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A U.S. Election Twitter Network Graph Tool

65 points by joeyespo 6y ago

jeffbee 6y ago
Pretty remarkable how easy it is to click your way to an insane spammer. For example the #1 inbound to Kamala Harris is some account with no followers or mentions, recently joined, posted the same reply to 600 different threads all on October 16th, liked all of its own posts, and has been dormant since. Not exactly a great contribution to the discourse.
- kingnight 6y ago
  It's been almost a decade from when I remember first clicking through an account exactly like this. Twitter has shown they absolutely care not for the discourse. Long term, platforms that do well on this front will overtake FB/Tw, because real users don't want this garbage.
- tjoff 6y ago
  How is that not automatically detected? Is there any evidence of any sort that any attempt to thwart things like this has even been attempted?
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    It is easily detected. Neither Twitter nor FB have any (edit: typo) desire to remedy this. These bots are what keep the discourse going.
  - TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
    If they can omit explicit porn results from searches in real time for people who aren't logged in, they absolutely can automatically detect and shadowban obvious malfeasance like this. The question you have to ask yourself is why they don't.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Meanwhile I have a Twitter bot which only replies to direct @ mentions, with 3000+ followers, and it gets shadowbanned on a monthly basis, hiding the bot's reply not only from random viewers, but even from the very person who is tweeting @ my bot and also follows my bot... And they somehow claim that they don't "shadowban" [0]. What a joke. Worst part is that since you're not actually banned, there's literally no recourse or support you can get either. But then these new accounts with no followers can spam thousands of tweets to big accounts and get away with it? Very strange. [0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...
BitwiseFool 6y ago
Can anyone familiar with Twitter explain how people like Jeff Tiedrich, Eugene Gu, ToddlerTrump, TrumpOwO, etc, manage to be the first few responders to everything @realDonaldTrump tweets? (Edit) To expand on this, some of these accounts are clearly bots that just modify the text of the tweet. I can see how easy it would be to make these bots - but not how they manage to be the first responses so consistently. Surely there are other competing bots trying to do the same thing? Others are direct responses to the content the president tweeted about. Dr.Gu frequently writes paragraph length rebuttals but I assume such responses take time to craft - so there's no way he could have been the first to respond with so much content, right?
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  Do those accounts really manage to get "frost pist" status? Their replies often appear first when you open a tweet from president Trump, but I assume replies are listed in order by some popularity measure and not chronologically.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    This is very easy to verify, go under any big tweet and you can see that the replies are not chronological. It is indeed trying to use some sort of popularity metric. Having many followers that see and like your tweets would definitely help you get positions higher than random bots.
  - spondyl 6y ago
    I didn't have any luck with search so I'd be curious to know what "frost pist" status is or refers to?
    - MauranKilom 6y ago
      A (presumably intended, as in satirical) misspelling of "first post".
    - cataflam 6y ago
      first post, but with some letters moved around, a popular form of discourse in general and as internet memes in particular a google search does return some examples if you force it to https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="frost+pist" https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="frost+pist"
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cwhiz 6y ago
It is obvious from these graphs than an overwhelming percentage of political discourse on Twitter is from bots. Just eyeballing it, it seems to be at least 70-90% of inbound mentions are from bots. These bots are obvious enough that we should wonder what is motivating Twitter.
tookiwooki 6y ago
Agreeed
tookiwooki 6y ago
testing
tookiwooki 6y ago
the graphs
Proven 6y ago
Perhaps the clowns at Mozilla should fix their failing software rather than spend budget on fighting for a corrupt, CCP-linked candidate.

65 points by joeyespo 6y ago

Pretty remarkable how easy it is to click your way to an insane spammer. For example the #1 inbound to Kamala Harris is some account with no followers or mentions, recently joined, posted the same reply to 600 different threads all on October 16th, liked all of its own posts, and has been dormant since. Not exactly a great contribution to the discourse.

kingnight 6y ago
It's been almost a decade from when I remember first clicking through an account exactly like this. Twitter has shown they absolutely care not for the discourse. Long term, platforms that do well on this front will overtake FB/Tw, because real users don't want this garbage.
tjoff 6y ago
How is that not automatically detected? Is there any evidence of any sort that any attempt to thwart things like this has even been attempted?
- cwhiz 6y ago
  It is easily detected. Neither Twitter nor FB have any (edit: typo) desire to remedy this. These bots are what keep the discourse going.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
  If they can omit explicit porn results from searches in real time for people who aren't logged in, they absolutely can automatically detect and shadowban obvious malfeasance like this. The question you have to ask yourself is why they don't.
ehsankia 6y ago
Meanwhile I have a Twitter bot which only replies to direct @ mentions, with 3000+ followers, and it gets shadowbanned on a monthly basis, hiding the bot's reply not only from random viewers, but even from the very person who is tweeting @ my bot and also follows my bot... And they somehow claim that they don't "shadowban" [0]. What a joke. Worst part is that since you're not actually banned, there's literally no recourse or support you can get either. But then these new accounts with no followers can spam thousands of tweets to big accounts and get away with it? Very strange. [0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-the-record-straight-on-shadow-banning.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2018/Setting-t...

BitwiseFool 6y ago

Can anyone familiar with Twitter explain how people like Jeff Tiedrich, Eugene Gu, ToddlerTrump, TrumpOwO, etc, manage to be the first few responders to everything @realDonaldTrump tweets? (Edit) To expand on this, some of these accounts are clearly bots that just modify the text of the tweet. I can see how easy it would be to make these bots - but not how they manage to be the first responses so consistently. Surely there are other competing bots trying to do the same thing? Others are direct responses to the content the president tweeted about. Dr.Gu frequently writes paragraph length rebuttals but I assume such responses take time to craft - so there's no way he could have been the first to respond with so much content, right?

tomjakubowski 6y ago
Do those accounts really manage to get "frost pist" status? Their replies often appear first when you open a tweet from president Trump, but I assume replies are listed in order by some popularity measure and not chronologically.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  This is very easy to verify, go under any big tweet and you can see that the replies are not chronological. It is indeed trying to use some sort of popularity metric. Having many followers that see and like your tweets would definitely help you get positions higher than random bots.
- spondyl 6y ago
  I didn't have any luck with search so I'd be curious to know what "frost pist" status is or refers to?
  - MauranKilom 6y ago
    A (presumably intended, as in satirical) misspelling of "first post".
  - cataflam 6y ago
    first post, but with some letters moved around, a popular form of discourse in general and as internet memes in particular a google search does return some examples if you force it to https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="frost+pist" https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="frost+pist"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cwhiz 6y ago

It is obvious from these graphs than an overwhelming percentage of political discourse on Twitter is from bots. Just eyeballing it, it seems to be at least 70-90% of inbound mentions are from bots. These bots are obvious enough that we should wonder what is motivating Twitter.

tookiwooki 6y ago

Agreeed

tookiwooki 6y ago

testing

tookiwooki 6y ago

the graphs

Proven 6y ago

Perhaps the clowns at Mozilla should fix their failing software rather than spend budget on fighting for a corrupt, CCP-linked candidate.