3 ms·

Comment isn't referring to spam bots, but the bot networks used for astroturfing.

mlindner 5y ago
The "bot networks used for astroturfing" are a much used fiction of pro-Musk and anti-Musk people alike. They basically don't exist. Upvote bot networks exist certainly however.
- bloqs 5y ago
  There is plenty of evidence they do, can you prove the contrary?
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Proving a the lack of existence of something is impossible.
    - KoftaBob 5y ago
      In other words, you're making a claim that's impossible to verify?
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246561/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246561/ > Here we analyze 14 million messages spreading 400 thousand articles on Twitter during ten months in 2016 and 2017. We find evidence that social bots played a disproportionate role in spreading articles from low-credibility sources. Bots amplify such content in the early spreading moments, before an article goes viral. I would also be interested in finding more studies that relate to what percentage of scientific research Americans thoughtlessly write off as "fiction" and the corresponding media diets.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Different cases. Those things are funded by politicians and foreign governments to influence the general populace. The scale is completely different.
    - DoctorOW 5y ago
      What does that even mean? The study refers to the type of bots I was talking about, the same as I suspect that comment's GP is talking about. If there's an extra special variety of astroturfing bots that don't exist, that's great. It seems obvious to me that this discussion was about bots that do exist.
  - mike_hearn 5y ago
    You should be aware that academic research into Twitter bots is indeed unreliable. Calling it fiction wouldn't be far wrong. A selection from the many issues you'll find if you read such papers: - Inability to be replicated, not even in principle. - Using definitions of "bot" that captures verified humans like e.g. the POTUS. - Ignoring false positives in the data set or not even trying to measure them at all. - Using opaque ML models trained off an irrelevant data set which (when measured by outsiders) have 50%+ FP rates. - Logic errors and difficulty reasoning about causality. - Mis-statements about what their own data actually shows. - Refusal to acknowledge or address any of these problems. There's a paper that thoroughly debunks this field here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 and it's also available in talk form here: https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200726_2000_People_Are_Not_Bots.mp4 https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200726_2000_Peopl... and if you're in a hurry I summarized the paper here: https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-not-c66129e5e3f5 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-n... NB: Some of my own meta-research into these papers is cited in their paper and talk. Edit: I took a quick look at the paper you linked and it has many of the same problems. Amongst other things it explicitly classifies satire as "digital misinformation". One of the authors is Flammini who is well known for writing nonsensical pseudo-scientific papers in this space, in fact, he's mentioned in the talk linked above.
- smt88 5y ago
  Twitter themselves have said that they have millions of fake accounts in bot networks[1]. What evidence do you have that Twitter is lying about this? Why would they harm their brand by saying that they're infested with bot networks when they actually aren't? 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/exclusive-twitter-pulls-down-bot-network-pushing-pro-saudi-talking-n921871 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/exclusive-twitter-pul...

The "bot networks used for astroturfing" are a much used fiction of pro-Musk and anti-Musk people alike. They basically don't exist. Upvote bot networks exist certainly however.

bloqs 5y ago
There is plenty of evidence they do, can you prove the contrary?
- mlindner 5y ago
  Proving a the lack of existence of something is impossible.
  - KoftaBob 5y ago
    In other words, you're making a claim that's impossible to verify?
DoctorOW 5y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246561/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6246561/ > Here we analyze 14 million messages spreading 400 thousand articles on Twitter during ten months in 2016 and 2017. We find evidence that social bots played a disproportionate role in spreading articles from low-credibility sources. Bots amplify such content in the early spreading moments, before an article goes viral. I would also be interested in finding more studies that relate to what percentage of scientific research Americans thoughtlessly write off as "fiction" and the corresponding media diets.
- mlindner 5y ago
  Different cases. Those things are funded by politicians and foreign governments to influence the general populace. The scale is completely different.
  - DoctorOW 5y ago
    What does that even mean? The study refers to the type of bots I was talking about, the same as I suspect that comment's GP is talking about. If there's an extra special variety of astroturfing bots that don't exist, that's great. It seems obvious to me that this discussion was about bots that do exist.
- mike_hearn 5y ago
  You should be aware that academic research into Twitter bots is indeed unreliable. Calling it fiction wouldn't be far wrong. A selection from the many issues you'll find if you read such papers: - Inability to be replicated, not even in principle. - Using definitions of "bot" that captures verified humans like e.g. the POTUS. - Ignoring false positives in the data set or not even trying to measure them at all. - Using opaque ML models trained off an irrelevant data set which (when measured by outsiders) have 50%+ FP rates. - Logic errors and difficulty reasoning about causality. - Mis-statements about what their own data actually shows. - Refusal to acknowledge or address any of these problems. There's a paper that thoroughly debunks this field here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3814191 and it's also available in talk form here: https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200726_2000_People_Are_Not_Bots.mp4 https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200726_2000_Peopl... and if you're in a hurry I summarized the paper here: https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-not-c66129e5e3f5 https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-are-n... NB: Some of my own meta-research into these papers is cited in their paper and talk. Edit: I took a quick look at the paper you linked and it has many of the same problems. Amongst other things it explicitly classifies satire as "digital misinformation". One of the authors is Flammini who is well known for writing nonsensical pseudo-scientific papers in this space, in fact, he's mentioned in the talk linked above.
smt88 5y ago
Twitter themselves have said that they have millions of fake accounts in bot networks[1]. What evidence do you have that Twitter is lying about this? Why would they harm their brand by saying that they're infested with bot networks when they actually aren't? 1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/exclusive-twitter-pulls-down-bot-network-pushing-pro-saudi-talking-n921871 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/exclusive-twitter-pul...