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One of the key aspects of political content on social media is that you don't necessarily need to buy ads to get your message in front of people. You can inste
by slg 7y ago
One of the key aspects of political content on social media is that you don't necessarily need to buy ads to get your message in front of people. You can instead pay for an army of bots to spread your message and make it appear as genuine user generated content rather than a prepackaged advertisement. So while this decision by Twitter is in my opinion good, what are they doing to cut down on inauthentic political engagement that has become a hallmark of the platform?
- busterarm 7y agoYou can also get an army of real actual people to spread your message and the company can just ban them and accuse them of being bots or having ties to some government without actual evidence.
- tyre 7y agoYour comment is written in a way that implies that this happens. Do you have evidence to back that up? Not evidence that they take down suspected state-sponsored brigading, but that they were wrong?
- ambicapter 7y ago> You comment is written in a way that implies that this happens. I think his comment his written to imply that it is possible for this to happen. In which case, it does not require supporting evidence beyond the logical consistency of itself, which is sound, I believe.
- syrrim 7y agobusterarm is almost certainly referring to chinese "bots".
- busterarm 7y agoThat's also an interesting phenomenon. There are a large number of Chinese citizens on the internet who will shout down with comments any message counter to the party line there. They are real people, aren't they?
- mbesto 7y agoThis dilemma right here is exactly why modern communication platforms are so dangerous.
- erichocean 7y ago> dangerous to who?
- Clubber 7y ago>dangerous ... to who? The entrenched who already have a mass information platform available to them (news).
- JaRail 7y agoReal people with real friends and families in mainland China, yes.
- busterarm 7y agoWired ran an article demonstrating that this happened. https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on-twitters-list-of-russian-bots/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on-twitte... I shouldn't have to google for someone as politically active... ...you're literally working to elect someone president.
- kick 7y agoThat article is surprisingly poor for Wired. Both Hirschfeld and Osborne first logged in to their accounts in February 2011, well before the first known IRA activity in 2013. WIRED’s analysis found at least 63 accounts created between 2009 and 2013 included in the list provided to Congress. It's reasonably well known to anyone who's used the site that old accounts are fairly frequently hijacked by others, so this doesn't invalidate Twitter's claim.
- Faark 7y agoThere was a talk [0] at Chaos Communication Congress 2 years ago about the early "political bots hype". Sadly in german and I'm not sure how great the provided translation is. It e.g. calls out "more than 50 tweets per day" being used as criteria to identify bots and concludes with more/better research is needed. Would love to hear an updated version or something alike, if someone has recommendations. [0] https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_filterblasen#l=eng&t=1890 https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_f...
- throwaway122378 7y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-break-rules/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-brea...
- throwaway122378 7y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-break-rules/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-brea... He controls it all
- redisman 7y agoAt least it will take away the incentive from the all-powerful tech companies to stop pushing and optimizing political messages with their core-business interest. If they can't make money off of it, I'm sure these botnets will get more attention from their anti-abuse teams.
- slg 7y agoActive user totals and engagement numbers are still a big driver in valuations so the incentives still align with not cracking down too hard (as long as legitimate users aren't pushed away by the inauthentic content).
- jimkleiber 7y agoThis aspect has puzzled me deeply. I imagine the following scenario: I'm the CEO of a social network trying to raise a new round of funding. I go to investors and say that we have 100M users on the platform and growing by 10M users per month. The investors like these numbers and decide to invest. A few years later, the investors find out that when I said 100M users, I actually meant 50M real human users and 50M bot users. When I said growing by 10M users per month, I actually meant by 5M real human users and 5M bot users per month. At what point does this become criminal fraud?
- mc32 7y agoAn investor should ask the hard questions like you know, how many of them are bots? It’s not hard to ask.
- abcpassword 7y agoThey will not. Paid engagement will increase. It’s a good time to be a shill on Twitter.
- rtkwe 7y agoThey've been going after bots and sockpuppets too when they find them. Either way at least removing the ability to forcibly promote ads in front of certain groups now they have to do that targeting themselves and it's more out in the open where it can be called out unlike the ads which you wouldn't see unless you were targeted.
- throwaway122378 7y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-break-rules/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/15/twitter-world-leaders-brea... He’s blocking that too