A Thursday evening software update at Facebook accidentally allowed anyone to view exactly who is posting under the accounts of public figures, businesses and other entities, according to Wired.
The result? For starters, some 3 million followers of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg have been reading posts made by her father, Svante Thunberg, and a climate activist in India who serves as a delegate at the UN’s Climate Change organization, Adarsh Prathap. Thunberg, Inc. claims Greta is still the one writing the content.
Greta, Inc. explained this in a Saturday Facebook post purporting to be the young climate activist.
“Some people have been asking who manages this page. First of all, since last spring I only use Facebook to repost what I write on my Twitter and Instagram accounts,” reads the post, in which ‘she’ says she tried Facebook “early on,” but didn’t like it, so she uses “my father Svantes account to repost content.”
“The rest that is shared on Facebook is reposted from Twitter and Instagram by the guy who founded the Greta Thunberg Facebook page long before I knew it existed. His name is Adarsh Prathap and he lives in India. Since a lot of people thought it was my official page in the beginning I asked if I could co-manage it and he said yes.”
Greta claims to have written all the content posted by her father and Prathap.
In other words, “of course it’s not me silly – you should have known I just ‘co-manage’ the fan page.”
Except – by all outward appearances it appeared to be her page alone.
Facebook’s ‘page transparency’ shows Greta as the confirmed owner – with the only clue suggesting she might have help being a page manager located in India.
According to Facebook, the flaw was quickly fixed – but not before the people behind famous accounts were revealed and shared on public forums such as 4chan.
“We quickly fixed an issue where someone could see who edited or published a post on behalf of a Page when looking at its edit history,” said the company in a statement. “We are grateful to the security researcher who alerted us to this issue.”
Facebook says the bug was the result of a code update that it pushed Thursday evening. It’s not something most people would have encountered on their own, since it took navigating to a Page, viewing an edit history, and realizing that there shouldn’t be a name and profile picture assigned to edits to exploit it. Still, despite the Friday morning fix, screenshots circulated on 4chan, Imgur, and social media appearing to show the accounts behind the official Facebook Pages of the pseudonymous artist Banksy, Russian president Vladimir Putin, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, the hacking collective Anonymous, climate activist Greta Thunberg, and rapper Snoop Dogg, among others.
Facebook points out that no information beyond a name and public profile link were available, but that information isn’t supposed to appear in the edit history at all. And for people, say, running anti-regime Pages under a repressive government, making even that much information public is plenty alarming. –Wired
“People who run sensitive Pages from their own Facebook should now consider that their identity may be known,” said Lukasz Olejnik independent privacy adviser and Oxford University Center for Technology and Global Affairs. “While mistakes happen, this one is unexpected.”
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Makes sense. The girl herself seems retarded.
Demented is the word I like to use.
Greta is autistic, as far as I know
Isn’t that the same as retarded? I don’t know – I’m autistic.
AHHHHHHHHHHHH HA HA HA HA! What an amazing complete lack of surprise. Perhaps a new name is in order…………. FakeBook
What? Greta is a fake? I had no idea! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
Next thing you know, they’ll be saying orange man isn’t really bad.
Pissy little liars.
Gretta sez…”Help my daddy line his pockets with a fake NGO U.N. climate change side business. ”
Another scam to suck up money in the name of another save-the-world concept.
Even if posted by her, they were all scripted by those promoting the agenda.
Yes, Dad did not write it either, in fact he looks equally retarded.
But he sure looks like he could suck a mean dick…?
Where’s the outrage
“How dare you dad you’ve stolen my facebook”
No surprise anyone with a brain could see she just a puppet
A retarded puppet.
Even rotten fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have also noticed it is usually the first to fall.
It appeared that Svante Thunberg, Greta Thunberg s father, and Adarsh Prathap, an Indian delegate at the United Nation s Climate Change organization, had authored the posts attributed to Greta, according to Zerohedge.