Facebook used programs codenamed Stormchaser and Night’s Watch to hunt down hoaxes and misinformation about ITSELF, including memes claiming Mark Zuckerberg is an alien
- Facebook used tools to monitor and respond to hoaxes about the site
- ‘Night’s Watch’ and ‘Stormchaser’ were used to help track Facebook’s image
- In some cases the company responded to memes posted on the platform
- Users who engaged with hoaxes were shown notices debunking the post
- The tools helped track and mitigate the platform’s image after public scandals
- Facebook no longer uses Stormchaser but continues to poll users publicly
A new report reveals that Facebook is particularly concerned with one victim of misinformation on its platform: itself.
As detailed by Bloomberg, several staffers at the company say Facebook used a tandem of tools to track down and kill hoaxes on Facebook and its encrypted messaging app WhatsApp that were thought to be spreading misinformation about the company.
According to the anonymous sources interviewed in the report, the tools, called Stormchaser and Night’s Watch — named after a fictional group in HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones — were used to monitor an array of hoaxes in real-time.
Facebook used a tandem of tools to help track and debunk misinformation about the company that occurred on its platform. File photo
That misinformation included popular ‘copy-and-paste’ posts that alleged Facebook would start charging users and other unfounded campaigns accusing the company of tapping users’ microphones to spy on them.
The company also used the tools to track trends like the #deleteFBmovement and even monitor inane memes such as those positing CEO Mark Zuckerberg was actually an alien, according to sources in the report.
Depending on the hoax in question, Facebook would sometimes take steps to debunk information by serving notices to customers who had shared or engaged with the posts.
Tools to monitor and track rumors and misinformation about the company coincide with a broader internal struggle to counter other misinformation being spread via the platform.
In 2016 Facebook’s played a central role in spreading Russia-generated misinformation meant to influence the the U.S. Presidential election.
As a result of their role in the misinformation campaign, in addition to the improper access of 50 million users’ personal data by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, sources in Bloomberg say the company internally amped up its efforts to restore Facebook’s image.
Zuckerberg testified before congress last year regarding the company’s role in the both of the scandals that lead up to and continued after the 2016 election.
Facebook’s public image has taken a number of hits lately due to scandals surrounding privacy and its role in spreading misinformation. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is shown
According to Bloomberg, the Night’s Watch tool in particular was used to assess how news — real news, not misinformation — regarding Facebook spread on the platform and WhatsApp.
A spokesperson for Facebook responded to Bloomberg’s report stating that the tools in question weren’t used to combat fake news, but were designed to intervene in cases of ‘product confusion.’
The spokesperson added that Stormchaser was discontinued in mid-2018 but did not elaborate on why.
A request for comment by DailyMail.com has not been responded to before time of publication.
Facebook still continues to track its own perception on the platform through the use of public polling to track both the company’s and Zuckerberg’s favorability with the company’s user base.
That polling serves as the basis for the company communications and marketing teams who have worked to position Facebook as a privacy-focused platform in recent months.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg stood before a crowd at a developer’s conference to announce that ‘the future is private’ and outline a host of new privacy and safety-centric features and goals.
FACEBOOK’S PRIVACY DISASTERS
December 2018: Facebook comes under fire after a bombshell report discovered the firm allowed over 150 companies, including Netflix, Spotify and Bing, to access unprecedented amounts of user data, such as private messages.
Some of these ‘partners’ had the ability to read, write, and delete Facebook users’ private messages and to see all participants on a thread.
It also allowed Microsoft’s search engine, known as Bing, to see the name of all Facebook users’ friends without their consent.
Amazon was allowed to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends’ posts.
As of last year, Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon could all obtain users’ email addresses through their friends.
September 2018: Facebook disclosed that it had been hit by its worst ever data breach, affecting 50 million users – including those of Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Attackers exploited the site’s ‘View As’ feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other users.
Facebook says it has found no evidence ‘so far’ that hackers broke into third-party apps after a data breach exposed 50 million users (stock image)
The unknown attackers took advantage of a feature in the code called ‘Access Tokens,’ to take over people’s accounts, potentially giving hackers access to private messages, photos and posts – although Facebook said there was no evidence that had been done.
The hackers also tried to harvest people’s private information, including name, sex and hometown, from Facebook’s systems.
Facebook said it doesn’t yet know if information from the affected accounts has been misused or accessed, and is working with the FBI to conduct further investigations.
However, Mark Zuckerberg assured users that passwords and credit card information was not accessed.
As a result of the breach, the firm logged roughly 90 million people out of their accounts earlier today as a security measure.
March 2018: Facebook made headlines earlier this year after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy.
The disclosure has prompted government inquiries into the company’s privacy practices across the world, and fueled a ‘#deleteFacebook’ movement among consumers.
Communications firm Cambridge Analytica had offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.
The company boasts it can ‘find your voters and move them to action’ through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists.
‘Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,’ with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website.
The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump
This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so.
This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.
The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.
This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK.
It has also suffered several previous issues.
In 2013, Facebook disclosed a software flaw that exposed 6 million users’ phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers for a year, while a technical glitch in 2008 revealed confidential birth-dates on 80 million Facebook users’ profiles.
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