How sophisticated are the actors? This was the case with the campaign that we took down today which was linked to Russian military intelligence services. We want to understand their tactics and respond in a way that keeps them off Facebook for good. Most start with a clear explanation of what it does and doesn’t tolerate. News, Media and Publishing Facebook Group. More than a third of divorce filings in 2011 referenced Facebook, said a survey from UK-based legal firm Divorce Online. "Juries are fully capable of distinguishing between metaphorical expression of strong emotions and statements that have the clear sinister meaning of a threat," its brief said. Following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution using Facebook to solicit suggestions from citizens. Leaders from our offices in London and Menlo Park, California spoke with members of the press about Facebook’s efforts to prepare for the upcoming General Election in the UK. It's one of the only sentences that I'm not allowed to say. Facebook has introduced trending topics and hashtags to counter this. If another company identifies a threat, we want to know about it so we can investigate whether the actor or actors behind it are abusing our services as well. But often there are caveats. And while all of these are appropriate for government organizations, we do not believe some of them should be used by companies: Applying the Framework to Our New Discovery. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Text messages were the most prevalent form, followed by social media and e-mail. There are cases where law enforcement can play a specific role in helping us mitigate a threat that we’ve identified, and in those instances, we’ll reach out to the appropriate agency to share what we know and seek their help. These partnerships all proved critical in our work ahead of the US midterms. The ruling is seen as a defeat for the government (Getty). At first, Facebook’s policies seem clear enough. That’s why it’s so important to have open lines of communication with all of these partners so we can ensure we’re all aligned, and that we take action in timeline that best disrupts the adversary. This set of actors has better operational security and does more to conceal their identities than the IRA did around the 2016 election, which is to be expected. Facebook’s logo is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colour blind. Elonis was convicted under the latter standard; a majority of justices ruled that's not sufficient. As our teams monitored for and rooted out new threats, the government proved especially valuable because of their broader intelligence work. While we can learn a lot from analyzing our own platforms, law enforcement agencies can draw connections off our platform to a degree that we simply can’t. Elonis was 27 and recently unemployed in Pennsylvania five years ago when he began posting threats against his estranged wife and others, from a generic kindergarten class to the FBI agents who came to his door. Or do we spend time investigating the extent of the attack and who’s behind it so we can prevent them from doing bad things again in the future? When we reach a point where our analysis is turning up little new information, we’ll take down a campaign, knowing that more time is unlikely to bring us more answers. To get this information, we work with governments and law enforcement agencies, cybersecurity researchers, and other technology companies. This framework is helpful when looking at the two major organized attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election on Facebook that we have found to date. Our technical forensics are insufficient to provide high confidence attribution at this time. The exact figures may be an estimate, but with just under 8 trillion Facebook messages sent in 2013 it’s certain that a substantial body of evidence is to be found on the social network. This is one of the fundamental limitations of attribution: offensive organizations improve their techniques once they have been uncovered, and it is wishful thinking to believe that we will always be able to identify persistent actors with high confidence. When appropriate, we also share what we know with these groups to help aid their investigations and crack down on bad actors. They’ll then combine deep computer learning and human expertise to detect patterns from the outside in — and will alert us to signs or behaviors that suggest a real likelihood of a security risk or threat. He was 22 years old at the time and owned 25 per cent of the company. The recent Special Counsel indictment of GRU officers supports our assessment in this case, and we would consider these actions to be “state-integrated” on Healey’s spectrum. The colour is so popular that Facebook’s campus store even sells nail polish in the exact shade named ‘social butterfly blue’. But today we’re shutting down 32 Pages and accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior without saying that a specific group or country is responsible. This past July, for instance, FireEye, one of our cybersecurity vendors, alerted us to a network of Pages and accounts originating from Iran that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior. Preventing misuse on Facebook is a priority for our company. Deciding when and how to publicly link suspicious activity to a specific organization, government, or individual is a challenge that governments and many companies face. The justices were seeking a rule that could result in locking up the former and letting the latter off the hook. In his seminal paper on the topic, Jason Healey described a spectrum to measure the degree of state responsibility for cyber attacks. Nor should investigations. How Much Can Companies Know About Who’s Behind Cyber Threats? You can browse Facebook upside down. Facebook: Self-XSS, clickjacking and survey scams abound. We are — and will continue to be — most effective when we draw on available resources and information. Likewise, if we find indications of coordinated inauthentic behavior that might extend beyond our platform, we want to give others a heads up. To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. Decision seen as a blow for groups that defend domestic violence victims, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. It's indirect criminal contempt. The set of actors we see now might be the IRA with improved capabilities, or it could be a separate group. Hard Questions is a series from Facebook that addresses the impact of our products on society. ", The lengthy diatribe copied nearly word-for-word a satirical sketch by The Whitest Kids U' Know comedy troupe, concluding with Elonis' own summation: "Art is about pushing limits. The reader who sent it to me is a woman who seems to be incredibly nice! Back to Top In the case of an attack that seeks to cause broader societal harm – like using misinformation to manipulate people or create division – where possible we share what we know with the press and third-party researchers so the public is aware of the issue. So if we determine that someone is trying to compromise another person’s account in order to determine their location — and we suspect the target might be in physical danger — we’d take action immediately, as well as notify the person being targeted and law enforcement when appropriate. That’s 4,000 photos uploaded every second and around 4 per cent of all photos ever taken, according to a study by Nokia. A YouGov poll claimed that three-quarter of UK Facebook users' photos showed someone drinking or inebriated.