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I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik, because that's not really the election influence problem they have. Political disc

by pornel 9y ago

I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik, because that's not really the election influence problem they have. Political discussions on Twitter are flooded by obvious bot/content farm accounts like "BaldEagleFreedom983428" shitposting memes how Hillary bought CNN to take away your gunflags. Ban this crap.

emodendroket 9y ago
We really don't need more interference from Twitter, Facebook, et al to moderate political discussions. Time and time again they blunder it.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  I'm of the view that we need more powerful users, not moderation. Would be hard to enforce I suppose, given voting rings and whatnot, but I'd like to see a community like that one day.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I'm not sure what you are imagining but isn't a hive mind effect a challenge?
    - imustbeevil 9y ago
      At least hive mind is real people being stupid. Bots exactly misrepresent the will of the public.
  - r721 9y ago
    I think algorithmic detection of agenda pushing is where the gold lies. I mean let's add to profiles "detected agendas: Russian state policy/US state policy/Vote for Democrats/Vote for Republicans/Buy bitcoin/whatever". There are probably some (a lot of?) caveats, but still.
    - andreineculau 9y ago
      If only someone would hear you and just do it...
    - cat199 9y ago
      Yes, lets suppress actual popular movements because they deviate from the norm and therefore could be suspicious.
      - hwillis 9y ago
        Non sequiter. Interest and promotion in a movement != pushing an agenda. In the same way, interest in topics on reddit != spamming upvotes. It's literally the exact same process of looking for suspicious behavior and then moderating it. Of course, reddit doesn't do that either nowadays. But the point stands: Blocking bot behavior does not necessarily mean blocking real users.
        talmand 9y ago
        I would like to see an automated system that correctly knows the difference between interest/promotion of a movement and pushing an agenda. My level of interest may be different than your level of interest; one of which may be considered suddenly pushing an agenda. Also, what's wrong with pushing an agenda exactly? Are we to ban politicians and opinion writers?
      - r721 9y ago
        How is that suppression? I propose to show publicly the result of an algorithmic process which for now could be done by a human with enough time on their hands.
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      Yeah, just look how Google's Youtube extremist detection algorithm works.
awalton 9y ago
Yeah but Reddit and Twitter both have realized their financial well-being depends on Monthly Active Users, and bots look like active users. They simply threw ethics away and gun straight for the capital. The only reason Twitter did this was to make it look like they were doing something to improve the platform. Twitter won't notice $2M from their balance sheets if it bumps their stock price a few cents, but they will notice the dollars off their stock price when they decide to stop lying about how much traffic from human beings they're actually servicing vs the massive bot infestation.
- Retric 9y ago
  Bots cost them money for zero direct benefit so they do hurt profitability.
  - koolba 9y ago
    Bots create an illusion of activity and relevance. They fill an important niche in the twitter ecosystem as without them it’d look like the sad and empty dive bar it truly is.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    It's a snowball effect. Bigger numbers and more activity help indirectly, eg by attracting celebrities. In turn they attract more real people.
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    Twitter is under immense pressure to show a growing user base. Getting rid of the bots would likely cause month-on-month figures to actually fall, which would presumably be a problem.
    - boxy310 9y ago
      They recently had a recalculation of MAU due to a misreporting -- users that used to have organic posts, but were now only sending out pre-scheduled messages, like ghosts in the machine. How they handled that was to back-date all the reporting. Presumably bot traffic does not generate any additional advertising value, so re-fitting the number of MAU would increase the average ad reach/user value proposition. The importance is the trend, not necessarily the overall level.
weirdstuff 9y ago
They could just as easily be real people under alt accounts. It's not that obvious. Many of my real-life contacts push meme-like propaganda all the time on facebook. I don't think they're paid to do it. Banning that stuff through automation is likely prone to error.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  No, these are bots. Anyone that's ever replied to one of the 'legit' accounts these bots are designed to amplify can watch as the posts are retweeted and liked on a regular schedule over the course of a month. Nothing at all for a week and then suddenly hundreds of retweets/likes Saturday night after midnight NY time on a 3 week old tweet. All from the exact same network of 'users'.
  - dashundchen 9y ago
    Here's a dashboard someone created monitoring a small portion of the Russian Twitter network: http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ The velocity, timing, and similarity among links in these tweets are not organic at all.
    - mizzack 9y ago
      From that site's methodology page re: the users sampled: > Accounts likely controlled by Russian government influence operations. > Accounts for “patriotic” pro-Russia users that are loosely connected or unconnected to the Russian government, but which amplify themes promoted by Russian government media. > Accounts for users who have been influenced by the first two groups and who are extremely active in amplifying Russian media themes. These users may or may not understand themselves to be part of a pro-Russian social network. So, not bots? Maybe organic right wingers? Looking at the advisory council of that group and seeing Bill Kristol along with a bunch of Obama staffers and hawkish neolibs/neocons is setting off my "disinfo via appeal to dataviz" alarm.
jrs95 9y ago
Can we also ban candidates from creating insane "dossiers" via third parties accusing their opponents of having a fetish for golden showers and being owned by the Russian government? The fake news flowed in both directions in this campaign.
- psergeant 9y ago
  What was insane about the dossier?
  - jrs95 9y ago
    It was just made up BS. An ex-MI6 guy was paid through Fusion GPS to make it, nothing in it was verified, and the news ran with it like crazy anyways. Fusion GPS has gone after people with basically slanderous claims in the past too. They accused a Venezuelan journalist who criticized one of their clients of being a pedophile drug trafficker, for example.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      > It was just made up BS. An ex-MI6 guy was paid through Fusion GPS to make it, nothing in it was verified, and the news ran with it like crazy anyways. This is false. It wasn't just made up BS. Many elements have been verified, and the news didn't just run with it. In fact, all the news outlets that had it save one didn't run with it because they hadn't verified it enough, and it was until one news outlet ran it that the cat was out of the bag. And even when they ran it, they made it very clear the status of verification. You are either ignorant and need to go do any level of research or a liar, in which case you should be ignored.
homero 9y ago
The trump and white house Facebook pages are full of bots writing stuff like below constantly, these aren't genuine human supporters: President Trump is the greatest president of all time. In the future, the U.S. will be so great that our history will be taught as 'before Trump' and 'after Trump'. Thank you, President Trump, for fighting for all that is right and good for America. I'm so sorry the liberals and media can't see the truth. Millions of us support and respect you. We are praying daily for your safety and health.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  I mean, it's possible that they're just sincere crazy people.
  - homero 9y ago
    I've thought about that but they're too quick and grammar is good. The bots should throw in misspellings.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
If people are too dumb to believe what BaldEagleFreedom983428 says, democracy has more fundamental problems than Twitter. I've also got news for you: most conservatives had strong aversions to Hillary Clinton to begin with. As far as I can tell, most of the surprise in the vote turnouts came from senior citizens who were hardly part of polls and open political discourse in the run-up. These people aren't glued to Twitter all day. Yes, Donald Trump was an unrealistic, silly choice and I too thought there was no chance he was going to win: but that's exactly what I thought when I saw how much the DNC was backing Hillary.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election. No conservative person I’ve ever met used Twitter. Twitters demographic is so far and away from the Trump demographic. The only people being “influenced” on twitter were other bots, the primary users of that service.
  - FilterSweep 9y ago
    > Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election. What about physical rallies organized by Russia on Facebook? [0]. Or the failed "Miners for Trump" in Philly [1] I guess it cracks you up when its your guy in the house :) [0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/20/russian_facebook_account_organized_florida_trump_rallies_daily_beast_reports.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/20/russian_fa... [1] http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-crazy-fake-russian-miners-for-trump-rally-in-philly-and-why-it-matters-will-bunch-20170928.html http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-crazy...
    - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
      Let's not be polarized here. Just because I think this narrative is absurd doesn't prove by deduction that I'm a supporter and voter of the current administration.
    - ameister14 9y ago
guiomie 9y ago
I'm starting to think all those Twitter accounts I believe are bots might actually just be another part of the US demographics that I've never been exposed. I thought Sean Hannity (what a weird name to begin with) was a bot, turns out, he is an actual guy on TV.
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  This is where the danger occurs. When sinister people conflate a hoard of bots as their "silent majority."
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Bots did not vote. People did. And they trounced democrat machine, including the democrat digital operation ( staffed by people who worked/used to work for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, etc ). All talks about "Hillary got more in popular vote" is akin to talking that the fat slob should have won against the MMA fighter quarter of his weight had the rules been about weight competition and not about dropping the opponent.
    - FilterSweep 9y ago
      We don't know if bots did take part in US elections or not. Electronic machines can be hacked. [0][1] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activists-sued-georgias-election-server-was-wiped-clean/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activ... [1] http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532824432/if-voting-machines-were-hacked-would-anyone-know http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532824432/if-voting-machines-w...
      - notyourday 9y ago
        Occam's razor makes it much more likely that the basket of deplorables gave a middle finger to the clueless elites.
      - PeachPlum 9y ago
        There is a reason The Donald is/was calling for paper ballots, Voter ID and no-electronic voting Smartmatic manufactures the voting machines used in 16 states last November. The Chairman of Smartmatic, Mark Malloch-Brown, is on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. It is not hacking by Russians that is the threat. Think what you like about Soros but having major Democrat donors running the electronic voting system is asking for trouble, be it real or manufactured.
rdtsc 9y ago
> I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik, Twitter was playing into the "Russians" PR story. Basically explaining the results of the elections as reversed by the Russian influence. Everyone talked about it for months on end. After months of investigating, it turns out Russians bought ads on Facebook and I guess were approached by Twitter to promote their version of "truth" as well for some extra cash. So now Twitter feels a bit guilty, because even though it knows the narrative is bogus, they have to go along with it. That's the danger of the conspiracy theory mindset. Once they go down that path, it's hard to really get back out, because it would mean realizing everything that has been said or repeated so far is mostly bogus. It's really hard to fight against cognitive dissonance, both at the personal and organizational level. However, I think it's good in general they are trying to reduce subversive influence and bring light to it. Hopefully they apply the same effort and zeal to expose and reduce the influence of other governments, corporations, political organizations and so on.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/8676064/Twitter-confirms-significant-round-of-funding-led-by-Russian-investment-company.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    > I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): Exactly. It went from Russians hacked or elections in Wisconsin. As in they logged in and changed vote counts. To piss dossier. To secret coded gestured at an official dinner between Putin and Trump. And now we are down to Milner considered "Russian influence". In this case we are in deep trouble. It means Alibaba, AirBnB, WhatsApp, Facebook, Flipkart, Zynga, Spotify are all their "pocket". By that token Google is a "Russian" company with a Russian born founder who is now creating robots, knows everyone's search history, and spies on everyone via Android phones. Everything is lost, nowhere to run. That's exactly how conspiracy theory works, it at the same level as contrails and lizard people.

by pornel 9y ago

emodendroket 9y ago

We really don't need more interference from Twitter, Facebook, et al to moderate political discussions. Time and time again they blunder it.

ShabbosGoy 9y ago
I'm of the view that we need more powerful users, not moderation. Would be hard to enforce I suppose, given voting rings and whatnot, but I'd like to see a community like that one day.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you are imagining but isn't a hive mind effect a challenge?
  - imustbeevil 9y ago
    At least hive mind is real people being stupid. Bots exactly misrepresent the will of the public.
- r721 9y ago
  I think algorithmic detection of agenda pushing is where the gold lies. I mean let's add to profiles "detected agendas: Russian state policy/US state policy/Vote for Democrats/Vote for Republicans/Buy bitcoin/whatever". There are probably some (a lot of?) caveats, but still.
  - andreineculau 9y ago
    If only someone would hear you and just do it...
  - cat199 9y ago
    Yes, lets suppress actual popular movements because they deviate from the norm and therefore could be suspicious.
    - hwillis 9y ago
      Non sequiter. Interest and promotion in a movement != pushing an agenda. In the same way, interest in topics on reddit != spamming upvotes. It's literally the exact same process of looking for suspicious behavior and then moderating it. Of course, reddit doesn't do that either nowadays. But the point stands: Blocking bot behavior does not necessarily mean blocking real users.
      - talmand 9y ago
        I would like to see an automated system that correctly knows the difference between interest/promotion of a movement and pushing an agenda. My level of interest may be different than your level of interest; one of which may be considered suddenly pushing an agenda. Also, what's wrong with pushing an agenda exactly? Are we to ban politicians and opinion writers?
    - r721 9y ago
      How is that suppression? I propose to show publicly the result of an algorithmic process which for now could be done by a human with enough time on their hands.
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    Yeah, just look how Google's Youtube extremist detection algorithm works.

awalton 9y ago

Yeah but Reddit and Twitter both have realized their financial well-being depends on Monthly Active Users, and bots look like active users. They simply threw ethics away and gun straight for the capital. The only reason Twitter did this was to make it look like they were doing something to improve the platform. Twitter won't notice $2M from their balance sheets if it bumps their stock price a few cents, but they will notice the dollars off their stock price when they decide to stop lying about how much traffic from human beings they're actually servicing vs the massive bot infestation.

Retric 9y ago
Bots cost them money for zero direct benefit so they do hurt profitability.
- koolba 9y ago
  Bots create an illusion of activity and relevance. They fill an important niche in the twitter ecosystem as without them it’d look like the sad and empty dive bar it truly is.
- hwillis 9y ago
  It's a snowball effect. Bigger numbers and more activity help indirectly, eg by attracting celebrities. In turn they attract more real people.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Twitter is under immense pressure to show a growing user base. Getting rid of the bots would likely cause month-on-month figures to actually fall, which would presumably be a problem.
  - boxy310 9y ago
    They recently had a recalculation of MAU due to a misreporting -- users that used to have organic posts, but were now only sending out pre-scheduled messages, like ghosts in the machine. How they handled that was to back-date all the reporting. Presumably bot traffic does not generate any additional advertising value, so re-fitting the number of MAU would increase the average ad reach/user value proposition. The importance is the trend, not necessarily the overall level.

weirdstuff 9y ago

They could just as easily be real people under alt accounts. It's not that obvious. Many of my real-life contacts push meme-like propaganda all the time on facebook. I don't think they're paid to do it. Banning that stuff through automation is likely prone to error.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
No, these are bots. Anyone that's ever replied to one of the 'legit' accounts these bots are designed to amplify can watch as the posts are retweeted and liked on a regular schedule over the course of a month. Nothing at all for a week and then suddenly hundreds of retweets/likes Saturday night after midnight NY time on a 3 week old tweet. All from the exact same network of 'users'.
- dashundchen 9y ago
  Here's a dashboard someone created monitoring a small portion of the Russian Twitter network: http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ The velocity, timing, and similarity among links in these tweets are not organic at all.
  - mizzack 9y ago
    From that site's methodology page re: the users sampled: > Accounts likely controlled by Russian government influence operations. > Accounts for “patriotic” pro-Russia users that are loosely connected or unconnected to the Russian government, but which amplify themes promoted by Russian government media. > Accounts for users who have been influenced by the first two groups and who are extremely active in amplifying Russian media themes. These users may or may not understand themselves to be part of a pro-Russian social network. So, not bots? Maybe organic right wingers? Looking at the advisory council of that group and seeing Bill Kristol along with a bunch of Obama staffers and hawkish neolibs/neocons is setting off my "disinfo via appeal to dataviz" alarm.

jrs95 9y ago

Can we also ban candidates from creating insane "dossiers" via third parties accusing their opponents of having a fetish for golden showers and being owned by the Russian government? The fake news flowed in both directions in this campaign.

psergeant 9y ago
What was insane about the dossier?
- jrs95 9y ago
  It was just made up BS. An ex-MI6 guy was paid through Fusion GPS to make it, nothing in it was verified, and the news ran with it like crazy anyways. Fusion GPS has gone after people with basically slanderous claims in the past too. They accused a Venezuelan journalist who criticized one of their clients of being a pedophile drug trafficker, for example.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    > It was just made up BS. An ex-MI6 guy was paid through Fusion GPS to make it, nothing in it was verified, and the news ran with it like crazy anyways. This is false. It wasn't just made up BS. Many elements have been verified, and the news didn't just run with it. In fact, all the news outlets that had it save one didn't run with it because they hadn't verified it enough, and it was until one news outlet ran it that the cat was out of the bag. And even when they ran it, they made it very clear the status of verification. You are either ignorant and need to go do any level of research or a liar, in which case you should be ignored.

homero 9y ago

The trump and white house Facebook pages are full of bots writing stuff like below constantly, these aren't genuine human supporters: President Trump is the greatest president of all time. In the future, the U.S. will be so great that our history will be taught as 'before Trump' and 'after Trump'. Thank you, President Trump, for fighting for all that is right and good for America. I'm so sorry the liberals and media can't see the truth. Millions of us support and respect you. We are praying daily for your safety and health.

rsynnott 9y ago
I mean, it's possible that they're just sincere crazy people.
- homero 9y ago
  I've thought about that but they're too quick and grammar is good. The bots should throw in misspellings.

TallGuyShort 9y ago

If people are too dumb to believe what BaldEagleFreedom983428 says, democracy has more fundamental problems than Twitter. I've also got news for you: most conservatives had strong aversions to Hillary Clinton to begin with. As far as I can tell, most of the surprise in the vote turnouts came from senior citizens who were hardly part of polls and open political discourse in the run-up. These people aren't glued to Twitter all day. Yes, Donald Trump was an unrealistic, silly choice and I too thought there was no chance he was going to win: but that's exactly what I thought when I saw how much the DNC was backing Hillary.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election. No conservative person I’ve ever met used Twitter. Twitters demographic is so far and away from the Trump demographic. The only people being “influenced” on twitter were other bots, the primary users of that service.
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  > Honestly I crack up when I think about twitter influencing the election. What about physical rallies organized by Russia on Facebook? [0]. Or the failed "Miners for Trump" in Philly [1] I guess it cracks you up when its your guy in the house :) [0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/20/russian_facebook_account_organized_florida_trump_rallies_daily_beast_reports.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/20/russian_fa... [1] http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-crazy-fake-russian-miners-for-trump-rally-in-philly-and-why-it-matters-will-bunch-20170928.html http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/the-crazy...
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    Let's not be polarized here. Just because I think this narrative is absurd doesn't prove by deduction that I'm a supporter and voter of the current administration.
  - ameister14 9y ago

guiomie 9y ago

I'm starting to think all those Twitter accounts I believe are bots might actually just be another part of the US demographics that I've never been exposed. I thought Sean Hannity (what a weird name to begin with) was a bot, turns out, he is an actual guy on TV.

FilterSweep 9y ago
This is where the danger occurs. When sinister people conflate a hoard of bots as their "silent majority."
- notyourday 9y ago
  Bots did not vote. People did. And they trounced democrat machine, including the democrat digital operation ( staffed by people who worked/used to work for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit, etc ). All talks about "Hillary got more in popular vote" is akin to talking that the fat slob should have won against the MMA fighter quarter of his weight had the rules been about weight competition and not about dropping the opponent.
  - FilterSweep 9y ago
    We don't know if bots did take part in US elections or not. Electronic machines can be hacked. [0][1] [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activists-sued-georgias-election-server-was-wiped-clean/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activ... [1] http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532824432/if-voting-machines-were-hacked-would-anyone-know http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532824432/if-voting-machines-w...
    - notyourday 9y ago
      Occam's razor makes it much more likely that the basket of deplorables gave a middle finger to the clueless elites.
    - PeachPlum 9y ago
      There is a reason The Donald is/was calling for paper ballots, Voter ID and no-electronic voting Smartmatic manufactures the voting machines used in 16 states last November. The Chairman of Smartmatic, Mark Malloch-Brown, is on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. It is not hacking by Russians that is the threat. Think what you like about Soros but having major Democrat donors running the electronic voting system is asking for trouble, be it real or manufactured.

rdtsc 9y ago

> I was surprised when Jack said they'd be returning ad money from RT/Sputnik, Twitter was playing into the "Russians" PR story. Basically explaining the results of the elections as reversed by the Russian influence. Everyone talked about it for months on end. After months of investigating, it turns out Russians bought ads on Facebook and I guess were approached by Twitter to promote their version of "truth" as well for some extra cash. So now Twitter feels a bit guilty, because even though it knows the narrative is bogus, they have to go along with it. That's the danger of the conspiracy theory mindset. Once they go down that path, it's hard to really get back out, because it would mean realizing everything that has been said or repeated so far is mostly bogus. It's really hard to fight against cognitive dissonance, both at the personal and organizational level. However, I think it's good in general they are trying to reduce subversive influence and bring light to it. Hopefully they apply the same effort and zeal to expose and reduce the influence of other governments, corporations, political organizations and so on.

SEJeff 9y ago
I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/8676064/Twitter-confirms-significant-round-of-funding-led-by-Russian-investment-company.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > I don't think it is a conspiracy theory to say Russia influenced them as well (at a $$$$ level): Exactly. It went from Russians hacked or elections in Wisconsin. As in they logged in and changed vote counts. To piss dossier. To secret coded gestured at an official dinner between Putin and Trump. And now we are down to Milner considered "Russian influence". In this case we are in deep trouble. It means Alibaba, AirBnB, WhatsApp, Facebook, Flipkart, Zynga, Spotify are all their "pocket". By that token Google is a "Russian" company with a Russian born founder who is now creating robots, knows everyone's search history, and spies on everyone via Android phones. Everything is lost, nowhere to run. That's exactly how conspiracy theory works, it at the same level as contrails and lizard people.