19 ms·

Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

55 points by the_duck 9y ago

reustle 9y ago
Are they absolutely sure it was Russia or are they going to quietly retract that like last time?
- lawlessone 9y ago
  what was last time?
myth_drannon 9y ago
Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? They need to run that script again, put it as a cron job!
- mcphage 9y ago
  > Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? Twitter has no interest in making it clear just how many of its “users” are actually bots. Politically motivated bots even more so. Moreover, they’ve shown no interest in making it more difficult to create new bots. They probably had news accounts before Twitter even finished deleting the old ones.
tpkj 9y ago
David Satter, "The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms
stupidcar 9y ago
Note that while the headline says the bots are "pro-gun", the article says the bots flood Twitter with messages on both sides of an issue like this. The idea supposedly being to encourage political discord in general.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jacquesm 9y ago
There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to weigh pretty heavily.
- hodl 9y ago
  Not sure how you can disconnect the internet. Basically would involve disconnecting all comms. Lest someone uses a modem. Then what about long distance RF?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    China is a pretty good example of what can be done just short of disconnecting, and as annoying as that is they are doing this because they are well aware of what could happen if they allowed free communications. They're on the wrong side of the line as far as I'm concerned but in the end the goals are roughly the same: prevent outside influences from destabilizing the country to the point where the whole thing might collapse. Open societies are probably (I hope) less vulnerable to this sort of thing than closed ones but it would be a huge mistake to think that we are immune to it.
- avs733 9y ago
  Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an equivalent to teaching understanding. Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by facts that disprove their beliefs. I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of all of this on the reification of STEM education and the devaluing of liberal arts and humanities.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > (i.e., conservatives) That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not just conservatives that do this. Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in a relatively friendly setting. The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones would have been laid differently. So now you get this weird mix of open societies connected in a very open fashion to outright dictatorships with the additional asymmetries of English being a pre-requisite for trade all over the world and thus a ready and cheap to deploy workforce aided by bots to sow dissention and to drive a wedge between folks in the remainder of the world. What is sad - and that's why I picked out that fragment - is that once the ball is rolling we will then happily take over beating on that wedge.
alkonaut 9y ago
I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group in the US (Say a large gun rights organization of some form) would buy these services from the russians. The Russian twitter troll factories don't work for free, and in this case there doesn't seem to be a reason why Russia would pay for this? Edit: another poster pointed out: there is one thing russia would gain from and that's political division and instability. Next up: pay someone to have a very public and very late abortion, for example.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  >What's the reasoning behind that? They want you to be at each others throats. Same reason they assisted brexit.
  - m00g00 9y ago
    Do you figure pro/anti-gun twitter posts from actual users are less likely to result in us being at each others throats? Really seems like pissing in the ocean.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      To roughly the same extent that throwing burning matches around in an area plagued by drought isn't going to affect the outcome, yes. See, it can take a long time before a fire erupts from a natural cause but if you are aiming for it the outcome is pretty much guaranteed.
      - m00g00 9y ago
        I think the analogy is more like trying to pin an execution on one particular member of the firing squad. Everyone is throwing matches, at the same time, into an already burning dumpster fire.
thanatropism 9y ago
Are we even sure they're Russian bots? If so, are we sure that they're hired by the Kremlin and not the NRA or the Yanopopoulous Youth or something?
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  From everything I've read, it sounds like there's reasonable certainty, but that's admittedly anecdotal on my part and comes from mostly secondary sources. I've read a small selection of the IC reports and declassified info as well that at least support the general tendency of the Kremlin to operate this way as of late. As an aside, this is a site set up that tracks known Kremlin Internet Research Agency accounts and bots activity: https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ Also it's worth noting that the FBI is currently investigating Russian cash flow into the NRA: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article195231139.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
- nugi 9y ago
  Or even the left, looks clumsy even for those fools.
- salimmadjd 9y ago
  This area is rather murky. There is a lot of assumptions here. Not even clear these bots are working for Kremlin or for interests of other parties who are hiring them.
bla2 9y ago
I wish any news commentary about Twitter or Facebook or similar would include a big disclaimer about the 1% rule and sampling bias.
nugi 9y ago
If I were a left wing group, trying to sow dislike of guns, this is exactly what I would do. Fits with the trump/russian thing, and looks kooky to explain. Why would russians care about our gun laws? /tinfoil
trothamel 9y ago
I always get a little skeptical about articles like this, and the motivation behind them. Are there Russian bots - perhaps, but they tend to sow discord. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the anti-gun tweets are also bot driven. But at the same time, I have gun owning friends, and they tend to circle the wagons when something like this happens. With 1 in 3 adults in the US owning a firearm, it doesn't take very many of them for there to be a lot of tweets against gun control. To put their reaction in perspective, realize that since fame appears to be a motive in these shootings, the easiest way to stop this would likely be to pass a law to prevent the media from covering mass shootings, or at least the names and life stories of the shooters. And I think a lot of reactions here would be "we can't do that!", because of the first amendment. That's how a lot of people feel about the second amendment.

55 points by the_duck 9y ago

reustle 9y ago

Are they absolutely sure it was Russia or are they going to quietly retract that like last time?

lawlessone 9y ago
what was last time?

myth_drannon 9y ago

Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? They need to run that script again, put it as a cron job!

mcphage 9y ago
> Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? Twitter has no interest in making it clear just how many of its “users” are actually bots. Politically motivated bots even more so. Moreover, they’ve shown no interest in making it more difficult to create new bots. They probably had news accounts before Twitter even finished deleting the old ones.

tpkj 9y ago

David Satter, "The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms

stupidcar 9y ago

Note that while the headline says the bots are "pro-gun", the article says the bots flood Twitter with messages on both sides of an issue like this. The idea supposedly being to encourage political discord in general.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

jacquesm 9y ago

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to weigh pretty heavily.

hodl 9y ago
Not sure how you can disconnect the internet. Basically would involve disconnecting all comms. Lest someone uses a modem. Then what about long distance RF?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  China is a pretty good example of what can be done just short of disconnecting, and as annoying as that is they are doing this because they are well aware of what could happen if they allowed free communications. They're on the wrong side of the line as far as I'm concerned but in the end the goals are roughly the same: prevent outside influences from destabilizing the country to the point where the whole thing might collapse. Open societies are probably (I hope) less vulnerable to this sort of thing than closed ones but it would be a huge mistake to think that we are immune to it.
avs733 9y ago
Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an equivalent to teaching understanding. Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by facts that disprove their beliefs. I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of all of this on the reification of STEM education and the devaluing of liberal arts and humanities.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > (i.e., conservatives) That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not just conservatives that do this. Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in a relatively friendly setting. The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones would have been laid differently. So now you get this weird mix of open societies connected in a very open fashion to outright dictatorships with the additional asymmetries of English being a pre-requisite for trade all over the world and thus a ready and cheap to deploy workforce aided by bots to sow dissention and to drive a wedge between folks in the remainder of the world. What is sad - and that's why I picked out that fragment - is that once the ball is rolling we will then happily take over beating on that wedge.

alkonaut 9y ago

I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group in the US (Say a large gun rights organization of some form) would buy these services from the russians. The Russian twitter troll factories don't work for free, and in this case there doesn't seem to be a reason why Russia would pay for this? Edit: another poster pointed out: there is one thing russia would gain from and that's political division and instability. Next up: pay someone to have a very public and very late abortion, for example.

lawlessone 9y ago
>What's the reasoning behind that? They want you to be at each others throats. Same reason they assisted brexit.
- m00g00 9y ago
  Do you figure pro/anti-gun twitter posts from actual users are less likely to result in us being at each others throats? Really seems like pissing in the ocean.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    To roughly the same extent that throwing burning matches around in an area plagued by drought isn't going to affect the outcome, yes. See, it can take a long time before a fire erupts from a natural cause but if you are aiming for it the outcome is pretty much guaranteed.
    - m00g00 9y ago
      I think the analogy is more like trying to pin an execution on one particular member of the firing squad. Everyone is throwing matches, at the same time, into an already burning dumpster fire.

thanatropism 9y ago

Are we even sure they're Russian bots? If so, are we sure that they're hired by the Kremlin and not the NRA or the Yanopopoulous Youth or something?

52-6F-62 9y ago
From everything I've read, it sounds like there's reasonable certainty, but that's admittedly anecdotal on my part and comes from mostly secondary sources. I've read a small selection of the IC reports and declassified info as well that at least support the general tendency of the Kremlin to operate this way as of late. As an aside, this is a site set up that tracks known Kremlin Internet Research Agency accounts and bots activity: https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ Also it's worth noting that the FBI is currently investigating Russian cash flow into the NRA: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article195231139.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
nugi 9y ago
Or even the left, looks clumsy even for those fools.
salimmadjd 9y ago
This area is rather murky. There is a lot of assumptions here. Not even clear these bots are working for Kremlin or for interests of other parties who are hiring them.

bla2 9y ago

I wish any news commentary about Twitter or Facebook or similar would include a big disclaimer about the 1% rule and sampling bias.

nugi 9y ago

If I were a left wing group, trying to sow dislike of guns, this is exactly what I would do. Fits with the trump/russian thing, and looks kooky to explain. Why would russians care about our gun laws? /tinfoil

trothamel 9y ago

I always get a little skeptical about articles like this, and the motivation behind them. Are there Russian bots - perhaps, but they tend to sow discord. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the anti-gun tweets are also bot driven. But at the same time, I have gun owning friends, and they tend to circle the wagons when something like this happens. With 1 in 3 adults in the US owning a firearm, it doesn't take very many of them for there to be a lot of tweets against gun control. To put their reaction in perspective, realize that since fame appears to be a motive in these shootings, the easiest way to stop this would likely be to pass a law to prevent the media from covering mass shootings, or at least the names and life stories of the shooters. And I think a lot of reactions here would be "we can't do that!", because of the first amendment. That's how a lot of people feel about the second amendment.