Eastern Europeans are trolling American Christians

[MTSkiBum 1,593]

Probably not news, except for how large of audience they have, 75 million users a month and 19 of the top 20 groups.  Facebook is clearly the problem with America today. Facebook needs to go back to being a place to share photos with friends/family and possibly keep their marketplace.

 

https://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/report-19-top-christian-pages-on-facebook-were-run-by-eastern-european-troll-farms.html

 

According to Relevant Magazine, the groups are largely based in Kosovo and Macedonia and attempt to target American Christians with “provocative content.” The groups may have been part of a larger network that collectively worked to reach Americans.

The Christian Facebook pages reached about 75 million users a month.

The only page in the Top 20 Christian pages in 2019 not run by the overseas group was Guideposts.

It’s unclear just how much the misinformation affects Facebook users’ beliefs, but Allen said he worries about how people engage with the content.

“This is not normal,” Allen said. “This is not healthy. We have empowered inauthentic actors to accumulate huge followings for largely unknown purposes.”

Allen said the investigation was prompted when Facebook “effectively ignored” his research. He left the company.

[JustinCharge 2,397]

The US government under Biden is currently run by a troll farm too.

[Djgb13 2,338]

Eastern Europe has power still? 

[Cdub100 3,369]

So? Also, "Troll farm" doesn't mean sh1t and is only used by American propaganda to give opposing views a negative connotation. 

 

[MTSkiBum 1,593]

17 minutes ago, Cdub100 said:

So? Also, "Troll farm" doesn't mean sh1t and is only used by American propaganda to give opposing views a negative connotation. 

 

 

If Troll farm is used that way i have not heard of it. Troll farm is typically defined as a group of people being paid to post stuff on social media to get as many hits as possible either for political for financial purposes.

It has a very real definition and in this case if there is any negative connotation associated with the term it is because what they are doing is in fact negative.

 

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/

 

“Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” Allen wrote. “Our platform has given the largest voice in the African American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never had an interaction with an African American.”

 

 

[Fireballer 2,369]

I don't get it.  I'm not on FB so have no idea what this troll farm stuff is.  How are people being targeted?

[MTSkiBum 1,593]

2 minutes ago, Fireballer said:

I don't get it.  I'm not on FB so have no idea what this troll farm stuff is.  How are people being targeted?

 

The MIT article I posted goes in depth quite well, but i copy/pasted some of the relevant stuff. To explain it in 2 sentences. The troll farms post large amounts of controversial articles, and since people like to read controversial articles then Facebook ranks these articles highly and then facebook actively pushes these articles onto users.

 

 

From the article:

Third, Facebook’s ranking system pushes more engaging content higher up in users’ newsfeeds. For the most part, the people who run troll farms have financial rather than political motives; they post whatever receives the most engagement, with little regard to the actual content. But because misinformation, clickbait, and politically divisive content is more likely to receive high engagement (as Facebook’s own internal analyses acknowledge), troll farms gravitate to posting more of it over time, the report says.

 

Troll farms previously made their way into Facebook’s Instant Articles and Ad Breaks partnership programs, which are designed to help news organizations and other publishers monetize their articles and videos. At one point, thanks to a lack of basic quality checks, as many as 60% of Instant Article reads were going to content that had been plagiarized from elsewhere. This made it easy for troll farms to mix in unnoticed, and even receive payments from Facebook.

[Mike Honcho 4,010]

Cant we troll them back with pictures of working toilets? 

[JustinCharge 2,397]

anyone that doesnt march lockstep with the liberal agenda is a troll farm to the press.