Twitter Told Congress This Random American Is A Russian Propaganda Troll

Update: Twitter has re-activated Delaware"s account. The company declined to comment about why it reinstated the account and about whether it would amend the list it sent to Congress.

*  *  *

Authored by Louise Matsakis via Motherboard.Vice.com,

Robert Delaware is now part of the Congressional record, despite having no apparent ties to Russia...

Robert Delaware is a US citizen, a former Microsoft contractor, and an avid Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) filer. According to the United States Federal Government however, he"s a Russian propaganda agent - at least on Twitter.

As part of the social media company"s investigation into Russia"s meddling into the 2016 US presidential election, it deleted Delaware"s account, and sent record of it to US lawmakers as evidence of foreign interference.

The problem is Delaware is actually an American - and has never even been to Russia. So how did his account get swept into a list of those believed to be connected to a Russian troll farm?

Representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter testified at several open hearings on Capitol Hill this week about how Russian-linked trolls used their platforms to influence the 2016 US presidential election and sow political unrest. As part of that process, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a list of 2,753 suspended Twitter accounts the company believes to be linked to a Russian troll farm.

The committee said those handles "impersonate[ed] U.S. news entities, political parties, and groups focused on social and political issues," in a memo it released along with the accounts.

Included on the list is Delaware, under the handle @RobbyDelaware. Motherboard reviewed emails sent to Delaware by Twitter verifying that he was the owner of the handle or at least had access to the email account associated with it. Motherboard also verified that Robert Delaware was the person he purported to be by verifying his Facebook account.

The fact that Delaware was included in the cache sent to the US government indicates that real people are being swept up in Twitter"s investigation into how Russia used its platform to influence US politics. Delaware"s Twitter account is now part of the Congressional record as being linked to a Russian troll farm - even though he has no apparent ties to it.

A Google cache as well as several news articles which aggregated his tweets show that Delaware talked about the journalist Don Lemon, a Microsoft chatbot, and used the hashtag #1980sin4words on Twitter. According to a Google cache, his bio said "I support the free movement of people, ideas and capital."

The cached version of his Twitter account shows Delaware tweeted about current events, as well as mundane events like having a cold. A screenshot from the Internet Archive also shows that he was tweeting about similar topics in 2012.

According to an email from Twitter to Delaware reviewed by Motherboard, Delaware"s account was suspended two weeks ago, on October 17.

Delaware"s life is far from connected to Russian propaganda efforts. He is a United States citizen and was born in California. In 2010, he moved to the country Georgia, and now resides there with a Georgian woman. He works as a commercial actor and an English instructor. He mainly used his Twitter account to tweet about books, movies, and television shows, he told me.

Delaware"s account was the oldest included in the ones Twitter provided to US lawmakers, according to a security expert Motherboard spoke to that asked to remain anonymous citing professional concerns. Twitter assigns a unique ID number to each person when they join the network. Delaware"s was 18710816. The number is an indication of the age of an account; you can use this website for example to calculate your own.

Other security researchers noticed the age of some of the accounts as well:

Looking at the user IDs, they must have been at this for awhile - some of those accounts are old.

— Adam Caudill (@adamcaudill) November 2, 2017

We don"t know for certain why Delaware"s account was banned or why it was on the list delivered to US lawmakers, and Twitter declined to tell me.

"We are confident in the methodology described in our written testimony to surface accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency.

 

We encourage all Twitter users to take steps to reinforce security on their accounts, including enabling two-factor authentication, and to file a support request if they believe their account may have been compromised," a Twitter spokesperson told me in an email.

Delaware believes that his account might have been mistakenly connected to Russia for two reasons.

For one, he lives in Georgia, which shares its northern border with Russia. For nearly seven years, he has tweeted from the country in which he lives. Delaware told me that he rarely tweeted about his intellectual pursuits (like filing FOIA requests) nor politics.

The second reason involves a Russian-created hoax from 2014. On September 11 of that year, Russian trolls spread a false rumor online about an explosion at the "Columbian Chemicals plant" in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. The "Columbian Chemicals plant" doesn"t exist. The trolls used text messages, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter to try and spread their hoax.

Almost a year later, journalist Adrian Chen published an extensive article in the New York Times connecting the hoax to a now-notorious Russian propaganda outfit, the Internet Research Agency. The accounts Twitter handed over to US lawmakers are believed to be connected to the same outfit.

On the day the trolls attempted to spread their explosion hoax, Twitter was flooded with hundreds of fake accounts tweeting under the hashtag #ColumbianChemicals, according to Chen"s reporting.

Robert Delaware was one of the people using the hashtag that day. Not because he was a bot trying to spread a hoax, but because he knew the explosion was fake, he told me. "I immediately suspected it as a hoax. I tweeted to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] saying something like, "what is this, please investigate,"" Delaware told me in a Twitter direct message from another account he has, @iPad_App_Bugs, where he documents minor iOS bugs that he finds. Delaware has had that account since 2016, but began using it more after @RobbyDelaware was suspended.

Delaware even communicated with Chen. The journalist confirmed with Motherboard that he was contacted by Delaware in a Twitter message. "I think I emailed him because he tweeted about [the hoax]," Chen told me. "And he emailed me back. I think we talked on the phone. He seemed fine."

After his account was suspended, Delaware tried a variety of methods to try and get it back, or at least figure out why he was banned in the first place. He opened a case with Twitter Support asking for information about his account, and he sent messages to various Twitter email accounts, according to messages Motherboard reviewed.

"I went to the thing where I entered in my account, and asked for support," Delaware told me. "I even cc"d other emails I found on the site. I searched on the internet, and someone on a blog wrote that Twitter has zero human customer support. That is why I cc"d advertising and jobs emails associated with Twitter."

In addition to @iPad_App_Bugs, Delaware also runs an account where he shares photos of his adopted country, Georgia. There, he sent a public plea to Twitter"s CEO Jack Dorsey for help with his banned account:

Hi .@jack, my other main twitter account, which dutifully follows all twitter rules, is suspended and this happens with password reset... pic.twitter.com/S0z5tJXACH

— Georgia Pictures (@GeorgiaPictures) October 17, 2017

As of Thursday, Twitter had not gotten back to Delaware, he said. Twitter did not immediately respond to a followup request for comment about why Delaware"s support case has yet to be addressed.

"Still puzzled as to how I entered into the Congressional record," he told me. "I would guess I am the only actual human who ended up on this list."

Russia Tried To Undermine Trump After The Election

Following today"s Senate Judiciary panel hearings with social media executives, the establishment"s "Russians colluded with Trump" narrative is hanging but all but the thinnest of threads.

Having shown that so-called "Russian actors" "were trying to create discord between Americans," during the election - which politicians attempted to position as "directed against Clinton," top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump"s victory.

As we showed earlier, sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016 organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS - a Russian-linked group.

The event was shared with 61,000 users.

“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally.

 

“Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”

And that appears to have the "Russians" m.o. after the election, as Politico reports, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of his [Trump’s] election.”

“During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton.

 

After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked at the hearing.

Stretch and his Twitter counterpart, Sean Edgett, called that an "accurate" statement.

Not really the one-sided, reason-for-my-loss, Russians-colluded narrative that the left (and right establishment) would like to be spun.

The social media giants" counsels parried most grandstanding blows from the various politicians; however, there were five key moments that Politico identified during the hearings...

1) First look at the fake Russian ads

Tuesday"s hearing offered the public its first look at political ads that Facebook and Twitter have identified as being purchased by the Russia-sponsored Internet Research Agency. The companies provided copies of the ads to congressional investigators earlier this month and revealed yesterday that they were seen by millions of users in the U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) showed an advertisement depicting an altered image of comedian Aziz Ansari holding a sign deceptively claiming voters could cast ballots via text from home. Meanwhile, Coons decried a sponsored image of a kneeling solider with the text "Hillary Clinton has a 69 percent disapproval rate among all veterans" overlaid on top. Facebook has said publicly that lawmakers should decide whether to make all 3,000 Russia-backed ads it has found available for public review.

 

2) Facebook not sure whether Russian ads swayed election

Facebook wasn’t able to offer much in the form of a definitive answer when Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked the company if it felt like content on its platform had an effect on the election. “In an election where a total of about 115,000 votes would have changed the outcome, can you say that the false and misleading propaganda people saw on your Facebook didn’t have an impact on the election?” Hirono asked. Stretch dodged in response. “We’re not well-positioned to judge why any one person or an entire electorate voted as it did,” he said.

 

3) Facebook won’t say no to accepting election-related foreign money

Franken, in an especially fiery exchange, asked Twitter, Google and Facebook if they would commit to not accepting foreign money payments on election-related advertisements, saying he wanted a simple “yes” or “no” answer from the platforms — and wanted to know why Facebook didn’t catch Russian agents purchasing ads sooner. Stretch said he hesitated on the foreign currency question because “it’s relatively easy for bad actors to switch currencies. So it’s a signal but not enough.” Edgett gave a quick “yes” to Franken, and Google Law Enforcement and Information Security Director Richard Salgado said Google would need to have a good enough “signal” that the transaction was illegal to keep it from going through. “Foreigners can’t use money in our campaign, you know that?” Franken said.

 

4) Democrats — allies of tech — attack their friends

For Democrats, who have for years had a largely warm and productive relationship with liberal-leaning Silicon Valley, the hearing represented a sharp break. Several members seized upon the chance to unleash on the company reps their simmering frustrations that the tech industry’s tools -- so often pitched as the means for making the world a better place -- had harmed their nominee, perhaps even fatally. Blumenthal highlighted widely shared posts on Twitter that incorrectly claimed that voters could cast ballots for Clinton simply by tweeting. “Do you know how many thought they voted but in fact were fooled?,” Blumenthal asked Edgett, who said he did not know.

 

5) No support for Honest Ads Act

Not a single one of the three tech giants would commit to supporting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s Honest Ads Act, which would require disclosures about political advertising on their platforms. All three have rolled out and touted work to independently address the issue of ads, following the introduction of the bill. “We certainly support the goals of the legislation and would like to work through the nuances to make it work for all of us,” Salgado said. Their answers prompted Klobuchar to draw attention to the lack of external oversight on these actions. “Just to clarify, while you are taking responsibility for a lot of what happened here, and trying to make some changes, there wouldn’t be an outside enforcer for any of these policies, right?”

Finally, James Lewis, an international cyber policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the revelation about Russian anti-Trump activity on social media post-election fits with typical Kremlin information warfare efforts.

“Their goal is to create confusion and dissent. The target is the U.S. and NATO, not any particular candidate. They just want chaos..."

The Russiagate Scandal Descends Into Total Absurdity

Authored by Alexander Mercouris via TheDuran.com,

Even as the Trump administration disintegrates – with the President publicly quarrelling with his Secretary of State, and his Chief of Staff forced to deny he is about to resign – the scandal which more than anything else has defined this Presidency has disintegrated into total lunacy.

Consider these facts...

(1) The Mueller investigation

Just a few weeks ago the media was full of reports of how Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation was “closing in” on the President and his campaign team.  The focus of media interest was on an early morning search in July of the house of Paul Manafort, the campaign professional who at one time acted as the Trump campaign’s chairman, with lurid headlines that he was about to be indicted, though it was never made clear for what.

Since then there has been nothing, a clear sign that the search of Manafort’s house has come up with nothing, and that the pressure to get Manafort to talk by dangling threats of indictment in front of him have resulted in nothing.

In all other respects a curtain of silence has fallen on Mueller’s investigation, a strong sign that after its failure to “break” Manafort it no longer has a clear strategy of what to do.

(2) The Senate Intelligence Committee

This held a portentous press conference recently to announce the findings of its nine month investigation into the Russiagate allegations.  As a result of that press conference we learnt that

…….the committee and its staff have conducted more than 100 interviews, comprising 250 hours of testimony and resulting in 4,000 pages of transcripts, and reviewed more than 100,000 documents relevant to Russiagate. The staff, said Warner, has collectively spent a total of 57 hours per day, seven days a week, since the committee opened its inquiry, going through documents and transcripts, interviewing witnesses, and analyzing both classified and unclassified material.

The result of all this impressive activity?  Precisely nothing.  Here is what Senator Richard Burr, its Republican chairman, had to say

There are concerns that we continue to pursue. Collusion?  The committee continues to look into all evidence to see if there was any hint of collusion. Now, I’m not going to even discuss any initial findings because we haven’t any

(bold italics added)

The position has been summed up perfectly by President Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders

MS. SANDERS: I think more importantly than the President being frustrated, I think the American people are frustrated. The Senate Intel Committee told us yesterday that, after nearly nine months of investigated — that’s included more than 100 interviews, over more than 250 hours, 4,000 pages of transcripts, 100,000 pages of documents, interviewing officials in the intelligence community who wrote the report on Russian election meddling, interviewing relevant Obama administration officials, and talking to every Trump campaign official they’ve requested — it’s literally found zero evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

I think that the American people would like them to focus on some other things. I know that we certainly have said this all along, and we’re glad that as they continue this process they’re coming to the same conclusion.

(bold italics added)

Notwithstanding this urging “to focus on some other things”, Senator Burr continues to insist that the question of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – the heart of the Russiagate scandal – is “still open”.  One wonders how much more money, time and work it will need before he finally accepts that it should be closed?

(3) Social media

Relentless pressure on the leading social media platforms – Facebook, Google and Twitter – from people like the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Deputy Chair Senator Warner has unearthed a tiny number of advertisements and comments costing in aggregate substantially less than a million dollars which are ‘assessed’ to have ‘some’ unspecified connection to Russia.

Most of these advertisements and comments did not appear during last year’s US Presidential election and were not about it.  Some of those which did were pro-Hillary Clinton and anti-Donald Trump.  There is however no rhyme or reason to these advertisements and comments, many of which were on non-political subjects, including such momentous matters as puppies.

A reasonable person would conclude that this small number of advertisements and comments could have had no bearing or influence on last year’s US Presidential election, and that they were not intended to have any.

A reasonable person would also conclude that the tiny number of these advertisements and comments – unearthed after frantic and relentless searches by the social media platforms after they were put under intense pressure from the politicians to come up with something – their vague and contradictory material, and their nebulous connection to Russia, in fact proves that there was NO sinister Russian plot to swing last year’s election to Donald Trump by using social media, or even a Russian plot via social media to create doubts about it.

There is however nothing remotely reasonable about the true believers of the Russiagate scandal.  On the contrary they have latched onto this material – whose lack of substance in fact proves the absurdity of their claims – not as disproving their claims but rather as vindication that what they have been saying all along about “Russian meddling in the election” has now been proved to be true.  A whole stream of strange articles (see for example this one in the Financial Times) has appeared in the establishment media which all but say this.

To which one can only say that when evidence of the non-existence of a conspiracy is taken as proof of its existence it becomes clear that all connection to reality and indeed to sanity has been lost.

(4) Attempted Russian hacking of state voting systems

In some ways this was the most bizarre recent claim of all.  It has been thoroughly discussed by Glenn Greenwald and to his commentary I have little to add.

What makes this episode bizarre is that the claim that the Russians hacked or attempted to hack the voting systems of US states is one which has been made repeatedly over the course of the scandal, only to be invariably and repeatedly proved to be false.

The latest iteration of this claim was in an article in USA Today sourced from the Department of Homeland Security which claimed that the Russians had attempted to hack the voting systems of 21 states.

Needless to say the claim was immediately picked up and repeated with enthusiasm by all sorts of people until two of the states involved – Wisconsin and California – categorically denied it, upon which the Department of Homeland Security was forced to issue a retraction.

To which one can only ask: how often does this story have to be refuted before it is accepted as false?

*  *  *

Overall one senses a scandalous story of nefarious collusion and double-dealing between the Trump campaign and Russia which now rests on nothing but hot air as all attempts to prove it true fail one by one.

In the meantime the American public and even parts of the media are losing interest, as shown by the fact that the scandal hardly comes up in White House news conferences any more.

Serious damage however continues to be done.

The scandal has paralysed the foreign policy of the US government as Donald Trump’s signature policy upon which he was elected – rapprochement with Russia – has been blocked because of a concocted scandal with no substance behind it.

The result unsurprisingly is an angry President, resentful at how his signature policy has been blocked, who having no clear idea what to do, is hitting out in all directions, sometimes by behaving spitefully towards his own staff.

Moreover, as the disintegration of the scandal makes it all but impossible for the President to be removed from office through his impeachment (the original intention of those who concocted it), this chaotic and unhappy state of affairs looks likely to continue indefinitely.

*  *  *

But then - Just when you thought the Hillary Clinton concocted ‘Russia election meddling’ story could not get any more stupid, CNN outdoes itself.

(5) CNN Claims Russia Used "Pokemon Go" To Meddle In US Election

via Alex Christoforou,

Putin has weaponized Pokemon to subvert US democracy.

Never mind Russia dismantling America’s democratic system with only $100,000 in Facebook ads, which did not even discuss the US election, Russia has now weaponized Pokemon.

We can now expect to see Pokemon characters subpoenaed to testify in front of Congress.

Exclusive: Russian-linked meddling effort extended to YouTube, Tumblr and even Pokémon Go https://t.co/Tw6WATNizC pic.twitter.com/bCvVYPKIki

— CNN (@CNN) October 12, 2017

Via The Gateway Pundit…

CNN broke an ‘exclusive’ story on Thursday in their desperate attempt to publish anything with the word ‘Russians’ in the title. CNN is now claiming the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election through Pokemon Go.

How did we go from Trump colluded with the Kremlin to Pokemon ads?

CNN claims…

Russian efforts to meddle in American politics did not end at Facebook and Twitter. A CNN investigation of a Russian-linked account shows its tentacles extended to YouTube, Tumblr and even Pokémon Go.

One Russian-linked campaign posing as part of the Black Lives Matter movement used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and Pokémon Go and even contacted some reporters in an effort to exploit racial tensions and sow discord among Americans, CNN has learned.

The campaign, titled “Don’t Shoot Us,” offers new insights into how Russian agents created a broad online ecosystem where divisive political messages were reinforced across multiple platforms, amplifying a campaign that appears to have been run from one source — the shadowy, Kremlin-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN that the Don’t Shoot Us Facebook page was one of the 470 accounts taken down after the company determined they were linked to the IRA. CNN has separately established the links between the Facebook page and the other Don’t Shoot Us accounts.

The Don’t Shoot Us campaign — the title of which may have referenced the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” slogan that became popular in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown — used these platforms to highlight incidents of alleged police brutality, with what may have been the dual goal of galvanizing African Americans to protest and encouraging other Americans to view black activism as a rising threat.

The Don’t Shoot Us YouTube page, which is simply titled “Don’t Shoot,” contains more than 200 videos of news reports, police surveillance tape and amateur footage showing incidents of alleged police brutality. These videos, which were posted between May and December of 2016, have been viewed more than 368,000 times.

All of these YouTube videos link back to a donotshoot.us website. This website was registered in March 2016 to a “Clerk York” in Illinois. Public records do not show any evidence that someone named Clerk York lives in Illinois. The street address and phone number listed in the website’s registration belong to a shopping mall in North Riverside, Illinois.

*****

The donotshoot.us website in turn links to a Tumblr account. In July 2016, this Tumblr account announced a contest encouraging readers to play Pokémon Go, the augmented reality game in which users go out into the real world and use their phones to find and “train” Pokémon characters.

Specifically, the Don’t Shoot Us contest directed readers to go to find and train Pokémon near locations where alleged incidents of police brutality had taken place. Users were instructed to give their Pokémon names corresponding with those of the victims. A post promoting the contest showed a Pokémon named “Eric Garner,” for the African-American man who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York Police Department officer.

CNN make it so easy for Twitter users to troll them…

Exclusive @CNN scoop! First released picture of the Russians who meddled in our election through Pokémon Go! pic.twitter.com/awxIm9sMNL

— Adorable Deplorable (@OliMauritania) October 12, 2017

.@CNN has totally lost the plot now. Pokemon? Geez pic.twitter.com/CcmehsJnde

— Captain Jim #MAGA ???? (@_____MAGA______) October 12, 2017

OMG you all have reached a new low Hehe Pokémon Go ????

— Hollywood Dep???????????? (@mi2guys) October 12, 2017

Facebook Security Chief Lashes Out: "Censorship Is Easy If You Don't Worry About Becoming The Ministry Of Truth"

In a furious tweetstorm this weekend, Facebook"s Chief Security Officer warned interfering desperate politicians and triggered letfists that the fake news problem is more complicated and dangerous to solve than the public thinks.

As a reminder, we noted that Alex Stamos was seemingly pressured into "finding" Russian evidence after Senator Mark Warner paid the social media company a visit -

A few weeks after the French election, Warner flew out to California to visit Facebook in person. It was an opportunity for the senator to press Stamos directly on whether the Russians had used the company’s tools to disseminate anti-Clinton ads to key districts.

Officials said Stamos underlined to Warner the magnitude of the challenge Facebook faced policing political content that looked legitimate.

Stamos told Warner that Facebook had found no accounts that used advertising but agreed with the senator that some probably existed. The difficulty for Facebook was finding them.

For months, a team of engineers at Facebook had been searching through accounts, looking for signs that they were set up by operatives working on behalf of the Kremlin. The task was immense.

Warner’s visit spurred the company to make some changes in how it conducted its internal investigation. Instead of searching through impossibly large batches of data, Facebook decided to focus on a subset of political ads.

Technicians then searched for “indicators” that would link those ads to Russia. To narrow down the search further, Facebook zeroed in on a Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency, which had been publicly identified as a troll farm.

“They worked backwards,” a U.S. official said of the process at Facebook.

The breakthrough moment came just days after a Facebook spokesman on July 20 told CNN that “we have seen no evidence that Russian actors bought ads on Facebook in connection with the election.”

And the rest is history as 3000 "Russian Ads" were suddenly discovered to enable Warner to keep the narrative alive - and more crucially demand social media companies crackdown on "fake news", on politically-sponsored and divisive ads, and on anything they decide is not really fitting their identity-politics-based narratives.

However, given this weekend"s tweetstorm by Stamos, we suspect he has finally snapped and been forced to shove some common sense down the throats of the vengeful politicians who see no unintended consequences in their demands for big-brother-esque newspeak. 

"It’s very difficult to spot fake news and propaganda using just computer programs," Stamos said in a series of Twitter posts on Saturday.

“Nobody of substance at the big companies thinks of algorithms as neutral,” Stamos wrote, adding that the media is simplifying the matter.

“Nobody is not aware of the risks.”

For example, lots of journalists have celebrated academics who have made wild claims of how easy it is to spot fake news and propaganda.

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017

So if you don"t worry about becoming the Ministry of Truth with ML systems trained on your personal biases, then it"s easy!

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017

My suggestion for journalists is to try to talk to people who have actually had to solve these problems and live with the consequences.

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) October 7, 2017

As Bloomberg reports, the easy technical solutions would boil down to silencing topics that Facebook is aware are being spread by bots -- which should only be done “if you don’t worry about becoming the Ministry of Truth” with machine learning systems “trained on your personal biases,” he said.

“A lot of people aren’t thinking hard about the world they are asking [Silicon Valley] to build,” Stamos wrote.

“When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”

Stamos’s comments shed light on why Facebook added 1,000 more people review its advertising, rather than attempting an automated solution.

The company sent a note to advertisers telling them it would start to manually review ads targeted to people based on politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues. The company is trying to figure out how to monitor use of its system without censoring ideas, after the Russian government used fake accounts to spread political discord in the U.S. ahead of the election.

The silver lining at least is that Stamos is aware of what a terrible idea the kind of censorship that Democratic politicians (and John McCain) are demanding... whether this means that, behind the smoke and mirrors of actively managing your news feed to provide you with your self-bias-perpetuating perspective, anything will change, is anyone"s guess.