4 ms·

I have to admit, this is a bit odd to think about in 2020: 20k upvotes in a system where there is no mitigation, captcha, JS or cookie requirement, being consid

by dylz 6y ago

I have to admit, this is a bit odd to think about in 2020: 20k upvotes in a system where there is no mitigation, captcha, JS or cookie requirement, being considered high - then I click over to Twitter and see things that have hundreds of thousands of "likes" in minutes from posting.

brnt 6y ago
I dont understand how anyone is still under the illusion that Twitter is inhabited by humans. Nothing there feels real to me.
- rconti 6y ago
  As I often say, "real people don't use twitter". Its bots and trolls talking to each other, with the news treating it as research.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  In a way, it's much more frightening to operate on the assumption that, while there are bots, it mostly is actual humans. Simply put, a lot of the actual humans are bots (in the metaphorical sense of having incredibly un-nuanced takes and reactively responding to certain heuristic phrases that "trigger" them). I don't have any stats on what % of twitter is bots so I'm not saying that it's not overwhelmed by bots, but we should be aware that there might be an even more chilling explanation here: that it actually _is_ humans causing the toxicity
  - MengerSponge 6y ago
    You're describing humans that are frighteningly close to "philosophical zombies" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ Twitter is a pure pain box, but no one has the kindness of offering a gom jabbar.
    - NoodleIncident 6y ago
      Not really... philosophical zombies behave indistinguishably from "conscious" humans, we just don't believe them when they say they have internal experiences just like real people.
    - gsich 6y ago
      NPCs
      - MengerSponge 6y ago
        Slide into their DMPCs
      - paulmd 6y ago
        I once was a coder like you, then I took a carpal tunnel to the hand.
  - jyrkesh 6y ago
    I've semi-recently created a new Twitter account account in order to dive head on into the deepest cesspools of Twitter. The topics and accounts I follow are mostly what I'd call "bot bait"--stuff like Hong Kong, Trump, COVID--and it's been extremely eye-opening to see the ways that people will respond back-and-forth for multiple tweets in near real-time. But I've also come to roughly the same conclusion as you. I might be naive, but given the time I've spent on the internet, I'd like to think I can tell the difference between bots and humans. Some of the bots are obvious, some of the bots are non-obvious (blaming bots), but still definitely bots. But MOST of them, are probably real people. Really, really ignorant people, on all sides of the political spectrums. There's just these people out there now with phones and a Twitter account, and they're broadcasting their id.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Twitter has been the best thing to happen to my life in awhile. It has directly led to opportunities and people that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. Maybe this is an ML thing, though. The Twitter ML community is much tighter-knit.
  - brnt 6y ago
    If a community would be comfortable among bots, it would be the ML community, wouldn't it? Joking aside, I think it is rather despite Twitter than because of it that it works.

by dylz 6y ago

brnt 6y ago

I dont understand how anyone is still under the illusion that Twitter is inhabited by humans. Nothing there feels real to me.

rconti 6y ago
As I often say, "real people don't use twitter". Its bots and trolls talking to each other, with the news treating it as research.
ryankemper 6y ago
In a way, it's much more frightening to operate on the assumption that, while there are bots, it mostly is actual humans. Simply put, a lot of the actual humans are bots (in the metaphorical sense of having incredibly un-nuanced takes and reactively responding to certain heuristic phrases that "trigger" them). I don't have any stats on what % of twitter is bots so I'm not saying that it's not overwhelmed by bots, but we should be aware that there might be an even more chilling explanation here: that it actually _is_ humans causing the toxicity
- MengerSponge 6y ago
  You're describing humans that are frighteningly close to "philosophical zombies" https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ Twitter is a pure pain box, but no one has the kindness of offering a gom jabbar.
  - NoodleIncident 6y ago
    Not really... philosophical zombies behave indistinguishably from "conscious" humans, we just don't believe them when they say they have internal experiences just like real people.
  - gsich 6y ago
    NPCs
    - MengerSponge 6y ago
      Slide into their DMPCs
    - paulmd 6y ago
      I once was a coder like you, then I took a carpal tunnel to the hand.
- jyrkesh 6y ago
  I've semi-recently created a new Twitter account account in order to dive head on into the deepest cesspools of Twitter. The topics and accounts I follow are mostly what I'd call "bot bait"--stuff like Hong Kong, Trump, COVID--and it's been extremely eye-opening to see the ways that people will respond back-and-forth for multiple tweets in near real-time. But I've also come to roughly the same conclusion as you. I might be naive, but given the time I've spent on the internet, I'd like to think I can tell the difference between bots and humans. Some of the bots are obvious, some of the bots are non-obvious (blaming bots), but still definitely bots. But MOST of them, are probably real people. Really, really ignorant people, on all sides of the political spectrums. There's just these people out there now with phones and a Twitter account, and they're broadcasting their id.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Twitter has been the best thing to happen to my life in awhile. It has directly led to opportunities and people that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. Maybe this is an ML thing, though. The Twitter ML community is much tighter-knit.
- brnt 6y ago
  If a community would be comfortable among bots, it would be the ML community, wouldn't it? Joking aside, I think it is rather despite Twitter than because of it that it works.