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I don't find Matt Taibbi's reporting on the Hamilton 68 dashboard credible. Caroline Orr has written a decent article about it here [1]. From my own investiga
by pryce 4y ago
I don't find Matt Taibbi's reporting on the Hamilton 68 dashboard credible. Caroline Orr has written a decent article about it here [1].
From my own investigations relating to social media bot behaviour in completely unrelated spheres (new religious movements / cults online), i've sen bots primarily being used to amplify or suppress content by human operated accounts - people operating bot accounts aren't looking to have the bots become 'influencer' nodes.
When I tracked those human-operated accounts that were getting boosted, I assessed many as intentionally receiving bot assistence, and others as being completely ignorant of the bot operation but getting boosted anyway. The latter group is useful to a bot operation as it helps dilute the bot networks intentions, and may at times align ideologically as well.
This is the sort of important distinction that any genuinely interested researcher or journalist would be keen to make. There is nothing of the sort in Taibbi's post. Instead, Taibbi makes assumptions that align with his priors, (aligning we might note, extremely well with the person paying him), then goes to a handful of (likely cherry picked to be sympathetic) human accounts and says "they thought you were a bot har-har!" looking for a soundbite. I found it risible.
[1] https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-those-russian-linked https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-thos...
- pphysch 4y agoYou're essentially asserting that some openly-biased political operatives in Washington DC are more "credible" than Twitter's moderation chief or an investigative journalist (both with access to internal Twitter documents), based on some unrelated amateur OSINT. That's ridiculous.
- karp773 4y agoHow can you be sure the new owners/management of Twitter and the hired "investigative journalist" are not compromised? I was very symathetic and enthusiastic about their recent pivot toward free speech. But now it's clear to me it was not about free speech but rather a certain agenda which is suspiciously aligned with Russian interests.
- pphysch 4y agoThe truth doesn't matter. What matters is how closely your speech patterns mirror "Putin talking points". Even if those "taking points" happen to be true.
- pryce 4y ago1. I described Taibbi as failing to meet a threshold of credible reporting for reasons I've explicitly stated in a fair amount of detail and further linking to a 3000 word artcle on it by someone who analyses disinformation professionally. You've characterised this as "essentially asserting". I am forced to conclude you are not a serious person. 2. Either you don't know or don't care that Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno is postdoc "at UMD’s Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS)." studying how disinformation works and propagates for a living. You are free to disagree with her analysis and mine if you like (how? where?) but to dismiss her work as "some unrelated amateur OSINT" tells me you're not genuine. Further discussion with you is clearly pointless.
- waych 4y agoMost people claiming to be experts in disinformation are really just experts in disinformation. Beware.
- pphysch 4y agoOne of the clearest examples of this is Peter Pomerantsev
- pphysch 4y agoRussiagate truthers like Orr are analogous to Qanon truthers. They should not be taken seriously. They have a preconceived conclusion and cherry-pick evidence to support it. Both are deranged, baseless conspiracy theories designed to advance partisan interests. Full stop.