4 ms·

yeah only one side routinely falls for russian propaganda, downright lies and breitbart.

emodendroket 9y ago
Charges of being Russian tools have been hurled at everyone left and right of the DNC (for instance they were going after Jill Stein).
irori929 9y ago
Why the generic labels? If they mention specifics, Bernie or a particular forum, there’s usually plenty of real arguments that can separate those specific things When the discourse devolves left/right and liberal/conservative tags you’ve landed in nonsense-land Tear down nonsense directly and call a person out for THEIR own BS.
MBCook 9y ago
Really? Here’s a paper (PDF) showing some of the most active & influential #BlackLivesMatter tweeters were linked to Russia. On BOTH SIDES. http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polarization.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polar... This matches similar research I saw in the last few days on some other political topic (can’t remember which) were some of the most important and active tweeters were Russian on both sides. Russia wasn’t trying to get Trump elected (though they HATED Clinton). They were trying to get America to fight with itself and sew division. They did a really good job.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Certainly people on both sides were accused of that but the idea that Black Lives Matter was actually just a Russian plot is frankly pretty repellent, and that paper in the end just defers to Twitter's ideas of who's a Russian troll, and how did they decide? We've seen a lot of really shoddy work in this department.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    No, I’m not saying it was a Russian plot at all. It’s a real thing. I’m saying they seized on it as something they could use to push division between people.
    - mike_hearn 9y ago
      I find that incredibly unlikely. I used to work in bot fighting on Google. Claims of Russian bots on Twitter and especially claims by academics are invariably riddled with methodological errors that render the "research" useless. I wrote about this problem here: https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f08c014a https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f... These studies are seeing patterns in noise. That's why the narrative changed over time - it used to be "Russian twitter bots got Trump elected!" and now it's "they're supporting both sides .... to sow division!". The former claim was extremely implausible but at least it had some sort of inner logic to it, in that Trump was more friendly to Russia than Clinton. The new spin doesn't even make logical sense. However it makes perfect sense if you're just picking random Twitter users and trying to explain their behaviour through the prism of some convoluted conspiracy.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        The article linked is excellent. Thanks.
      - hackinthebochs 9y ago
        >the new spin doesn't even make logical sense. Sure it does. The appearance of a wide division in our political landscape leads to a wide division in our political landscape. People tend to "pick sides" in political fights and when something gives the appearance of a serious political dispute, people are motivated to pick sides and entrench their opinions. This is in keeping with getting Trump elected, as a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest. None of this is particularly hard to understand.
        9y ago

Charges of being Russian tools have been hurled at everyone left and right of the DNC (for instance they were going after Jill Stein).

irori929 9y ago

Why the generic labels? If they mention specifics, Bernie or a particular forum, there’s usually plenty of real arguments that can separate those specific things When the discourse devolves left/right and liberal/conservative tags you’ve landed in nonsense-land Tear down nonsense directly and call a person out for THEIR own BS.

MBCook 9y ago

Really? Here’s a paper (PDF) showing some of the most active & influential #BlackLivesMatter tweeters were linked to Russia. On BOTH SIDES. http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polarization.pdf http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polar... This matches similar research I saw in the last few days on some other political topic (can’t remember which) were some of the most important and active tweeters were Russian on both sides. Russia wasn’t trying to get Trump elected (though they HATED Clinton). They were trying to get America to fight with itself and sew division. They did a really good job.

emodendroket 9y ago
Certainly people on both sides were accused of that but the idea that Black Lives Matter was actually just a Russian plot is frankly pretty repellent, and that paper in the end just defers to Twitter's ideas of who's a Russian troll, and how did they decide? We've seen a lot of really shoddy work in this department.
- MBCook 9y ago
  No, I’m not saying it was a Russian plot at all. It’s a real thing. I’m saying they seized on it as something they could use to push division between people.
  - mike_hearn 9y ago
    I find that incredibly unlikely. I used to work in bot fighting on Google. Claims of Russian bots on Twitter and especially claims by academics are invariably riddled with methodological errors that render the "research" useless. I wrote about this problem here: https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f08c014a https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f... These studies are seeing patterns in noise. That's why the narrative changed over time - it used to be "Russian twitter bots got Trump elected!" and now it's "they're supporting both sides .... to sow division!". The former claim was extremely implausible but at least it had some sort of inner logic to it, in that Trump was more friendly to Russia than Clinton. The new spin doesn't even make logical sense. However it makes perfect sense if you're just picking random Twitter users and trying to explain their behaviour through the prism of some convoluted conspiracy.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      The article linked is excellent. Thanks.
    - hackinthebochs 9y ago
      >the new spin doesn't even make logical sense. Sure it does. The appearance of a wide division in our political landscape leads to a wide division in our political landscape. People tend to "pick sides" in political fights and when something gives the appearance of a serious political dispute, people are motivated to pick sides and entrench their opinions. This is in keeping with getting Trump elected, as a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest. None of this is particularly hard to understand.
      - 9y ago