Still Lots of 'Guesswork' After Facebook's Account Purge
*By Alex Heath*
Questions still linger over who was behind the coordinated misinformation campaign on Facebook ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
“Facebook does not want to make an attribution yet,” Kevin Roose of The New York Times told Cheddar on Wednesday. “They have not definitively said this is Russia or this isn’t Russia.”
On Tuesday, Facebook disclosed that it had removed 32 accounts and pages that were involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” The accounts organized real-world events around hot-button issues, like a sequel to last year’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. One of the pages, called "Resisters,” created a Facebook event for a protest in Washington that was scheduled to take place next week.
“Facebook is clearly taking the threat of foreign-led disinformation campaigns very seriously,” Theresa Payton, former White House CIO under President George W. Bush, told Cheddar on Wednesday. “Russian operatives and other operatives around the globe that want to meddle in elections have been changing their tactics to learn how to hide in plain site. This is just a drill, what’s going on going into the midterm elections.”
Facebook says that it’s in the early stage of investigating who is behind the coordinated effort. The social network recently began notifying members of the Justice Department and says it has been working with the FBI to investigate the activity.
Meanwhile, Facebook continues to deal with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which exposed the data of millions of Facebook users. The company said on Tuesday that it had cut off access to “hundreds of thousands of inactive apps that have not submitted for our app review process.”
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/facebook-still-unsure-whos-behind-latest-political-influence-campaign).
A bipartisan bill introduced by U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) aims to tackle the spread of misinformation on social media platforms, as well as the addictive nature of the sites and negative mental health impacts they have on users. The 'Nudge Act' would require studies to find and compile potential interventions that platforms could use to encourage people to think before they share a post, or log off after spending too much time on an app. The FTC would create rules based on these findings, and hold the platforms accountable. But will it work? Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, joins Closing Bell to discuss the bill, whether real results and regulations could come from it, and more.
A.I.-based entertainment company, Deedub, recently raised
$20 million in a Series A round, led by Insight Partners. Deepdub uses A.I. technology to automate the dubbing process for foreign-language movies or TV shows, while using actors' original voices. The company says it can take just two to three minutes of data from an actor's voice and transform the voice into a different language. The funding comes as foreign-language films and shows like Netflix's 'Squid Game' have recently become more popular with audiences in the U.S. and around the world. Oz Krakowski, Chief Revenue Officer at Deepdub, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Energy Vault, the company developing sustainable, grid-scale energy storage solutions, is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange following the completion of its business combination with Novus Capital Corporation II. Energy Vault develops sustainable, grid-scale energy storage solutions designed to advance the transition to a carbon free, resilient power grid. Robert Piconi, co-founder and CEO of Energy Vault, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to disucss.
A new mobile app has launched just in time for Valentine's Day. Our.Love bills itself as an A.I.-powered, gamified, relationship wellness app for couples. The app is set in what the company calls the Coupleverse, a virtual world where each couple can build a virtual relationship home as they also build their real-world relationship. Founder and CEO Tal Zlotnitsky joined Cheddar to discuss how the app works. "The concept behind Our.Love is to give people the opportunity to understand where they stand in their relationship through very simple metrics that we provide within the app that will help them in real-time, see where they stand, see where their partner is, and be able to get closer together," he said.
Alyson Wilson, VP of Brand Innovation at Alo Yoga, joins Cheddar News to discuss the yoga apparel company entering the metaverse and teaming up with Spring Studios for New York Fashion Week.
