Facebook Plans To Use US Mail To Verify IDs of Election Ad Buyers (reuters.com) 123
Facebook will start using postcards sent by U.S. mail later this year to verify the identities and location of people who want to purchase U.S. election-related advertising on its site, a senior company executive said on Saturday. From a report: The postcard verification is Facebook's latest effort to respond to criticism from lawmakers, security experts and election integrity watchdog groups that it and other social media companies failed to detect and later responded slowly to Russia's use of their platforms to spread divisive political content, including disinformation, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Re:Give information (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, but that's beside the point. This forces Ivan to go through US Mail in order to violate US election laws. This compounds the legal issues and allows more avenues for investigation.
More importantly to Facebook, they're likely hoping this lets the Feds deal with any fraud, rather than facing new laws passed to prevent Facebook and other companies from selling ads without any real verification.
This isn't at all about stopping Ivan. It's about reducing Facebook's legal burden.
Re: (Score:3)
The ones that make it illegal for foreigners to say "Clinton is a cunt and Trump is too" during an election.
I'd say that's common knowledge for anyone with more than two brain cells, core voters of both being beyond redemption.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but that's beside the point. This forces Ivan to go through US Mail in order to violate US election laws.
This. By forcing would-be ad purchasers to first commit a few federal crimes, Facebook is off the hook. They can then claim that they acted in good faith to allow the ad. It's an elegant solution from Facebook's point of view.
Re:Give information (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook VP: "The Majority Of Russian Ad Spend Happened AFTER The Election" [fb.com]
"many of these ads did not violate our content policies. That means that for most of them, if they had been run by authentic individuals, anywhere, they could have remained on the platform."
"Shouldn't you stop foreigners from meddling in US social issues?
The right to speak out on global issues that cross borders is an important principle. Organizations such as UNICEF, Oxfam or religious organizations depend on the ability to communicate â" and advertise â" their views in a wide range of countries. While we may not always agree with the positions of those who would speak on issues here, we believe in their right to do so â" just as we believe in the right of Americans to express opinions on issues in other countries."
Re: (Score:1)
"Shouldn't you stop foreigners from meddling in US social issues?"
Shouldn't you stop people who live in one state from contributing to candidates running in another state? If I live in California, what business do I have contributing to a congressional candidate running in Pennsylvania?
It's a serious question.
Re: (Score:3)
Ivan will simply find a sucker to take out the ad for him, for a small fee. This is feel good fake news security theatre.
Precisely, if it doesn't already, the Russian embassy will soon have an attaché for shell company management, political action committee administration and political advertisement design, sucker recruitment will be outsourced to the fisheries attache (aka. the FSB operations guy).
Re: (Score:2)
While you're worried about Russia, what about all the people who aren't US citizens who were marching to change our immigration laws? You know, the "illegal and proud" type people at rallies and marches.
Or is it only a problem when Russians dare to express their opinions?
Nice Conway there Trumpkin, but all I was really trying to do was point out how utterly useless this effort by Facebook is. I have no interest in watching you and your buddies circle jerk over immigration law.
It is not about real security (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hate FB but I actually feel a bit sorry for them in this case
Before this election you had this situation
A lot of people posted on FB but knew it was a waste of time. FB banned people for saying bad words like tr*nny, f*ggot or n*gger but those people were kinda tedious anyway. FB had a few people arguing about politics, mostly left wingers but a few right wingers who had to be very careful what they said given the left wing nature of the site. People under about 20 wouldn't touch the platform and neithe
Yup. Pure security theater... (Score:3)
From the Internet Research Agency Indictment: [justice.gov]
5. Certain Derfendants traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpos of collecting intelligence to inform Defendants' operations.
Defendants also procured and used computed infrastructure, based partly in the United States, to hide the Russian origin of their activities and to avoid detection by U.S. regulators and law enforcement.
...
12. b. For example, on or about May 29, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through an ORGANIZATION-controlled social media account, arranged for a real U.S. person to stand in front of the White House in the District of Columbia under false pretenses to hold a sign that read "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss."
Defendents and their co-conspirators informed the real U.S. person that the sign was for someone who "is a leader here and our boss... our funder."
PRIGHOZHIN's Russian passport identifies his date of birth as June 1, 1961.
...
30. c. Only KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA received visas, and from approximately June 4, 2014 through june 26, 2014 KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA traveled in and around the United States, including stops in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York to gather intelligence.
After the trip, KRYLOVA and BURCHIK exchanged an intelligence report regarding the trip.
d. Another co-conspirator who worked for the ORGANIZATION traveled to Atlanta, Georgia from approximately November 26, 2014 through November 30, 2014.
Following the trip, the co-conspirator provided POLOZOV a summary of his trip's itinerary and expenses.
...
41. In and around 2016. Defendants and their co-conspirators also used, possessed, and transferred, without lawful authority, the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons' knowledge or consent.
Using these means of identification, Defendants and their co-conspirators opened accounts at PayPal, a digital payment service provider, created false means of identification, including fake driver's licenses, and posted on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts using the identities of these U.S. victims.
Defendants and their co-conspirators also obtained, and attempted to obtain, false identification documents to use as proof of identity in connection with maintaining accounts and purchasing advertisements on social media sites.
And then there's that bit where they organized rallies, offered money to cover rally expenses, paid someone to "BUILD A CAGE ON A FLATBED TRUCK" and another person to "WEAR A COSTUME PORTRAYING CLINTON IN A PRISON UNIFORM".
They can steal identities, travel around U.S., pay people to construct motorized cages and other people to dress up and be driven around in those cages... but they'll somehow not be able to mail in a postcard?
Which part of "run like a KGB oper
Re:Give information (Score:5, Interesting)
If only the people who support this supported voter ID laws.
Re: Give information (Score:2)
My kingdom for a mod point!
Re: Give information (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.
Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama's 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina's adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.
They do say
We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.
However if you look at their paper
http://www.judicialwatch.org/w... [judicialwatch.org]
Nonetheless, identification requirements blocked ballot access for only a small portion of non-citizens. Of the 27 non-citizens who indicated that they were "asked to show picture identification, such as a driver's license, at the polling place or election office," in the 2008 survey, 18 claimed to have subsequently voted, and one more indicated that they were "allowed to vote using a provisional ballot." Only 7 (25.9%) indicated that they were not allowed to vote after showing identification. These results are summarized in Fig. 1. Although the proportion of non-citizens prevented from voting by ID requirements is statistically distinguishable from the portion of citizens5 (Chi-Square 161, p < .001), the overall message is that identification requirements do not prevent the majority of non-citizen voting. The fact that most non-citizen immigrants who showed identifi- cation were subsequently permitted to vote suggests that efforts to use photo-identification to prevent non-citizen voting are unlikely to be particularly effective. This most likely reflects the impact of state laws that permit noncitizens to obtain state identification cards (e.g. driver's licenses
I.e. voter ID laws don't work if by voter ID you mean "driving license" and the state gives out driving licenses to non citizens which are indistinguishable from the ones they hand out to citizens. Which is not impossible. E.g.
https://immigration.procon.org... [procon.org]
The law provides driver's licenses to people who filed Colorado state income taxes in the previous year and can show proof of current state residence, or who have an Individual Taxpayer ID and proof of 24 months of state residency, with a passport, consular ID, or military ID. The license will state "Not valid for federal identification, voting, or public benefits purposes."
The paper also contains th
Re:Top of first article nullifies your entire post (Score:4, Informative)
Read the rebuttals and the author's response to them. It's just the WashPo trying to discredit Inconvenient Truths.
Rebuttals
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Author's response which seems to cover them all :
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
I think the authors are onto something. Their paper was peer reviewed too. And the peer reviewed paper the WashPo claims debunks it is in the same journal but is paywalled. Unlike theirs, which I linked to. It seems to be claiming their sample size is too small and that constitutes cherry picking.
tl;dr - they did a study which was very cautious about interpreting the data. Even that found evidence of 620,000 non citizens voting. People criticized them. They responded. Peer reviewed is not the same as 'true', and in fact can't be given both their paper and the paper critiquing it were published in the same journal.
And the comments are full of anecdotal evidence that illegals voting is well known.
It's true they said Trump's claim that non citizens voting accounted for all of Hillary's popular vote lead. However they reckon significant numbers of non citizens voted.
https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman... [odu.edu]
If the assumptions stated above concerning non-citizen turnout are correct, could non-citizen turnout account for Clintonâ(TM)s popular vote margin? There is no way it could have. 6.4 percent turnout among the roughly 20.3 million non-citizen adults in the US would add only 834,318 votes to Clintonâ(TM)s popular vote margin. This is little more than a third of the total margin.
Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clintonâ(TM)s margin. Yes. Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? Not at all.
Then when that number got picked up by people they disagree with they disowned it
https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman... [odu.edu]
As a primary author cited in this piece, I need to say that I think the Washington Times article (http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/26/hillary-clinton-received-800000-votes-from-nonciti/) is deceptive. It makes it sound like I have done a study concerning the 2016 election. I have not. What extrapolation I did to the 2016 election (https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman/2016/11/28/is-it-plausible-that-non-citizen-votes-account-for-the-entire-margin-of-trumps-popular-vote-loss-to-clinton/) was purely and explicitly and exclusively for the purpose of pointing out that my 2014 study of the 2008 election did not provide evidence of voter fraud at the level some Trump administration people were claiming it did. I do not think that one should rely upon that extrapolation for any other purpose. And I do not stand behind that extrapolation if used for ANY other purpose.
In the original article they point out things like
This post is not intended to make a specific claim on my part concerning how many non-citizens
Re: (Score:3)
Also if you look here
https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman... [odu.edu]
The 2008 estimate is inherently uncertain. It depends upon a number of assumptions including assumptions about the validity of the survey data. Our critics have made a variety of arguments and I encourage readers to evaluate those arguments along with our responses to them. The underlying study on which the extrapolation is based has been the subject of some cogent criticisms, and this leads me to believe that the actual rate of non-citizen involvement is on the low end of our initial estimates rather than anywhere close to the high end.
The critics paper is the ' peer-reviewed article [sciencedirect.com] argued that the findings reported in this post (and affiliated article [sciencedirect.com]) were biased and that the authors' data do not provide evidence of non-citizen voting in U.S. elections'
Well it turns out they've issued a response to that
https://fs.wp.odu.edu/jrichman... [odu.edu]
Conclusion
Ansolabehere et. al. (2015) make a useful point - that group-membership measurement error rates must be considered very carefully when analyzing small subsamples. However, there are ways to estimate this error rate, and to validate the estimated error rate using other measures. We have shown that each of four independent approaches to evaluating electoral participation by non-citizens indicates that in fact a small number of non-citizens do most likely participate in US elections. Analysis of group-specific error rates, repeatedly measured individuals, higher frequency behaviors, and hypotheses that follow from the assumption that responses are driven by group-identification errors all yield the same independent conclusion, refuting the Ansolabehere et.al. (2015) contention that the Richman et. al. (2014) non-citizen participation results "are completely accounted for by very low frequency measurement error" among citizens. A more thorough analysis of the data makes clear that response error in the citizen-status question cannot account for the entirety of observed non-citizen verified and reported voting in the CCES. Hence, the CCES survey does provide substantial evidence that in the United States non-citizens hold verified registration status, cast verified votes, report they are registered, and report they are voters.
The analysis offered above should not be a stopping point, however. There are design choices that can improve the capability to engage in test-retest validation of group status and assessment of differential group-level rates of measurement error. Inclusion of specific followup questions aimed at verifying group membership status in the CCES should be pursued by those interested in making specific inferences about small subpopulations in large sample surveys. In the context of the non-citizen subsample such questions could include closed-ended and open-ended follow-up inquiries aimed at confirming or disconfirming self-identified noncitizen status and thereby ensuring that measurement error does not contaminate estimates of non-citizen sub-population behaviors.
Incidentally in the first source they say
If the percentage of non-citizens voting for Clinton is held constant, roughly 18.5 percent of non-citizens would have had to vote for their votes to have made up the entire Clinton popular vote margin. I don't think that this rate is at all plausible. Even if we assume that 90 percent voted for Clinton and only 10 percent for Trump, a more than fourteen percent turnout would be necessary to account for Clinton's popular vote margin. This is much higher than the estimates we offered. Again, it seems too high to be plausible.
In the original paper they estimate the following
In 2008, the proportion of non-citizens who were in fact registered to vote was somewhere between 19.8% (all who reported or had verified registration, or both) and 3.3% (11 non-citizen respondents were almost certainly registered to vote because they both stated that they were registered and had their registration status verified). Even the lowend estimate suggests a fairly substantial population of registered-to-vote non-citizens nationwide. Out of roughly 19.4 million adult non-citizens in the United States, this would represent a population of roughly 620,000 registered non-citizens4 . By way of comparison, there are roughly 725,000 individuals in the average Congressional district.
Now if the range i
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.nationalreview.com... [nationalreview.com]
North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.
A voter-registration card is routinely issued without any identification check, and undocumented workers can use it for many purposes, including obtaining a driver's license and qualifying for a job. And if a non-citizen has a voter-registration card, there are plenty of campaign operatives who will encourage him or her to vote illegally.
O'Keefe had a Brazilian-born immigrant investigator pose as someone who wanted to vote but was not a citizen. Greg Amick, the campaign manager for the Democrat running for sheriff in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), was only too happy to help.
Greg Amick: Here's a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver's license, but do you have any sort of identification?
Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver's license.
Amick: Oh, you do. Show 'em that and you're good.
PV: But the only problem, you know, I don't want to vote if I'm not legal. I think that's going to be a problem. I'm not sure.
Amick: It won't be, it shouldn't be an issue at all.
PV: No?
Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you'll be fine.
But North Carolina officials shouldn't be "fine" with Amick, who appears to be afoul of a state law making it a felony "for any person, knowing that a person is not a citizen of the United States, to instruct or coerce that person to register to vote or to vote."
Amick stepped down
http://www.charlotteobserver.c... [charlotteobserver.com]
Tillis won by 45608 votes or 1.5% of the total.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I.e. it was a classic case of an election the Democrats could have won by getting non citizens to vote. North Carolina has about 527,000 non citizens, so about 17K voters assuming 3.3%
https://www.kff.org/other/stat... [kff.org]
In a close race, they could swing it. Amick doesn't seem to have been prosecuted.
Re: (Score:2)
I think anyone who commits a felony should be prosecuted - Democrats, Republicans and the rest.
Interestingly from your link it seems like more ineligible voters vote Democrat (64%) than Republican (18%) or independent/Libertarian (18%)
http://www.newsobserver.com/ne... [newsobserver.com]
The 508 ineligible voters identified in the report are spread across the state, with 36 in Wake County, 34 in Durham and two in Orange. The report says that 64 percent were registered Democrats, 18 percent were registered Republicans and the rest were either unaffiliated or Libertarians.
Which tells me that Democrats benefit a lot more from voter fraud than anyone else, which is why they're so opposed to voter ID laws.
And why they support things like California's Motor Voter law (AB-1461) which auto adds anyone who applies for
Your own source debunked itself... (Score:2)
Right there... in the opening paragraph.
Note: The post occasioned three rebuttals (here, [washingtonpost.com] here, and here [washingtonpost.com]) as well as a response [washingtonpost.com] from the authors.
Subsequently, another peer-reviewed article [sciencedirect.com] argued that the findings reported in this post (and affiliated article [sciencedirect.com]) were biased and that the authors' data do not provide evidence of non-citizen voting in U.S. elections.
Re: (Score:2)
See here
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
tl;dr - not really.
Read here: You're full of shit. (Score:1)
Also here: You're full of shit.
The "study" the whole thing was based on was torn down on account the author "no do math too good". Some people just don't understand that whole "stat is ticks" thing. What's up with them ticks anyway?
Also, on account of being a cherry picker at doing that.
The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys
Abstract
The advent of large sample surveys, such as the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), has opened the possibility of measuring very low frequency events, characteristics, and behaviors in the population. This paper documents how low-level measurement error for survey questions generally agreed to be highly reliable can lead to large prediction errors in large sample surveys, such as the CCES. The example for this analysis is Richman et al. (2014), which presents a biased estimate of the rate at which non-citizens voted in recent elections.
The results, we show, are completely accounted for by very low frequency measurement error; further, the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0.
OUCH! Sick burn!
Oh... BTW... that's under the link you cherry picked to ignore.
Aaaaawwww... poow snowflake. How's all that winnin goin for ya? That ulcer kicked in yet?
Also, besides cherry picking, and not doing numbers that
Re: (Score:2)
See here
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
and here
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
tl;dr - not really.
Yawn... You're pathetic. Even for a troll. (Score:1)
Spinning in circles, getting high on the scent of your own farts...
Pathetic.
Sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Aww... A poor snowflake can't take the reality so it mods down. Boo fucking hoo...
Luckily! There's copy-paste! Infinite amounts of it!
Thus we all know that Hal_Porter ( 817932 ) is a pathetic little troll [slashdot.org] who posts circular links to his own posts, pretending to make a point when actually just trolling.
Spinning in circles, getting high on the scent of its own farts...
Pathetic.
Sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh look... No-Argument Nancy tries to downmode reality again. Awwww... cute.
But with the magic of infinite copy-paste... Viola!
Did I mention that I have infinite copy-paste?
Also here: You're full of shit.
The "study" the whole thing was based on was torn down on account the author "no do math too good". Some people just don't understand that whole "stat is ticks" thing. What's up with them ticks anyway?
Also, on account of being a cherry picker at doing that.
The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys
Abstract
The advent of large sample surveys, such as the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), has opened the possibility of measuring very low frequency events, characteristics, and behaviors in the population. This paper documents how low-level measurement error for survey questions generally agreed to be highly reliable can lead to large prediction errors in large sample surveys, such as the CCES. The example for this analysis is Richman et al. (2014), which presents a biased estimate of the rate at which non-citizens voted in recent elections.
The results, we show, are completely accounted for by very low frequency measurement error;
further, the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0.
OUCH! Sick burn!
Oh... BTW... that's under the link
Re: (Score:1)
Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I know being a company you want all the business you can get, but sometimes it may actually be for the common good that you don't try to squeeze every penny out of everything you can squeeze.
Re: (Score:1)
Cloth of sufficiently high quality to wipe servers with is expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
My video game forums do not allow any political discussions. If you post one it's deleted and you get a warning. It's part of the TOS.
Why would Facebook banning them be any different?
Re:Better idea (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
you must be new to the internet
Re: (Score:3)
Umm, First Amendment? Pretty sure you'd be running afoul of the First Amendment if you did that....
That's a popular misconception. The First Amendment means you can say whatever you want, but nobody is legally required to help you say it. Obligatory xkcd link [xkcd.com].
Re: (Score:1)
I know being a company you want all the business you can get, but sometimes it may actually be for the common good that you don't try to squeeze every penny out of everything you can squeeze.
They're a US public company, so the "common good" is irrelevant.
Greed is all that matters. Forget morals or ethics, we're lucky if a mega-corp operates legally these days.
Re: (Score:1)
They're a US public company, so the "common good" is irrelevant.
Greed is all that matters. Forget morals or ethics, we're lucky if a mega-corp operates legally these days.
They can be sued by shareholders for not making as much profit as possible unless of course that profit was illegally obtained.
Greed is builtin to the system, so anyone who refuses business, regardless of how immoral or unethical they think it is, can end up in front of a court.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey Facebook! Here's a better idea: Don't allow any election ads in the first place.
Hey crackwhore, just don't do crack in the first place! That's analogous to what you just said. Elections are a massive public spending spree and you want an advertisement company to not participate? You'll sooner get Republicans to make gun ownership illegal than what you suggest.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't allow any election ads in the first place.
That might have worked back in the old print media days. Where the ad had to be typeset and an editor could review it in advance for compliance with his political views^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign law compliance. But if you are serving them up off a third party server, the ad content could be changed at a moments notice. The server could even return innocuous ad copy to Facebook corporate IP addresses, election officials, etc.
Does not verify identity ... (Score:4, Informative)
it verifies that you have obtained the information on a post card. Two simple ways of subverting it (you can probably dream up more):
* Set up postal redirection
* Offer someone a small payment: ''when you receive a postcard addressed to Mr Smith, use your mobile to send a photograph of it to me"
Re: (Score:3)
What next having to show federal and state photo ID to "internet"?
Re: (Score:2)
What next having to show federal and state photo ID to "internet"?
Surely ID is not required to vote, though. After all, that would be discriminatory.
Re: (Score:2)
And let me guess, these will be the states that already let businesses just have a mailbox. You know, so they don't have to pay business taxes.
Which states are those?
And I forget, are they red or blue? ;)
Re: (Score:2)
And I forget, are they red or blue? ;)
Blue.
WA State. I used to live in an apartment complex that had many more mailboxes than apartment units. And people pulling up to fetch their mail whom I'd never seen around the building at other times. And there are official avenues for obtaining mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc. For 'The Homeless'.
Re: (Score:2)
Two simple ways of subverting it. Set up postal redirection. Offer someone a small payment: ''when you receive a postcard addressed to Mr Smith, use your mobile to send a photograph of it to me"
"This ad payed for by Republican Nominee Caucaus, 523 Official Avenue, Place".
"This ad payed for by Democrat Nominee Committee, 123 Expected Drive, Place".
"This ad payed for by John Smith, 1273 The Blandings #327, Pimlington".
That will look out-of-place if they publish the addresses. It'd get journalists or politically-minding users calling attention to it pretty promptly.
Re: (Score:1)
Most of the underclass (the 'hicks' and 'rubes') live in the inner core cities. There really isn't the infrastructure 'out here' for the helpless ignorant to live out here. There are pockets of poverty out in the countryside, but mostly there are people who could be judged more self-sufficient than the typical urban dweller.
Riiiiiiiiight (Score:4, Insightful)
Cause the money-laundering Russian mafia isn't gonna simply pivot and start laundering postcards as well...
"I make 5K a week working from home! Want to know my secret?"
Well, at least Facebook can say they really are creating jobs now.
This is literally the dumbest fucking thing i've heard this week. And its technically a new week! Seriously, Facebook really does need to hire a 5 year old to sit on their board and any flaws in the plans they make he points out should result in the entire plan being scrapped for sheer stupidity and the person who came up with the plan should be beaten with a rubber hose and then fired.
Yeah, that's gonna work just fine (Score:2)
as long as Boris and Natasha haven't heard of the post-office box.
Watch rents spike before elections (Score:2)
When suddenly a lot of people need apartments for a month or two...
That is, provided FB really demands a physical address and doesn't simply accept PO-Boxes.
One small flaw (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2)
As if the poor Russian embassy employees had not already enough to do, now they'll also have to throw postcards in.
Executive Decision (Score:1)
You can tell when a executive / MBA type person makes decisions, they are not completely well thought out...
It's easy to get an PO box in the usa! (Score:2)
It's easy to get an PO box in the usa!
Mail scanning services (Score:2)
Forget PO boxes, there are mail forwarding services that will scan your physical mail and email it to you.
Facecrooks (Score:3)
If facebook wanted to stop messing with elections, they would just ban election advertising.
In the past every village was a world in (Score:2)
Who could think that a relatively poor nation would be capable influence elections thousand of miles away, over the oceans, in a large land, without even investing in radio-stations along the borders?
Re: (Score:2)
Weird the people care more about who runs the ad then what is in the ad.
Not "the people". But the mainstream media. They used to have a monopoly on advertising expenditures. For everything from political ads to dish soap. But this Internet thing cropped up and people have figured out how to get a message out without the prior approval of the MSM bigwigs.
Voice of America still going strong (Score:3)
The United States spends billions every year to influence or outright overthrow other countries every year. The United States needs a stadium-sized cup of STFU when it comes to "meddling". This is the point where western exceptionalists start blurting "whatabboutery", so I'll go ahead and tell you first to cram hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, Syrians and Libyan's up your asses while you're whining about $5000 in Facebook ads.
Not enough (Score:2)
The entire advertising industry needs to be regulated, and hard.
verification? (Score:1)
Effective... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But, a really big wet newspaper might actually be able to stop a bullet :-)
Fail to learn from history (Score:1)
Russians have had agents in America since the 1920s. From the Patent office to espionage. It's no secret.
I know how to fix it (Score:2)
Shut down Facebook and Twitter 3 months before the election. Nothing important will be lost.