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Okay, but my summaries don't do it justice. Unfortunately for those not there for the events, it is difficult to communicate what it is like. Imagine the human

Okay, but my summaries don't do it justice. Unfortunately for those not there for the events, it is difficult to communicate what it is like. Imagine the human time wasted when dozens of people reply "oh honey don't get so upset, it's okay, that's not what the report says, here's a link" etc. The number of human-hours wasted with good-intentioned people trying to make the bots feel better is a sad sad sad thought ....so much time wasted. They also talk to each other, creating super confusion about who is real and who is not. Maybe those responses are written by bots too, to make us think some are real? The sheer quantity of lies, especially lies that have nothing to do with the topic at all, leads me to believe the aim is a lot more than "to divide". The aim is also to disinform and to waste time of good people, who could be doing more important things but now feel they have to stop the spread of lies. I apologize for my sample being incomplete and the summaries not sufficient. You really have to be there in the trenches seeing it happen. Check the next big news megathreads and you'll see it. 100s of comments per minute, many of them fraudulent and full of lies. You can go there and pick apart the details yourself to come to your own conclusions about it. But you have to go there live - they delete their comments so rapidly that future study of the events is very difficult.

caringAboutIt 7y ago
I think it's just funny that people even care about the internet anymore. Maybe I've just always been ahead of the curve, but seriously. Who even cares? Aren't we past caring about strangers on the internet. Haven't we reached the point where we leave irrational barking and carrying on to just twist in the wind? On a fundamental level, I'm not impressed by any of this, because I don't believe it to have ever been effective in the first place. Thinking back to when YouTube comments were the worst of the worst, it was plain that the braying of idiots into a comment box never worked. Nor did trolling. In the same sense that you pay no mind to a ranting freak at a gas station, you ignore the garbage littering the internet. I don't think bots troll well. And I don't think trolls troll well. Trolling is an annoyance, simply because it registers as spam. You know litter when you see it. User prticipation is often perceived as refuse by default, especially when originating from total strangers you've never met in person. The claims that internet propaganda works are dubious.

caringAboutIt 7y ago

I think it's just funny that people even care about the internet anymore. Maybe I've just always been ahead of the curve, but seriously. Who even cares? Aren't we past caring about strangers on the internet. Haven't we reached the point where we leave irrational barking and carrying on to just twist in the wind? On a fundamental level, I'm not impressed by any of this, because I don't believe it to have ever been effective in the first place. Thinking back to when YouTube comments were the worst of the worst, it was plain that the braying of idiots into a comment box never worked. Nor did trolling. In the same sense that you pay no mind to a ranting freak at a gas station, you ignore the garbage littering the internet. I don't think bots troll well. And I don't think trolls troll well. Trolling is an annoyance, simply because it registers as spam. You know litter when you see it. User prticipation is often perceived as refuse by default, especially when originating from total strangers you've never met in person. The claims that internet propaganda works are dubious.