Attacking Information Networks
A few days ago, in response to questions on Capitol Hill regarding how the spread of inaccurate news stories – especially from foreign entities – will be contained and removed in the upcoming election cycle was asked to Mark Zuckerberg. The current and future steps Facebook will take in terms of tackling this issue with the release of new features tackling such issues are very much fundamental to keeping our next election cycle as free as possible from misleading content and information. As more entities outside of the United States try to spread misinformation, especially with regards to politics, to our nation’s electoral pool, finding solutions – especially through a social media company as large and expansive as that of Facebook – will be important to fight against to keep our nation’s elections as transparent as possible.
Currently, it is great that Facebook is tackling this problem early on, as it claims, by removing “four networks of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” tied to Russia and Iran from its services” (see link). This is due to the fact that the earlier the issue of tackling networks spreading misinformation is tackled, the less likely it is for such information to spread out from one strongly connected component within the information network to another through a bridge. Removing this networks, in other words, will significantly reduce the page rank score of these sites going forward. As the information network is tightly connected between sources of information, keeping the score of pages, profiles, and links that spread misinformation as low as possible (at 0) – and even removing such sites – is essential because a few increases in the page rank of these sites and the number of connections leading into this site from outside hubs will, unfortunately, lead to the wider spread of such information.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/21/facebook-announces-new-election-security-features-removes-fake-accounts.html