himself.

The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office said Mr. Holland left no indication of motive.

Out of their hands

By the end of 2017, Mr. Anonsen had quit Facebook and Instagram in frustration.

He estimated that he had reported roughly 200 impostor accounts to Facebook. The company removed some, but said many didn’t violate its rules. When he sent messages to Facebook pleading for help, he received automated responses.

Mr. Anonsen told his platoon commanders about the issue, then his battalion’s intelligence officers. All said it was out of their hands.

“I thought military intelligence would be able to type a couple of zeros and ones and it would all go away, but it’s not that simple,” said Mr. Anonsen, who left the military last year and now works on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

His experience reflects the futility of stopping military romance scams: No one appears to be able to help.

“I don’t know what else we can be doing,” said Ms. Joiner, the Defense Department official. She called Facebook impostors “the new norm” and said the Pentagon combats them with education and reporting fake accounts to Facebook.

On Facebook and Instagram, The Times recently found more than 120 accounts impersonating three of the military’s highest-ranking generals. One Instagram account posing as Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had posted a photo of a child in a hospital bed, asking for donations to Nigeria via Western Union.

Ms. Joiner said when the Pentagon reported fakes, Facebook took them down. Yet when The Times reported 46 of the accounts to Instagram, the site responded within 24 hours that none violated its rules, without explaining why.

The Times later provided the list of impostors to the Pentagon. Four months later, 25 accounts were still active.

“I just don’t know how to influence it more than we are,” Ms. Joiner said.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which investigates crimes involving Army personnel, said it fields calls from hundreds of victims of romance scams a month. But it said its investigators cannot look into those reports because the perpetrators and victims are civilians.

“Our jurisdiction stops there,” said Chris Grey, a spokesman for the division. He said they distribute public warnings and urge service members to protect their identities.

There are no exact figures on how many service members and civilians have been affected. The F.B.I. said it received nearly 18,500 complaints from victims of romance or similar internet scams last year, with reported losses exceeding $362 million, up 71 percent from 2017.

The F.B.I. investigates a fraction of those reports, said James Barnacle, head of the F.B.I.’s money laundering unit. Many victims lose a few thousand dollars, and “it’s really hard for an agency like the F.B.I. to work something that low, just because there’s so many cases that come in our door,” he said.

Facebook said it constantly removes impostor accounts with the help of software, human reviewers and user reports. Its software also scans for scammers and locks accounts until owners can provide proof of identity. It has a video warning people of scams.

The hoax has created a brigade of victims’ advocates. One is the group Advocating Against Romance Scams, run by Ms. Waters, a health care worker from Fresno, Calif., and Bryan Denny, a retired Army colonel.

Since 2017, they have met five times with Facebook and with 11 separate congressional offices to lobby for a law to hold social media sites responsible for such scams.

Since last year, Facebook has used Colonel Denny in tests of a new system to quickly remove impostors of commonly impersonated service members. He provided Facebook with 51 photos that his imitators used. Months later, he said, the fakes still showed up.

In an email to Ms. Waters and Colonel Denny last year, a Facebook spokeswoman wrote, “I understand what it must look like to you guys. I hope we can redeem ourselves.”

Finding Michael Chris

Ms. Holland left behind a trail of clues about Mr. Chris.

It started with receipts from Western Union and MoneyGram, which wire money around the world. Those revealed that Ms. Holland had not sent money directly to Mr. Chris, but to people in places like New Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Mr. Chris had told Ms. Holland they were “Army agents.” In reality, the F.B.I.’s Mr. Barnacle said, they were probably “money mules” who laundered payments to confuse victims and the authorities. They could be accomplices or victims themselves.

One of the names on Ms. Holland’s receipts was Maria, a Greek immigrant in New Jersey. She spoke on the condition of anonymity to hide her involvement in the scam from her adult children.

Maria, 57, said she joined Facebook after her husband died in 2010. She quickly heard from men in uniform and developed a relationship with a supposed Army sergeant named Jacob. He showered her with compliments, called her “my Queen” — and then requested money.

Over two years, Maria sent roughly $15,000. She pawned her jewelry and stopped paying her mortgage. When her bank blocked her from sending more, her scammer persuaded her to forward a payment from someone else: Ms. Holland.

“Am tired disappointed depressed I lost everything I don’t know what ales to do,” Maria wrote to her scammer in messages reviewed by The Times.

“Just give me your trust one more time,” the person wrote.

“Okay one time,” Maria responded.

In 2017, the bank foreclosed on Maria’s house. To save her home, she increased her working hours at a factory to seven days a week.

“I don’t know how humans can do that to another human,” she said.

The ‘Yahoo Boys’

All of the clues ultimately pointed to Nigeria.

Maria’s receipts showed her payments went to someone in Nigeria named Victor Ohaja. That name had also appeared in Ms. Holland’s receipts. In her final payment to Mr. Chris, $350 went to Mr. Ohaja. His connection to the person purporting to be Mr. Chris was unclear.

According to the Internet Protocol address for the person messaging as Mr. Chris — a kind of online identification number that can provide a rough location — he appeared to be in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Times messaged the person and presented its reporting about his scam. “Nice job,” he responded. “No one is perfect.” Then he logged off and has not returned.

Nigeria has become synonymous with online scams, fairly or not. Easy internet access, poverty and English are widespread. And those who learn the trade pass it to others, said the men who talked to The Times about the internet schemes.

They called their victims “clients” and themselves “Yahoo Boys,” a nod to the online chat service Yahoo Messenger where love scams gained traction nearly 20 years ago. Now they ply their trade on Facebook and Instagram, they said, because that’s where the people are.

Three Nigerian men, age 25, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they conned people on Facebook to pay for their education at Lagos State University.

They said they previously made $28 to $42 a month in administrative jobs or pressing shirts. With love hoaxes, the money was inconsistent but more plentiful. One estimated he made about $14,000 in two years; another took in $28,000 in three years.

Nigerian authorities have publicized raids on Yahoo Boys, but the scammers said they do not worry. Some said they paid bribes to evade arrest.

Facebook was becoming tougher on their profession, they added, but Instagram was easy to elude. If their accounts were blocked, they bought new ones; a six-month-old profile cost about $14, one said.

Adedeji Oyenuga, a senior lecturer in criminology at Lagos State University who has studied Yahoo Boys, said Nigeria’s older generation largely rejects the scammers, but many youths embrace them. “Girls would rather date a Yahoo Boy,” he said.

The trail of Ms. Holland’s and Maria’s money led finally to Owerri, a city of 1.2 million people in southern Nigeria.

During his cash pickups at banks in Owerri, Mr. Ohaja left four nearby addresses and three phone numbers, according to an official at a money-transfer company, who declined to be identified because the information was confidential.

There was another name. Maria’s scammer had once instructed her to send a package to an Orji James Ogbonnaya at a different Owerri address. Her scammer also sent a phone number for Mr. Ogbonnaya that was the same number that Mr. Ohaja left during one of his pickups.

In Owerri, the addresses led to dead ends: a convenience store, an electronics shop, a DHL location and an office building.

“There’s no name like that here,” said Peace Benjamin, the building’s security officer. “It’s a trick. Don’t you understand?”

When The Times tried the phone numbers, one left by Mr. Ohaja was disconnected; another went to a lecturer at the local university, who expressed confusion. The number linked to both Mr. Ohaja and Mr. Ogbonnaya was answered by a deep-voiced man who identified himself as Mr. Ogbonnaya. He hung up when he learned The Times was calling.

“Please. I don’t know you. I don’t have any information related to what you’re looking for,” he texted later. “Don’t bug me. I really need some peace.”

That night, Mr. Ogbonnaya called back. He denied any connection to Yahoo Boys. “I’m just a delivery man,” he said.

Last month, the same man answered the phone again.

“I don’t know anybody like that,” he said, when referred to as Mr. Ogbonnaya. “I’m Chris. You can call me Chris.”

Jack Nicas reported from Fort Pierce, Fla.; Washington, D.C.; New York; Seattle; San Francisco; Belton, Mo.; and Lagos and Owerri, Nigeria. Bukky Omoseni and Mayowa Tijani contributed reporting from Lagos. Tony Iyare contributed reporting from Owerri. Susan Beachy contributed research.

Jack Nicas reported from Fort Pierce, Fla.; Washington D.C.; New York; Seattle; San Francisco; Belton, Mo.; and Lagos and Owerri, Nigeria. Bukky Omoseni and Mayowa Tijani contributed reporting from Lagos. Tony Iyare contributed reporting from Owerri. Susan Beachy contributed research.

Facebook Auto-Generates Videos Celebrating Extremist Images

Pages from a confidential whistleblower's report obtained by The Associated Press are photographed Tuesday, May 7, 2019, in Washington. Facebook likes to give the impression that it’s stopping the vast majority of extremist posts before users ever see them., but the confidential whistleblower’s complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success. Even worse, it shows that the company is making use of propaganda by militant groups to auto-generate videos and pages that could be used for networking by extremists. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

BY DESMOND BUTLER, BARBARA ORTUTAY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The animated video begins with a photo of the black flags of jihad. Seconds later, it flashes highlights of a year of social media posts: plaques of anti-Semitic verses, talk of retribution and a photo of two men carrying more jihadi flags while they burn the stars and stripes.

It wasn’t produced by extremists; it was created by Facebook. In a clever bit of self-promotion, the social media giant takes a year of a user’s content and auto-generates a celebratory video. In this case, the user called himself “Abdel-Rahim Moussa, the Caliphate.”

“Thanks for being here, from Facebook,” the video concludes in a cartoon bubble before flashing the company’s famous “thumbs up.”

Facebook likes to give the impression that it’s staying ahead of extremists by taking down their posts, often before users even see them. But a confidential whistleblower’s complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained by The Associated Press alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success. Even worse, it shows that the company is inadvertently making use of propaganda by militant groups to auto-generate videos and pages that could be used for networking by extremists.

A banner reading "The Islamic State" is displayed on the Facebook page of a user identifying himself as Nawan Al-Farancsa. The page was still live Tuesday, May 7, 2019, when the screen grab was made. Facebook says it has robust systems in place to remove content from extremist groups, but a sealed whistleblower's complaint reviewed by the AP says banned content remains on the web and is easy to find. (Facebook via AP)

According to the complaint, over a five-month period last year, researchers monitored pages by users who affiliated themselves with groups the U.S. State Department has designated as terrorist organizations. In that period, 38% of the posts with prominent symbols of extremist groups were removed. In its own review, the AP found that as of this month, much of the banned content cited in the study — an execution video, images of severed heads, propaganda honoring martyred militants — slipped through the algorithmic web and remained easy to find on Facebook.

The complaint is landing as Facebook tries to stay ahead of a growing array of criticism over its privacy practices and its ability to keep hate speech, live-streamed murders and suicides off its service. In the face of criticism, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken of his pride in the company’s ability to weed out violent posts automatically through artificial intelligence. During an earnings call last month, for instance, he repeated a carefully worded formulation that Facebook has been employing.

“In areas like terrorism, for al-Qaida and ISIS-related content, now 99 percent of the content that we take down in the category our systems flag proactively before anyone sees it,” he said. Then he added: “That’s what really good looks like.”

Pages from a confidential whistleblower's report obtained by The Associated Press are photographed Tuesday, May 7, 2019, in Washington. Facebook likes to give the impression that it’s stopping the vast majority of extremist posts before users ever see them., but the confidential whistleblower’s complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success. Even worse, it shows that the company is making use of propaganda by militant groups to auto-generate videos and pages that could be used for networking by extremists. The researchers in the SEC complaint identified over 30 auto-generated pages for white supremacist groups, whose content Facebook prohibits. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

The research behind the SEC complaint is aimed at spotlighting glaring flaws in the company’s approach. Last year, researchers began monitoring users who explicitly identified themselves as members of extremist groups. It wasn’t hard to document. Some of these people even list the extremist groups as their employers. One profile heralded by the black flag of an al-Qaida affiliated group listed his employer, perhaps facetiously, as Facebook. The profile that included the auto-generated video with the flag burning also had a video of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri urging jihadi groups not to fight among themselves.

While the study is far from comprehensive — in part because Facebook rarely makes much of its data publicly available — researchers involved in the project say the ease of identifying these profiles using a basic keyword search and the fact that so few of them have been removed suggest that Facebook’s claims that its systems catch most extremist content are not accurate.

“I mean, that’s just stretching the imagination to beyond incredulity,” says Amr Al Azm, one of the researchers involved in the project. “If a small group of researchers can find hundreds of pages of content by simple searches, why can’t a giant company with all its resources do it?”

Al Azm, a professor of history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio, has also directed a group in Syria documenting the looting and smuggling of antiquities.

Facebook concedes that its systems are not perfect, but says it’s making improvements.

“After making heavy investments, we are detecting and removing terrorism content at a far higher success rate than even two years ago,” the company said in a statement. “We don’t claim to find everything and we remain vigilant in our efforts against terrorist groups around the world.”

But as a stark indication of how easily users can evade Facebook, one page from a user called “Nawan al-Farancsa” has a header whose white lettering against a black background says in English “The Islamic State.” The banner is punctuated with a photo of an explosive mushroom cloud rising from a city.

A Facebook page for a user that translates into English as "Lights of bitterness" that lists the user as a doctor at the Islamic State. The page was still live as of Tuesday, May 7, 2019, when the screen grab was made. Facebook says it has robust systems in place to remove content from extremist groups, but a whistleblower's complaint reviewed by the AP says banned content remains on the web and easy to find. (Facebook via AP)

The profile should have caught the attention of Facebook — as well as counter-intelligence agencies. It was created in June 2018, lists the user as coming from Chechnya, once a militant hotspot. It says he lived in Heidelberg, Germany, and studied at a university in Indonesia. Some of the user’s friends also posted militant content.

The page, still up in recent days, apparently escaped Facebook’s systems, because of an obvious and long-running evasion of moderation that Facebook should be adept at recognizing: The letters were not searchable text but embedded in a graphic block. But the company says its technology scans audio, video and text — including when it is embedded — for images that reflect violence, weapons or logos of prohibited groups.

The social networking giant has endured a rough two years beginning in 2016, when Russia’s use of social media to meddle with the U.S. presidential elections came into focus. Zuckerberg initially downplayed the role Facebook played in the influence operation by Russian intelligence, but the company later apologized.

Facebook says it now employs 30,000 people who work on its safety and security practices, reviewing potentially harmful material and anything else that might not belong on the site. Still, the company is putting a lot of its faith in artificial intelligence and its systems’ ability to eventually weed out bad stuff without the help of humans. The new research suggests that goal is a long way away and some critics allege that the company is not making a sincere effort.

When the material isn’t removed, it’s treated the same as anything else posted by Facebook’s 2.4 billion users — celebrated in animated videos, linked and categorized and recommended by algorithms.

But it’s not just the algorithms that are to blame. The researchers found that some extremists are using Facebook’s “Frame Studio” to post militant propaganda. The tool lets people decorate their profile photos within graphic frames — to support causes or celebrate birthdays, for instance. Facebook says that those framed images must be approved by the company before they are posted.

Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, who advises the Counter-Extremism Project, a New York and London-based group focused on combatting extremist messaging, says that Facebook’s artificial intelligence system is failing. He says the company is not motivated to tackle the problem because it would be expensive.

“The whole infrastructure is fundamentally flawed,” he said. “And there’s very little appetite to fix it because what Facebook and the other social media companies know is that once they start being responsible for material on their platforms it opens up a whole can of worms.”

Another Facebook auto-generation function gone awry scrapes employment information from user’s pages to create business pages. The function is supposed to produce pages meant to help companies network, but in many cases they are serving as a branded landing space for extremist groups. The function allows Facebook users to like pages for extremist organizations, including al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and the Somali-based al-Shabab, effectively providing a list of sympathizers for recruiters.

At the top of an auto-generated page for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the AP found a photo of the damaged hull of the USS Cole, which was bombed by al-Qaida in a 2000 attack off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors. It’s the defining image in AQAP’s own propaganda. The page includes the Wikipedia entry for the group and had been liked by 277 people when last viewed this week.

As part of the investigation for the complaint, Al Azm’s researchers in Syria looked closely at the profiles of 63 accounts that liked the auto-generated page for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a group that merged from militant groups in Syria, including the al-Qaida affiliated al-Nusra Front. The researchers were able to confirm that 31 of the profiles matched real people in Syria. Some of them turned out to be the same individuals Al Azm’s team was monitoring in a separate project to document the financing of militant groups through antiquities smuggling.

Facebook also faces a challenge with U.S. hate groups. In March, the company announced that it was expanding its prohibited content to also include white nationalist and white separatist content— previously it only took action with white supremacist content. It says that it has banned more than 200 white supremacist groups. But it’s still easy to find symbols of supremacy and racial hatred.

The researchers in the SEC complaint identified over 30 auto-generated pages for white supremacist groups, whose content Facebook prohibits. They include “The American Nazi Party” and the “New Aryan Empire.” A page created for the “Aryan Brotherhood Headquarters” marks the office on a map and asks whether users recommend it. One endorser posted a question: “How can a brother get in the house.”

Even supremacists flagged by law enforcement are slipping through the net. Following a sweep of arrests beginning in October, federal prosecutors in Arkansas indicted dozens of members of a drug trafficking ring linked to the New Aryan Empire. A legal document from February paints a brutal picture of the group, alleging murder, kidnapping and intimidation of witnesses that in one instance involved using a searing-hot knife to scar someone’s face. It also alleges the group used Facebook to discuss New Aryan Empire business.

But many of the individuals named in the indictment have Facebook pages that were still up in recent days. They leave no doubt of the users’ white supremacist affiliation, posting images of Hitler, swastikas and a numerical symbol of the New Aryan Empire slogan, “To The Dirt” — the members’ pledge to remain loyal to the end. One of the group’s indicted leaders, Jeffrey Knox, listed his job as “stomp down Honky.” Facebook then auto-generated a “stomp down Honky” business page.

Social media companies have broad protection in U.S. law from liability stemming from the content that users post on their sites. But Facebook’s role in generating videos and pages from extremist content raises questions about exposure. Legal analysts contacted by the AP differed on whether the discovery could open the company up to lawsuits.

At a minimum, the research behind the SEC complaint illustrates the company’s limited approach to combatting online extremism. The U.S. State Department lists dozens of groups as “designated foreign terrorist organizations” but Facebook in its public statements says it focuses its efforts on two, the Islamic State group and al-Qaida. But even with those two targets, Facebook’s algorithms often miss the names of affiliated groups. Al Azm says Facebook’s method seems to be less effective with Arabic script.

For instance, a search in Arabic for “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” turns up not only posts, but an auto-generated business page. One user listed his occupation as “Former Sniper” at “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” written in Arabic. Another user evaded Facebook’s cull by reversing the order of the countries in the Arabic for ISIS or “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

John Kostyack, a lawyer with the National Whistleblower Center in Washington who represents the anonymous plaintiff behind the complaint, said the goal is to make Facebook take a more robust approach to counteracting extremist propaganda.

“Right now we’re hearing stories of what happened in New Zealand and Sri Lanka — just heartbreaking massacres where the groups that came forward were clearly openly recruiting and networking on Facebook and other social media,” he said. “That’s not going to stop unless we develop a public policy to deal with it, unless we create some kind of sense of corporate social responsibility.”

Farid, the digital forensics expert, says that Facebook built its infrastructure without thinking through the dangers stemming from content and is now trying to retrofit solutions.

“The policy of this platform has been: ‘Move fast and break things.’ I actually think that for once their motto was actually accurate,” he says. “The strategy was grow, grow, grow, profit, profit, profit and then go back and try to deal with whatever problems there are.”

Barbara Ortutay reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael contributed to this report.

Follow the authors on Twitter at https://twitter.com/desmondbutler and https://twitter.com/BarbaraOrtutay

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Facebook Wants To Install A Massive Fiber Optic Cable Around Africa

BY DAVID NATH

FOX NEWS

Facebook has dominated the tech news for months with a variety of privacy issues, from hacked accounts to user data stolen to Russian bots spying on us. But now the social media giant is making headlines for a different reason. Facebook officials say they want to install a massive underwater fiber optic cable, just not for the U.S.

The multi-stage project is reportedly named "Simba" - yes, like "Simba" from The Lion King. Its goal is to connect the entire continent of Africa to the internet, increasing accessibility while also driving down bandwidth prices significantly, which could make it easier to sign up new users. And it could be a major disruption to the current service provider model. For the most part, internet service connects continents by way of underwater fiber optic cables capable of carrying massive amounts of data. There are a dozen such cables between the Northeastern United States and Europe alone, and many more connecting the hubs of Asia and the Mideast.

But getting into the fiber optic business would be a big jump for Facebook - one already made by some of their rivals. Google has a major investment in running fiber optic cables through its subsidiary, Google Fiber. But Google's plan is to provide far more connectivity than is needed at the moment, hoping to avoid costly upgrades; it's a way of future-proofing what is expected to be an expensive and labor-intensive process. In contrast, Amazon has announced they want to blanket the globe with high-speed internet service using thousands of small satellites, not fiber-optics.

As for when the ring of fiber will be placed around Africa, it's hard to say. The details of the project are still being worked out and there's an obvious lack of infrastructure in many areas at the moment. But Facebook's 'Whatsapp' messenger program is already popular in the region, providing a potential blueprint for how to proceed with the "Simba" project.

Facebook, Gogle Face Widening Crackdown Over Online Content

In this April 18, 2017 file photo, conference workers speak in front of a demo booth at Facebook's annual F8 developer conference, in San Jose, Calif. The U.K. for the first time on Monday April 8, 2019, proposed direct regulation of social media companies, with senior executives potentially facing fines if they fail to block damaging content such as terrorist propaganda or images of child abuse. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

BY DANICA KIRKA, KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — Tech giants like Facebook and Google came under increasing pressure in Europe on Monday when countries proposed stricter rules to force them to block extreme material such as terrorist propaganda and child porn.

Britain called for a first-of-its-kind watchdog for social media that could fine executives and even ban companies. And a European Union parliamentary committee approved a bill giving internet companies an hour to remove terror-related material or face fines that could reach into the billions.

“We are forcing these firms to clean up their act once and for all,” said British Home Secretary Sajid Javid, whose department collaborated on Britain’s proposal.

Opponents warned the British and EU measures could stifle innovation and strengthen the dominance of technology giants because smaller companies won’t have the money to comply. That, in turn, could turn Google and Facebook into the web’s censors, they said.

The push to make the big companies responsible for the torrent of material they carry has largely been driven by Europeans. But it picked up momentum after the March 15 mosque shootings in New Zealand that killed 50 people and were livestreamed for 17 minutes. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the attacks in the 24 hours afterward.

The U.S., where government action is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of the press, has taken a more hands-off approach, though on Tuesday, a House committee will press Google and Facebook executives on whether they are doing enough to curb the spread of hate crimes and white nationalism.

Australia last week made it a crime for social media platforms not to quickly remove “abhorrent violent material.” The offense would be punishable by three years in prison and a fine of 10.5 million Australian dollars ($7.5 million), or 10% of the platform’s annual revenue, whichever is larger. New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner wants his country to so the same.

The British plan would require social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to protect people who use their sites from “harmful content.” The plan, which includes the creation of an independent regulator funded by a tax on internet companies, will be subject to public comment for three months before the government publishes draft legislation.

“No one in the world has done this before, and it’s important that we get it right,” Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright told the BBC.

Facebook’s head of public policy in Britain, Rebecca Stimson, said the goal of the new rules should be to protect society while also supporting innovation and freedom of speech.

“These are complex issues to get right, and we look forward to working with the government and Parliament to ensure new regulations are effective,” she said.

Britain will consider imposing financial penalties similar to those under the EU’s online data privacy law, which permits fines of up to 4% of a company’s annual worldwide revenue, Wright said. In extreme cases, the government may also seek to fine individual company directors and prevent companies from operating in Britain.

Under the EU legislation that cleared an initial hurdle in Brussels, any internet companies that fail to remove terrorist content within an hour of being notified by authorities would face similar 4% penalties. EU authorities came up with the idea last year after attacks highlighted the growing trend of online radicalization.

The bill would apply to companies providing services to EU citizens, whether or not those businesses are based in the EU’s 28 member countries. It still needs further approval, including from the full European Parliament.

It faces heavy opposition from digital rights organizations, tech industry groups and some lawmakers, who said the 60-minute deadline is impractical and would lead companies to go too far and remove even lawful material.

“Instead, we call for a more pragmatic approach with removals happening ‘as soon as possible,’ to protect citizens’ rights and competitiveness,” said EDIMA, a European trade group for new media and internet companies.

Opponents said the measure also places a bigger burden on smaller internet companies than on giants like Facebook and Google, which already have automated content filters. To help smaller web companies, the bill was modified to give them an extra 12 hours for their first offense, a measure opponents said didn’t go far enough.

Mark Skilton, a professor at England’s Warwick Business School, urged regulators to pursue new methods such as artificial intelligence that could do a better job of tackling the problem.

“Issuing large fines and hitting companies with bigger legal threats is taking a 20th-century bullwhip approach to a problem that requires a nuanced solution,” he said. “It needs machine learning tools to manage the 21st-century problems of the internet.”

Wright said Britain’s proposed social-media regulator would be expected to take freedom of speech into account while trying to prevent harm.

“What we’re talking about here is user-generated content, what people put online, and companies that facilitate access to that kind of material,” he said. “So this is not about journalism. This is about an unregulated space that we need to control better to keep people safer.”

Facebook Left Millions Of Passwords Readable By Employees

In this Aug. 21, 2018, file photo a Facebook start page is shown on a smartphone in Surfside, Fla. Facebook said Thursday, March 21, 2019, that it stored millions of its users’ passwords in plain text for years. The acknowledgement from the social media giant came after a security researcher posted about the issue online. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

BY BARBARA ORTUTAY & FRANK BAJAK

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook left millions of user passwords readable by its employees for years, the company acknowledged Thursday after a security researcher exposed the lapse .

By storing passwords in readable plain text, Facebook violated fundamental computer-security practices. Those call for organizations and websites to save passwords in a scrambled form that makes it almost impossible to recover the original text.


“There is no valid reason why anyone in an organization, especially the size of Facebook, needs to have access to users’ passwords in plain text,” said cybersecurity expert Andrei Barysevich of Recorded Future.

Facebook said there is no evidence its employees abused access to this data. But thousands of employees could have searched them. The company said the passwords were stored on internal company servers, where no outsiders could access them.

The incident reveals yet another huge and basic oversight at a company that insists it is a responsible guardian for the personal data of its 2.2 billion users worldwide.

The security blog KrebsOnSecurity said Facebook may have left the passwords of some 600 million Facebook users vulnerable. In a blog post , Facebook said it will likely notify “hundreds of millions” of Facebook Lite users, millions of Facebook users and tens of thousands of Instagram users that their passwords were stored in plain text.

Facebook Lite is a version designed for people with older phones or low-speed internet connections. It is used primarily in developing countries.

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted a new ”privacy-focused vision ” for the social network that would emphasize private communication over public sharing. The company wants to encourage small groups of people to carry on encrypted conversations that neither Facebook nor any other outsider can read.

The fact that the company couldn’t manage to do something as simple as encrypting passwords, however, raises questions about its ability to manage more complex encryption issues — such in messaging — flawlessly.Facebook said it discovered the problem in January. But security researcher Brian Krebs wrote that in some cases the passwords had been stored in plain text since 2012. Facebook Lite launched in 2015 and Facebook bought Instagram in 2012.

Recorded Future’s Barysevich said he could not recall any major company caught leaving so many passwords exposed internally. He said he’s seen a number of instances where much smaller organizations made such information readily available — not just to programmers but also to customer support teams.

Security analyst Troy Hunt, who runs the “haveibeenpwned.com” data breach website, said that the situation is embarrassing for Facebook, but that there’s no serious, practical impact unless an adversary gained access to the passwords. But Facebook has had major breaches, most recently in September when attackers accessed some 29 million accounts .

Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, said storing passwords in plain text is “unfortunately more common than most of the industry talks about” and tends to happen when developers are trying to rid a system of bugs.

He said the Facebook blog post suggests storing passwords in plain text may have been “a sanctioned practice,” although he said it’s also possible a “rogue development team” was to blame.

Hunt and Krebs both likened Facebook’s failure to similar stumbles last year on a far smaller scale at Twitter and Github; the latter is a site where developers store code and track projects. In those cases, software bugs were blamed for accidentally storing plaintext passwords in internal logs.

Facebook’s normal procedure for passwords is to store them encoded, the company noted Thursday in its blog post.

That’s good to know, although Facebook engineers apparently added code that defeated the safeguard, said security researcher Rob Graham. “They have all the proper locks on the doors, but somebody left the window open,” he said.

Bajak reported from Boston.