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I don't understand it. So there are bots that have been posting "porn" for a bunch of years. And now they post political messages. How does that influence any

I don't understand it. So there are bots that have been posting "porn" for a bunch of years. And now they post political messages. How does that influence anybody? Who subscribes to porn bots? I would have thought only other porn bots follow porn bots? Can somebody link to an example of such a bot?

goatinaboat 7y ago
The concept is that an account that is years old and has thousands of followers seems more plausible than one that was just created
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  99% change , those followers are bots to.
- gruez 7y ago
  Great idea, poor execution. It's going to be suspicious that these accounts suddenly go from NSFW posts to pro-china posts.
  - shawnz 7y ago
    If you look at the tweet history and not just the numbers. What percentage of people that see the tweets will do that?
simias 7y ago
>Who subscribes to porn bots? I would have thought only other porn bots follow porn bots? Clearly if they exist they must have some marginal use. It's like saying "who falls for nigerian prince scams?" or "who is influenced by ads?". Clearly some people are, otherwise they wouldn't be quite as popular. I'm sure some real people follow porn bots in order to... see porn. As for the influence I think in isolation it's probably negligible, but if people get flooded by propaganda on social networks it may be quite efficient. "Everybody says it, it can't be completely wrong". The echo-chamber nature of many social networks probably plays into that too. Many people would probably be more likely to follow an obvious bot spamming propaganda that aligns with their beliefs than a real person holding a different opinion. For instance an obviously biased propaganda outlet like Prager U has 2 million followers on Youtube, I doubt all of those are bots.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  PragerU isn't obvious to most people that's what's insidious about it. It's a fake "university" for people who are too ignorant or low intelligent to know what a real one looks like. Compare PragerU to "A People's History of the United States" book. Both are highly politically biased, both oppose "mainstream" education, but one is intellectually much better than the other. Discerning which requires higher level thinking many people lack.
  - simias 7y ago
    I think you're wrong to assume that it only works with people who are "too ignorant or low intelligent". Confirmation bias is not limited to dumb people. It's always more pleasant and comforting to listen to people agreeing with you (even if what they're saying isn't super insightful) rather than people arguing against your values (even if what they're saying is very interesting). Searching for contradictory viewpoints and actually managing to listen to the argument with an open mind takes effort. That's the big problem with most social media currently, they amplify this bias to the extreme. You can hold a fringe belief like "earth is flat" and still manage to find thousand of people agreeing with you, spending hours every day consuming flat earth content and avoiding any dissenting voice.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Well they’re clearly being marketed as having actual use. Whether it’s true... could go either way
lijogdfljk 7y ago
Google, perhaps? I've been obsessing about (creating) a federated information store recently, and this was one of my points to address. In my view bad actors don't have to just misinform, but make it more difficult to locate. Doing that seems shockingly easy, as much of our ability to locate data online is limited to brittle keywords. Not to deviate, but in case anyone is curious: One of my attempts at mitigating this problem is via content hashes. Building a UX where the content hashes are often the point of reference and indexed by search engines might allow us to locate data and related data based on content hashes, rather than easily flooded semantic keys. Metadata pertaining to the hashes would also have to be provided for them to be useful, eg "related:04136e24". Lots of to discuss, but I'm trying to limit my off-topic, despite it being related to [dis|mis]information. edit: I don't understand the downvote - can someone explain? Not sure exactly if something I said is factually incorrect? To be clear I wasn't saying Google was the thing running the bots, but that Google / search engines might be the point.
Numberwang 7y ago
China uses them to paint a picture of westerners as being decadent and animal like.
wastedhours 7y ago
Not sure if it's 100% the case here, but a lot of bots respond to popular threads from legitimate people, either countering or supporting their position. Less about the credibility of the account, and more about creating a lot of buzz or, well, counter-buzz around another thread.
opencl 7y ago
Nobody has to subscribe to them, they just search for relevant terms and reply to anyone talking about the protests.
rgoulter 7y ago
"So there are bots that have been posting "porn" for a bunch of years. And now they post political messages." The article says accounts like this can be purchased cheaply from resellers. "How does that influence anybody?" I think the most effective use is in replies to other tweets. All the replies to a tweet are shown if you look at a tweet. You might look at the profile of some user who makes a tweet, but perhaps won't take such a deep look at their profile to see the earlier porn tweets. High number of tweets, high number of followers, long time on the site would indicate 'actual person' rather than bot, or so you'd think without scrolling down far enough to see it filled with spam posts.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Perhaps it is SEO algorithmic gaming to try to get it trending and it wasn't meant to influence in itself but make others more visible?
usrusr 7y ago
They are a stepping stone, not intended to directly influence anyone: hashtags appearing en masse on "influential" (due to bulk porn subscribers) but utterly unrelated accounts will add weight to on-topic posts using the same tags elsewhere. Not much different from the link farms of the early days of SEO which were never meant for human eyes.

goatinaboat 7y ago

The concept is that an account that is years old and has thousands of followers seems more plausible than one that was just created

GrumpyNl 7y ago
99% change , those followers are bots to.
gruez 7y ago
Great idea, poor execution. It's going to be suspicious that these accounts suddenly go from NSFW posts to pro-china posts.
- shawnz 7y ago
  If you look at the tweet history and not just the numbers. What percentage of people that see the tweets will do that?

simias 7y ago

>Who subscribes to porn bots? I would have thought only other porn bots follow porn bots? Clearly if they exist they must have some marginal use. It's like saying "who falls for nigerian prince scams?" or "who is influenced by ads?". Clearly some people are, otherwise they wouldn't be quite as popular. I'm sure some real people follow porn bots in order to... see porn. As for the influence I think in isolation it's probably negligible, but if people get flooded by propaganda on social networks it may be quite efficient. "Everybody says it, it can't be completely wrong". The echo-chamber nature of many social networks probably plays into that too. Many people would probably be more likely to follow an obvious bot spamming propaganda that aligns with their beliefs than a real person holding a different opinion. For instance an obviously biased propaganda outlet like Prager U has 2 million followers on Youtube, I doubt all of those are bots.

lonelappde 7y ago
PragerU isn't obvious to most people that's what's insidious about it. It's a fake "university" for people who are too ignorant or low intelligent to know what a real one looks like. Compare PragerU to "A People's History of the United States" book. Both are highly politically biased, both oppose "mainstream" education, but one is intellectually much better than the other. Discerning which requires higher level thinking many people lack.
- simias 7y ago
  I think you're wrong to assume that it only works with people who are "too ignorant or low intelligent". Confirmation bias is not limited to dumb people. It's always more pleasant and comforting to listen to people agreeing with you (even if what they're saying isn't super insightful) rather than people arguing against your values (even if what they're saying is very interesting). Searching for contradictory viewpoints and actually managing to listen to the argument with an open mind takes effort. That's the big problem with most social media currently, they amplify this bias to the extreme. You can hold a fringe belief like "earth is flat" and still manage to find thousand of people agreeing with you, spending hours every day consuming flat earth content and avoiding any dissenting voice.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
Well they’re clearly being marketed as having actual use. Whether it’s true... could go either way

lijogdfljk 7y ago

Google, perhaps? I've been obsessing about (creating) a federated information store recently, and this was one of my points to address. In my view bad actors don't have to just misinform, but make it more difficult to locate. Doing that seems shockingly easy, as much of our ability to locate data online is limited to brittle keywords. Not to deviate, but in case anyone is curious: One of my attempts at mitigating this problem is via content hashes. Building a UX where the content hashes are often the point of reference and indexed by search engines might allow us to locate data and related data based on content hashes, rather than easily flooded semantic keys. Metadata pertaining to the hashes would also have to be provided for them to be useful, eg "related:04136e24". Lots of to discuss, but I'm trying to limit my off-topic, despite it being related to [dis|mis]information. edit: I don't understand the downvote - can someone explain? Not sure exactly if something I said is factually incorrect? To be clear I wasn't saying Google was the thing running the bots, but that Google / search engines might be the point.

Numberwang 7y ago

China uses them to paint a picture of westerners as being decadent and animal like.

wastedhours 7y ago

Not sure if it's 100% the case here, but a lot of bots respond to popular threads from legitimate people, either countering or supporting their position. Less about the credibility of the account, and more about creating a lot of buzz or, well, counter-buzz around another thread.

opencl 7y ago

Nobody has to subscribe to them, they just search for relevant terms and reply to anyone talking about the protests.

rgoulter 7y ago

"So there are bots that have been posting "porn" for a bunch of years. And now they post political messages." The article says accounts like this can be purchased cheaply from resellers. "How does that influence anybody?" I think the most effective use is in replies to other tweets. All the replies to a tweet are shown if you look at a tweet. You might look at the profile of some user who makes a tweet, but perhaps won't take such a deep look at their profile to see the earlier porn tweets. High number of tweets, high number of followers, long time on the site would indicate 'actual person' rather than bot, or so you'd think without scrolling down far enough to see it filled with spam posts.

Nasrudith 7y ago

Perhaps it is SEO algorithmic gaming to try to get it trending and it wasn't meant to influence in itself but make others more visible?

usrusr 7y ago

They are a stepping stone, not intended to directly influence anyone: hashtags appearing en masse on "influential" (due to bulk porn subscribers) but utterly unrelated accounts will add weight to on-topic posts using the same tags elsewhere. Not much different from the link farms of the early days of SEO which were never meant for human eyes.