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More than 90% of the bots are Pro-Ukrainian, with fewer than 7% pro-Russian
- p6way 4y agoRussian bots got into the arxiv, how much does it cost?
- metadat 4y agoWhy is this surprising or newsworthy? Putin is the villain.. straight up. Edit: thx for the drive-by downvote feedback, would appreciate if you'd engage directly if I'm missing something
- ShivShankaran 4y agoA play by play approach of US that it did in Syria https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/02/22/is-there-action-the-us-should-take-in-syria/provide-opposition-groups-in-syria-with-anti-aircraft https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/02/22/is-there-ac... Note that this person from NATO who wrote this nytimes article asking to arm ISIS with anti-aircraft is now the content director of reddit.
- t6jvcereio 4y agoGood? NATO is on the right side of this.
- superchroma 4y agoThe US didn't force Russians to shoot... checks notes sorry, no, brutally torture and execute civilians and level entire towns. They did that all on their own.
- subjectsigma 4y agoI read the abstract but not the paper. If it's accurate, it is an incredibly surprising result. We already know the Russians are pros at manipulating social media for the purposes of HUMINT, propaganda, etc. If they only represent 7% of bots, that means that: 1. Another actor, possibly a nation-state, is putting even more resources than Russia is into shaping the narrative, 2. Russia isn't actually trying very hard manipulate the narrative this time around. Both these scenarios are new and somewhat frightening. If #1 - what is the motivation? Who is doing it? If #2 - why would they abandon a previously successful strategy? Where did they redirect those resources to? Are they up to something even worse? None of this discussion requires you to be pro-Putin, which is what you seemed to imply. Your comment is being down-voted because it criticizes while lacking any sort of imagination or insight.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoOr 3. Western media got a lot better at filtering out Russian disinformation and propaganda, once the put their minds to it. I'm not sure I entirely believe that. The Russians aren't amateurs.
- another_another 4y agoActually I do think that's possibly what is happening here. As you say the Russians aren't amateurs, but at the same time they've massively overstepped their mark this time and have galvanised action against them that possibly didn't particularly have the will before, since they poured a lot of money into platforms that would promote Russia's propaganda (hard and soft). It seems that currently no amount of money can whitewash what they're doing. Of course that might change again in the future.
- ShivShankaran 4y agohttps://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-viewpoint-aregood-vietnam-war-20170928-story.html https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-viewpoint-aregood... "We're forever scarred by the Vietnam War, and the lies " https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1218&context=honors https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg... I wasn't born during the vietnam war but there was an article that I read recently on how the media deceived the public about deaths and "trust in american media was lost permanently" The propaganda in this war from all three sides is exceedingly high. We will find out the US propaganda in 10 years or so.
- subjectsigma 4y ago[flagged]
- happymellon 4y agoThere is only one country that invaded a sovereign nation. No amount of "propaganda" will remove that fact.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoI think what you're missing is that "who's the villain" has no relevance whatsoever to "who the bots side with". They're orthogonal axes.
- rvz 4y agoHere we go again. Finding the villain of the year. This year it is Putin, Trump last year, etc pushed by the media and its propaganda. Anything that goes against it like this paper is upsetting those who believe what the media says and does and doesn't question their views or stories either. It can spread from bots on either side and with that you need to question both views on who is spreading their propaganda to distort reality to suit their target audience.
- ShivShankaran 4y ago2005, Modi was the villian and banned from US https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-narendra-modi-was-banned-from-the-u-s-1399062010 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-narendra-modi-was-banned-fr... Followed by Saddam, then it was Assad, then it was Gaddafi Then it was little rocket man. 2019 it was Xi. 2020 it was Trump. 2022 it's Putin. I am taking bets on who the propaganda is going to nominate in 2023. Nominees are: Saudi Arabia MBS, Iran Ali Kamanei, Imran Khan, Modi (again), North Korea (again), Solomon Islands (because they snubbed US and denied entry to US ships) https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-08-25/solomon-islands-coast-guard-cutter-china-7106824.html https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-08-25/sol...
- _kbh_ 4y agoMaybe it’s because Putin’s army is committing genocide in Ukraine and it’s not propaganda and just the truth?.
- jim-jim-jim 4y agoAustralian media has already been seething nonstop about the Solomons for months now. A certain switch was flicked in March and now they're very, very corrupt and antidemocratic: so much so that we require daily reminders.
- IYasha 4y agoI see a pattern there )
- 4y ago
- r721 4y ago>We use Botometer to quantify the extent of bot activity in the dataset by assigning scores to a random sample of accounts
- t6jvcereio 4y ago
- ShivShankaran 4y agoThe bots drummed up the public opinion and the war. Wouldn't you think this is a possibility?
- t6jvcereio 4y agoIt's absolutely possible that the bots drummed up public opinion. But regardless of what public opinion is or why it is what it is, it's also clear who the aggressor is.
- ShivShankaran 4y ago>it's also clear who the aggressor is. let me guess. NATO?
- cutierust 4y agoOnly inciter. After running middle East they are too scared to aggress themselves. Fun fact, 75% of the world's population still trades with Russia .
- NicoJuicy 4y agoRussia ( and USSR) signed all founding documents of NATO. NATO is not the inciter, that's a Russian whataboutism to grab territory where gas was found ( Crimea)
- t6jvcereio 4y agoYou learn a bit about history in the region you'll know that Russia has been being the aggressor for about 300 years, but has always felt the victim. Stalin in the 1920s even had the phrase "capitalism encirclement", not unlike Putin's "NATO encroachment". This is despite the fact that it was Stalin's strategy to chase trade agreements with the UK, Germany and France, while at the same time supporting the respective countries communist parties attempts at revolution. As you see, the pattern of behavior has changed since then. So no, NATO isn't the aggressor.
- timcavel 4y ago[dead]
- legitster 4y agoThis shouldn't be surprising. The purpose of most bots are to blend into normal populations. Which is why the most followed accounts by bots are like... Obama or Lady Gaga.
- createdapril24 4y ago"The balanced category contained 3.04% of accounts, showing that accounts exhibiting mixed behaviour are present in the dataset." This set of accounts is actually the most interesting to me. The Pro-either-side bots are going to be relatively easy to attribute, and if you are following the war closely you can have a very good guess as to which propaganda narratives they are going to magnify (and therefore predict their content). The 3.04% accounts may be trying to build a online profile that is more "trustworthy" so that it can be used later, may be trying to counter disinformation (as opposed to "counter disinformation with disinformation" - which is almost always what it means when you hear politicians talk about it), or may be trying to do something subtle and specific. It's also much harder to attribute.
- geenew 4y agoAm I reading it wrong, or does the article say that 90% of _accounts_ are pro-Ukrainian, 7% pro-Russian? Section 3.0 describes how they got the dataset (all tweets in a timeframe with a "#IStandWith[Ukraine|Russia|Zelynskyy|Putin]" hashtag). Section 3.1 describes how they assign national 'lean' to the accounts in their entire dataset; that's the section that has the 90%/7% numbers. Section 3.2 describes how they quantify bot activity in their dataset, using a program called BotoMeter to apparently run regression on accounts in the dataset. Section 4 gives the average botometer scores by national lean. This is the oddest of all, since the botometer scores for both sides are roughly equal. It seems to imply that Ukraine and Russia both had bot armies that were roughly equal in proportion to the total number of accounts favouring their national camp, despite the huge disparity in the size of the national camps (90% vs 7%). Which seems odd. [Edit: to clarify: I may have missed it but the paper doesn't seem to give a clear statement on %bot/country anywhere.] All this article really does is make me curious about botometer accuracy and the usefulness of a 'IStandWith*' filter for doing a study like this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- r721 4y agoThere was some criticism of Botometer in previous bot discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32361296
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
- NicoJuicy 4y agoI think Russia severely underestimated what the emigration of millions of people do to other countries. Of course they won't be pro-Russian, they had to stay in a bunker during multiple months for safety ( a neighbor is from Ukraine)
- HereIGoAgain 4y agoThis is really a surprise to anyone? Russia may have more resources than Ukraine, but pretty much the entire world is on the latter's side. Especially social and major media. Bots are one of the reason that NO social media should ever be used to get "public opinions" on anything! Not just via likes/votes either!
- tenpies 4y agoThere's a fascinating contrast in strategies: Ukraine went fast and aggressive with the Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island propaganda. Russia: silence. And you see it still today. Just this week, Ukraine claimed a pensioner shot down a Russian plane with a rifle. Meanwhile Russia just releases very dry Ministry of Defence updates. I'm not sure if it's a strategy or a focus on domestic approval over foreign, but it sure is interesting to watch.
- saargrin 4y ago#istandwithPutin is not a hashtag pro-ruZZian propaganda (or anybody else for that matter) uses, so i dont see how this comparison is even making sense except creating clickbait
- dang 4y agoThis title was heavily editorialized. That's against HN's rules. Accounts that do that eventually lose submission privileges, so please don't do that. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- retox 4y agoWhy is this flagged?
- i_am_jl 4y agoEditorialized headline.