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60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine
- jevgeni 4y agoSeeing how the hashtag form of #IStandWithUkraine is mostly a pro-Ukrainian thing, I'm not surprised. Russians use other hashtags.
- bperki8 4y agoI guess you, uh... missed the other hashtags? >The studies posts contained hashtags like “StandWithPutin”, “(I)StandWithRussia”, “(I)SupportRussia”, “(I)StandWithUkraine”, “(I)StandWithZelenskyy” and “(I)SupportUkraine”.
- gpderetta 4y agoThese tags are in English, what about Russian? The Russians might have more interest in internal propaganda in their language, while Ukraine of course needs to influence its allies. Having said that, I have the feeling that Russia has been surprisingly playing catch up on social media on this war. Ukraine groups has been posting 'from the trenches' combat videos almost from day one while it took a while to Russia to identify it as an useful propaganda source and they are still not as good as the Ukrainian.
- speeder 4y agoThe only reaction I saw from Russia so far is keep pointing out whenever they spot a Nazi on Ukranian videos. To be honest this feels kinda effective, since Ukranians are not bothering in hiding the Nazi at all (most recent example: Zelensky made selfies near his bodyguards, and they were wearing concentration camp division tags on their uniforms...) But when I talk to random people on street here in Brazil at least, it is more likely they believe in Ukranian propaganda than Russian propaganda just because they never heard of the Russian propaganda in first place.
- Nahtnah 4y agoThis https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/15/zelensky-bodyguards-hitler-patch/ https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/15/zelensky-bodyguards-hitle... ? Yeahhh, the bodyguard for the Jewish guy is a Nazi! (Note grayzone is HEAVILY russian biased.) Fuck it, I'm jewish and I'd rather be interrogated by the Ukranians than the Russians any day: https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1570779528196399104 https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1570779528196399104
- knodi123 4y agoThe head of the Wagner Group (russia's mercenary corps) literally has nazi tattoos on his neck. https://twitter.com/sameralatrush/status/1365746097117921288?lang=en https://twitter.com/sameralatrush/status/1365746097117921288... I don't know if we can draw conclusions about racist leanings by backpack stickers that require so much familiarity with historical nazi logos that you can recognize one re-interpreted into a "generic tough guy" aesthetic. Maybe we can! But even if it's the case that there are simply a lot of racists in eastern europe, it's still true that one side is brutally invading a non-threatening neighboring democracy and committing war crimes on a daily basis.
- pushkine 4y agoIn my experience, Russian propaganda is more about extrapolating things well out of order rather than fabricating fake news. They also omit facts against their side, but that's a constant for mass media. Russian sources love to speak of the enemy in general as holder of a certain ideology. They also like to repeat that civilian casualties and destroyed buildings are unilaterally caused by the other side, mostly by bombing the places they retreat from. The first claim is obviously wrong since Ukrainians are just defending themselves. I've only heard proof of the second from eyewitness testimonies, yet I've seen real footage of Russian tanks firing at 20-story buildings and hysterical volunteers taking turns at blasting RPGs in empty, silent streets.
- thriftwy 4y agoI don't think Russians use these hashtags. Russians don't use Twitter that much and ones who do tend to be very westernized, introducing further bias. The kind who fled to Israel and Turkey because they could not stay in a country that wages wars :)
- helge9210 4y ago> because they could not stay in a country that wages wars Because sanctions affect their personal well-being. The war started at 2014 and they were OK with it for eight years.
- thriftwy 4y agoThey just live in Western information bubble on Twitter. In 2014 the West did some mild condemnations and so did Russian twitter crowd. In 2022 the West decided it's time to boot Russia and so they promptly left. Many of them are returning now since they did not have means to stay there anymore (no job, no residency permit, no ways to draw sufficient money from Russia)
- notarget137 4y agoWere they?
- helge9210 4y agoI know some people who moved out of Russia in 2008 or earlier, because they were not OK.
- jevgeni 4y agoNo, I haven’t. That’s why I used the term “hashtag form” instead of just “hashtag”.
- cloutchaser 4y agoSo, the million (or trillion) dollar question is, who controls them?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fbn79 4y agoPrivate companies that leverage interest in war to drive traffic to their services
- sicp-enjoyer 4y agoDon't you think that would be a pretty big PR risk?
- colordrops 4y agoPlausible deniability
- sicp-enjoyer 4y agoI don't buy it. I'm sure their individual lobbying efforts with politicians are far more effective and less risky forms of marketing.
- krisknez 4y agoI am not sure but I used to be in a Telegram group called "Ukraine IT army" which had ~50k members all around the world at that time trying to contribute to Ukraine in any way. It was mostly about posting spam, DDoSing Russian sites and hacking them. (Majority of people weren't tech savy enough to be a hacker, they would just download a script and run it on a specific ip/domain) That was about 3-4 weeks into the war and I left it so I don't know what happened to it maybe it still exists and has more members.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
- tushonka 4y agoOh well, at least it's not other way around
- rdelpret 4y agoOh how the turns table
- fbn79 4y agoRetry the same experiment over VK. I bet you'll get opposite stats: 99% bots pro Putin.
- Joker_vD 4y agoWell, I take you on your bet. Now you can go and retry it and if you manage to get that 99% I'd be genuinely surprised: from my experience, it's about 20% if that, and there are lots of Ukrainian-administered groups VK support team pretty adamantly refuses to "deal" with for the last half the year.
- postsantum 4y ago
- pastor_bob 4y agoTitle should be: 60-80% of Twitter accounts posting on Russia-Ukraine war WITH GENERIC HASHTAGS are bots Most tweets I see don't have any of these hashtags
- echelon 4y agoI don't see bots in my feed, but they have free reign in the comments. I'm worried that both bots as a means to message at volume and the rise of NLP and captcha-beating models will ultimately lead to a loss of freedom. One way to combat these is to massively fund anti-botting teams, which doesn't really feed the bottom line. The other way is to require full state ID - driver's license or passport - to register for services. I'm doubtful pseudonymity will continue into the next decade. Bots are clearly a problem. We're not addressing it adequately, and we may see harsh countermeasures imposed against us all to stop them.
- TylerLives 4y agoYou can probably buy pictures of IDs from India or some other place where people don't care much about not being able to use Twitter.
- echelon 4y agoI don't know. I think such a system would integrate an ID verification process. That would be almost inescapable.
- guywithahat 4y agoThere's this weird sentiment that the only people who use bots are the political party you don't like, and that's simply not true. Everyone uses bots; Russia, Ukraine, Republicans, Democrats, etc, and even if these parties themselves don't pay for the bots someone else will
- notahacker 4y agoAnd on the flip side, there's also the assumption that posters who are ill-informed, aggressively partisan and posting repetitive shit constantly throughout the day are bots. But that's actually how ordinary people behave when spending too much time on social media... (There are clearly enormous effective coordinated propaganda campaigns on Ukraine's behalf, but I'm pretty sure kids on Reddit shouting about killing 'orcs' aren't part of it)
- drewrv 4y agoSufficiently advanced fanboys are indistinguishable from bots.
- notahacker 4y agoAnd on social media, they don't even need to be "sufficiently advanced".
- skywal_l 4y agoOn internet, nobody knows you're a bot.
- gfdsgfsdgfds 4y agoThere should be study on Reddit too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- unsupp0rted 4y agoReddit is weirdly overflowing with pro Ukraine propaganda and people don't seem to notice. Any even neutral story about Russia brings out vitriol about how obvious Russia's propaganda is. But somehow they miss the same effect when the story is pro-Ukraine, no matter who the sources are, how unlikely the content is to be true, etc. This was to be expected in the first months of the war, but after so many months of a steady diet of propaganda that doesn't turn out to be true, somehow Redditors still take it at face value.
- prox 4y agoThat depends mightily on the subreddit though, as always. The better ones flair or ban the propaganda posts.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoThe bigger the subreddit, the less tolerant of neutral-seeming Russia stories (i.e. "propaganda") and the more tolerant of heavily pro-Ukraine glory stories (i.e. propaganda). As with all things, it's on smaller community subreddits where people are allowed to think independently to some degree. Even my hometown's subreddit (city pop less than 500K, subreddit membership less than 100k) is so heavily group-thinked that many topics of current national debate are 100% settled on the subreddit and no-go for discussion.
- BitwiseFool 4y agoI think you're giving Reddit too much credit. The frontpage is awash with astroturfing, agenda posts, and an obvious bias being curated by a handful of power mods. Sure, minor or niche subreddits can escape this, but that's probably only because they are non impactful to begin with. "Flairing" posts doesn't do much good either, because the vast majority of users don't filter. I wonder if this actually makes things worse because the people who would downvote and present counterpoints have opted out of seeing such posts - furthering the echo chamber. The real power of Reddit is to manipulate perception by a barrage of likeminded content, displayed over and over again to people who don't have their ideological defenses up because they're just browsing casually.
- mc32 4y agoeh, by now, I think we are all pretty well resigned to Twitter, FB, TT, etc., being organs of propaganda with a social veneer. By propaganda I mean propaganda, to disseminate the establishment take on things. Occasionally you get the dissenter's take or opposition's propaganda, but it's pretty much all propaganda, mostly from, to borrow a hippie phrase, "the man". Not everything "the man" says is automatically wrong, as was presumed in the '70s, but you know, he has his prerogatives.
- mistrial9 4y agopersonally I think the meaning of that "the Man" phrase is something like.. "a person of authority (male) acting to further authority (and its privelages/power/profits) for its own sake" .. in other words, the presentation is appeal-to-authority directives, given for the sake of reinforcing the existing authority and its privileges. This is typical for military-to-civilian communication, defending and advancing big bureaucracy, and territory administration including highway transportation, rental property, the insurance industry, big agribusiness; less so for technocratic authority for example current network big tech, social media manipulation, women in positions of power for liberal political reasons, and obvious new wealth of any kind. $0.02
- pushkine 4y agoI've noticed that every source of information I find particularly trustworthy and meaningful ends up getting corrupt and re-purposed for malicious intent. For instance, I strongly believe that the process of corrupting Wikipedia has started and in a few years time we'll read articles about how troll farms altered a massive number of wiki articles about certain topics to revise historical facts.
- Garvi 4y agoA communicology study here. Here's my views on this: - Traditinal media has a long time been dying due to a changing landscape with the introduction of new technologies. We all get that. - The ones operating today are completely reliant proliferation through social media. This has the consequence of turning social madia administrators into information gatekeepers. - If your publication gets flagged as enemy propaganda on major social media, you have to basically close shop. - Most of these censors are working for free. - Most suffisciently large tech companies now have embedded spooks, to keep this process locked in and in their favor. - This creates artificial echo chambers where all people seem to be in agreement on important issues.
- volkk 4y agoi've stopped following this war/conflict because the amount of bs stemming from both sides is unparalleled from other stuff i've seen historically. i legitimately can't tell what is made up/staged/propaganda from actual facts, and i am guessing i will never know. some of it is very blatant. twitter is filled with bots, and deceit is everywhere. not surprised at all reading this fyi -- i was born in ukraine and i can say from experience that it is a massively corrupt country, and so is russia.
- Xeoncross 4y agoThe other side is pure evil, not even human, they shouldn't be allowed anything, in fact, the world would be better without them! Business, politics, relationships gone south. Everyone seems to think this is an acceptable way to frame the other side. I know rage drives clicks, but man is it killing our future. The news really is destroying the world.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- viro 4y agoUmm, Putin literally gave a "blood & soil" speech before invading. Do you think the mass graves found are also fake?
- thriftwy 4y agoThese are genuine graves with genuine dead people inside and genuine crosses above them, often trying to describe the contents, such as "17 Ukrainian soldiers".
- viro 4y agoBUCHA? do these look like soldiers to you? https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/8b286707d5df49529273c4bde0632e08/2000.jpeg https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/8b286707d5df49... edit: source = https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-2c77447fda4b362dfcd99e4331f9d6ae https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-2c77447fda4...
- civilized 4y agoThat's funny, because in my social media circles I see a lot of edgy contrarians blaming the West for everything. Even after Putin compared himself to Peter the Great [1], in that Peter righteously conquered possessions of Sweden to "return" them to the rightful possession of the Russian empire, and Putin was now doing the same with Ukraine - which, according to him, seems to have no right to possess itself. Putin is the worst thing to happen to the international community since Hitler. He wants to return Russia back to its former imperial glory, and he doesn't care how many millions of lives he must destroy or subjugate to achieve that. I don't understand how it's difficult to see. Or maybe some people don't want to see. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...
- BWStearns 4y agoI was just happy that @pmarca finally shut up with his "current thing" bit after Bucha. I generally like the tech community but the edgelord schtick is extremely common and gross.
- trasz 4y agoThis might be simply because Rashists tend to keep to Telegram and other "non-prohibited" media.
- littlestymaar 4y agoA few years ago in France a think tank tried to count the numbers of “Russian bots” involved in the French political debate on Twitter, and they actually published the list of several thousand Twitter accounts (how is that GDPR compliant, don't ask me), in the end many (the majority maybe) of the flagged accounts were in fact legit Twitter users and for the flagged people it became a meme to put its rank in the list in their twitter profile. Beware of analysis trying to count the number of bots, bots are hard to detect without false positive especially when all you have access to is public data.
- yamtaddle 4y ago> how is that GDPR compliant, don't ask me Publishing observations about public handles on a public website, which handles are published publicly by same public website, could fall afoul of the GDPR... how?
- littlestymaar 4y agoThis isn't how these things work. Storing a personal information without consent is against GDPR even if you gathered this personal information through OSINT. It's not because some personal information is accessible publicly online for whatever reason that it gives you the right to collect it in your database. (otherwise GDPR would be very weak given the amount of information that can be accessed through OSINT)
- yamtaddle 4y agoScreenshotting a public Twitter page and sharing the screenshot without redactions is illegal, then?
- littlestymaar 4y agoI'm pretty sure you can see the difference between a individual screenshot and a list of thousands of people based on some political scoring …
- beezle 4y agoIt would be interesting to do the same on a site like Zero Hedge where the posts/comments run nearly 100% pro Russia/Putin. On a lark I've looked at the limited available posting history of a few users and lets just say they don't have time for much of anything else during the day than to post on ZH.
- Xeoncross 4y agoRecently, I've realized I'm talking with a more bots here on HN. I'll read a weird reply to someones comment shaming them and praising China/Russia/etc..., look at the poster, and realize their account was just created and often gets flagged and taken down. HN is an ideal place to hit the minds of very influential people. Reddit is the place to hit very influenceable people.
- notahacker 4y agoPretty sure most of those comments from new account are just people that don't want their possibly-identifiable main HN account connected with starting flamewars and getting downvoted to oblivion. (And nah, HN is a terrible place to hit the minds of people that influence whether their country is sympathetic towards rival superpowers, and Reddit is worse...)
- windock 4y agoThis whole thread reads to me like bots talking to each other. With main points being “The other side is bad too” and “The opinion of one side (aggressor) is ignored” This feels exactly like Russian ops/propaganda.
- poisonborz 4y agoThe HN crowd is just too small to be worth the manipulation. This is still really the thing that shields this space. In the grand scheme of things, why would be the crowd of engineers and middle managers more important than any other demographic.
- Xeoncross 4y agoI think you might be downplaying who actually reads hacker news. I cannot think of a company who's primary makers are not represented here. Everything I've used from vector programs to database engines have a lead developer or business person here. There are a lot of people making outsized impacts commenting on HN.
- viridian 4y ago> HN is an ideal place to hit the minds of very influential people This level of self importance seems unwarranted, IMO. The readership almost certainly wields a teeny, tiny fraction of influence of say, the Economist or the WSJ.
- intrasight 4y agoAren't bots the only logical way to use Twitter? One writes an article on a legit publishing platform, and then uses automation to send a link to it to things like Twitter and Facebook.
- tptacek 4y agoIf it wasn't for all the bots, people would have a different opinion about Russia invading Ukraine?
- glyphosate 4y agoWhy do you think people create sock puppet armies?
- idlewords 4y agoTo invade sock Ukraine
- jscipione 4y agoToo many bots was the stated reason that Elon Musk used to decide not to go through with his purchase of Twitter. Hopefully Twitter will take a massive stock dive with this news allowing Musk to buy the company for a much cheaper price. Otherwise there will be two platforms, Twitter for leftists and bots, and Truth Social for conservatives. If Twitter is not reformed then the two bubbles will no longer interact bifurcating the audiences stifling debate. Perhaps that is inevitable anyway as Democrats and Republicans no longer wish to have dialogue as evidenced by Katie Hobbs and John Fetterman refusing to debate.
- merricksb 4y agoSame study discussed 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32745602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32745602
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoWhy did that post get "flagged"?
- wyager 4y agoLooks like because dang felt the title was editorialized. Let's see if he's OK with this one.
- postsantum 4y agoUsers flag posts, not dang. Or "users"
- pGuitar 4y agoUsually he changes the title when he doesn't like it... maybe it's something else.
- trabant00 4y agoI don't understand this idealism, I see it as naive and dangerous. It's a freaking war! I want my side to win. Propaganda is a powerful weapon. I would be really pissed off if my side would not use it. Having more western propaganda in western media is how I would hope things are. Otherwise it would mean we are in deep shit indeed.
- danjoredd 4y agoThat does not surprise me. I am on Ukraine's side in this conflict because I hate both the Russian and Chines governments with a passion. However, Ukrainians hack just as much as Russians do. In fact, last Spring some Ukrainian guy posted a web dev freelance job to Upwork, and when I applied the poster messaged me saying it was actually a Ukrainian who wants access to the US only jobs, and wanted to buy my account. I told them to screw off. Them making bots to sway public opinion is not surprising in the least.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoIt is not a surprise. Ukraine propaganda is spectacular in terms of reach and effectiveness. Frankly, both US, Russia and China are likely taking notes. Even mild indication of pro-Russia stance ( say, spelling Kiev the wrong way ) might result in heavy pile on depending on the forum. I don't like it and I am not fond of Russia. However, I have learned to accept we now share public spaces with various interests that now include spooks and the private parties they hired.
- disgruntledphd2 4y agoI mean, it's an easy sell too. Smaller country gets invaded and resists heroically is a pretty good story, regardless of anything else.
- jeroenhd 4y agoThough the conclusion that this algorithm detected more pro-Ukraine bots is true, there's also this conclusion which would make a much better headline: > Pro-Russian non-bot accounts are most influential overall The Ukrainian bot networks are much bigger but also less effective than the targeted Russian troll farms when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine, at least the way this was measured. I don't see how they've compensated for the difference in popularity of Twitter in Ukraine and Russia. Russia has its own social media full of its own propaganda, there aren't that many Russians on Twitter in comparison. Furthermore, Russians speaking out against the government can face some serious consequences so the pro-Ukrainian Russians probably know better than to voice their opinion with a hashtag, shifting the balance further. I also question the reliability of this machine learning network; this data doesn't come from a human verified data set, just from a machine learning algorithm trained on other bot data. I'm sure the network can detect bots that behave like the bots flagged in the original data set it was based on (though I hope that didn't include the faulty French data set) but that doesn't prevent one from setting up a new bot network that this system doesn't catch. Finally, regarding biases of the linked website, India is generally more in favour of Russia in general. I'm not sure why India chooses to support Russia in such a black-and-white situation, especially given their own history of being invaded by greedy expansionist powers that claim to "help" the local population, but I suppose the dislike for the west is stronger than the compassion for the Ukrainians.
- BWStearns 4y agoRe India there's a good discussion here[0]. Basically Russia was never ambivalent between India/Pakistan like the US, Russia supplies them with most of their arms, and India hopes they can buddy up to Russia and have a RU-IN vs China situation instead of a RU-CN vs India one. Lots of little reasons even though the outcome is somewhat uncomfortable. [0] https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/04/25/what-is-in-our-interest-india-and-ukraine-war-pub-86961 https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/04/25/what-is-in-our-inte...
- squidbeak 4y agoI can't see how it's surprising that there should be overwhelming partiality on these services against an invading power. On the contrary, it encourages me to see it. Inevitably there's propaganda and disinformation on either side. But the unarguable fact in this war is that there's now mass death, destruction and suffering because Russia chose to invade Ukraine.
- irl_chad 4y agoI read the article. The headline is awful. For example: > The most commonly-used bot type both by pro-Ukraine and pro-Russia sides is the “self-declared bots — accounts that are transparent about being bots Quite honestly, I refuse to deal with anyone who is a Russian apologist. There is presently no better example of Good vs Evil in the world than Ukraine vs Russia.
- UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
- kiawe_fire 4y agoI think it warrants caution that measuring bot usage as a correlation to narrative truthiness might also be wrong? Something like “I stand with Ukraine” has become such a ubiquitous feel good signal on social media among the masses, that I could see a good bot farm tweeting it out amongst a sea of other tweets, just to “keep up appearances”. Kind of like tweeting a “condolences” tweet after a celebrity dies or something - a relatively timely, non-vulgar thing to lend credence to your bots. But then I’m not sure I know how these bots are typically controlled, so I’m just speculating.
- less_less 4y agoTo clarify the title: The authors sampled accounts that tweeted certain pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine war-related English hashtags. Roughly 90% of the sampled accounts were pro-Ukraine and 60-80% of the sampled accounts were estimated to be bots. It's *not* a situation where the humans are pro-Russia and the bots are pro-Ukraine. The vast majority of the (supposed) bots were pro-Ukraine, but so were the vast majority of the (supposed) humans. From the article: > Pro-Russian accounts have a mean CAP score of 0.42, while pro-Ukrainian accounts have a mean score of 0.43, with medians 0.36 and 0.34 respectively. The CAP score is the estimation of bottiness from the Botometer software they used.
- genman 4y agoSurprisingly complete failure by HN crowd to notice that these "bots" are determined Botometer that has questionable reliability. You are obviously running into Russian propaganda spin without much analytical thinking. One should have by now learned that extreme care should be maintained about information that puts Russia even remotely into good light.
- amai 4y agoThat is why you don't read news on Twitter. Read a (online) newspaper. For the war in Ukraine specifically: https://novayagazeta.eu/ https://novayagazeta.eu/ https://meduza.io/ https://meduza.io/ And if you are really interested in pro-Kremlin news try https://www.kp.ru/ https://www.kp.ru/ All websites can be translated reasonably well with Google Translate. Medusa and Novaya Gazetta also do translate some articles to English, but these are always some days behind.
- psittacus 4y agoSuggesing _russian_ newspapers non-ironically to read news is like suggesting someone to read Daily Mail for latests political developments. Wherever you read your news at the very least make sure there's no russian trace there. Russian imperial midset is a huge bias in the current situation and the forementioned meduza isn't any different in this regard.
- amai 4y ago> Russian imperial midset is a huge bias in the current situation and the forementioned meduza isn't any different in this regard. Meduza does not promote any kind of imperial Russian mindset. These are independent journalists, which do the best they can to deliver high quality news from Russia even under the very difficult circumstance nowadays. You clearly have never read their website.
- sennight 4y agoLittle wonder that things are ridiculous as they are, there are hundreds of PR companies engaged in pro-Ukrainian messaging. Well, that is how they frame the activity - but it is debatable who is ultimately benefiting from the endeavor, aside from the US defense contractors who are definitely making out like bandits. https://iccopr.com/ukraine-communications-support-network/ https://iccopr.com/ukraine-communications-support-network/
- colpabar 4y agoIt really sucks that we never discuss the incentives of war for the military industrial complex, and more importantly, its ability to influence the us government. It's always assumed that everything is purely good vs evil. But of course pointing this out makes me a terrorist or a russian apologist, and therefore a bot. beep boop!
- sennight 4y agoGreetings fellow bot. I don't believe that war profiteers are the prime mover in this case, but I do think their direct benefit creates a feedback loop that will only prolong the suffering. What we are seeing right now is the continuation of plans made many years ago. Do you remember when Hillary Clinton proposed a no fly zone over Syria while running for president, and everyone just sort of gave her the benefit of doubt and assumed she didn't know that would lead to war with Russia (all so the US could act as air cover for ISIS)? I'm pretty confident that was her intent all along, which may explain the magnitude of the meltdown the establishment had when she lost her opportunity to execute that plan. You remember how Russia spent decades reminding everyone that NATO expansion into Ukraine was an actual no joke red line, and everyone believed them except Biden - who everyone just assumed screwed up yet again with his habitual bluffing? Well the evidence favors this all being very intentional, like the PNAC and the Iraq war - we've got yet another think tank proposal that matches subsequent warmongering: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
- bArray 4y ago> The bots also increase online discussion around motion, observed the research paper, by tweeting posts with words like “moving”, “go”, “going”, “leave”, which are potentially associated with staying or fleeing the country. Pick 'leave'. Is this "I think _we_ should leave" or "I think _they_ should leave". Without context these words could be used in either way. I searched the paper for the word "leave" and it wasn't there, so the article pulled this example from nowhere. I am also not convinced whether the sentiment isn't also just amplified from that of real people. On page 11 of the paper [1] the "lag" seems to be the content from the bots becoming less emotive over time. On the other hand, page 12 in the conclusion it appears to amplify with time, which could also be somebody getting more exasperated. I don't know whether this could be concluded to have real intention behind it. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07038.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.07038.pdf