Wired: “It was as if YouTube had flipped a switch. In a way, it had. Scores of them, really—a small army of algorithmic tweaks, deployed beginning in 2019. Flat-earther Mark Sargent’s was among the first accounts to feel the effects of a grand YouTube project to teach its recommendation AI how to recognize the conspiratorial mindset and demote it.”

“It was a complex feat of engineering, and it worked; the algorithm is less likely now to promote misinformation. But in a country where conspiracies are recommended everywhere—including by the president himself—even the best AI can’t fix what’s broken.”

“Conspiracy theories about the origin of fires in Oregon are still spreading through private Facebook groups days after the social media giant announced it would remove the false claims,” Axios reports.

“Facebook’s efforts to control misinformation on its vast platform continue to lag behind the spread of rumors and conspiracy theories about life-and-death crises, and researchers are urging earlier and stronger action, especially as the election gets closer and the coronavirus continues to rage in the country.”

Portland news channel KGW reports that 911 dispatchers were inundated with calls about antifa starting the fires.

BuzzFeed News: “The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them.”

Said Zhang: “In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked by Axios if he was at all concerned that history will remember Facebook as “an accelerant of social destruction.”

He responded: “I have a little more confidence in democracy than that. And I hope my confidence isn’t misplaced.”

He added added: “What we do, and I think a lot of what the internet does overall, is gives individuals more power.”

“The Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month, after Attorney General William Barr overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case against one of the world’s wealthiest, most formidable technology companies,” the New York Times reports.

“Justice Department officials told lawyers involved in the antitrust inquiry into Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, to wrap up their work by the end of September… Most of the 40-odd lawyers who had been working on the investigation opposed the deadline. Some said they would not sign the complaint, and several of them left the case this summer.”

“Facebook took down a small network of fake accounts and pages associated with Russian operatives that had recruited U.S. journalists to write articles targeting left-leaning readers on topics such as racial justice, the Biden-Harris campaign, and President Trump’s policies,” the Washington Post reports.

“The network of 13 fake accounts and two pages was in its early stages of attempting to build an audience.”

An investigation by a UK-based counter-extremist organization found that typing “holocaust” into Facebook search brought up suggestions for denial pages, which in turn recommended links to publishers which sell revisionist and denial literature, as well as pages dedicated to the notorious British Holocaust denier David Irving, The Guardian reports.

“Facebook said on Wednesday that it had removed 790 QAnon groups from its site and was restricting another 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts related to the right-wing conspiracy theory, in the social network’s most sweeping action against the fast-growing movement,” the New York Times reports.

“Facebook’s takedown followed record growth of QAnon groups on the site, much of it since the coronavirus pandemic began in March.”

“For at least the last two months, a key Instagram feature, which algorithmically pushes users toward supposedly related content, has been treating hashtags associated with President Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in very different ways,” BuzzFeed News reports.

“Earlier this week, a search on Instagram for #JoeBiden would have surfaced nearly 390,000 posts tagged with the former vice president’s name along with related hashtags selected by the platform’s algorithm. Users searching Instagram for #JoeBiden might also see results for #joebiden2020, as well as pro-Trump hashtags like #trump2020landslide and #democratsdestroyamerica.”

“A similar search for #DonaldTrump on the platform, however, provided a totally different experience. Besides showing 7 million posts tagged with the president’s name, Instagram did not present any related hashtags that would have pushed users toward different content or promoted alternative viewpoints.”