5 ms·

State-controlled media gain Twitter followers after quiet platform policy change

57 points by WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

hammon 4y ago
LOL, as NATO/US Propaganda would not been there... Spoiler: we see it. In the mean time, Assange is still in prison. We need more journalist, this is why people don't trust media anymore. COVID Lies anyone?
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
orig headline: State-controlled media experience sudden Twitter gains after unannounced platform policy change (trimmed to fit)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wildpeaks 4y ago
Unrelated to the content of the article, the effect on the left sidebar (white text on green, blending in diagonally with the same text green on white as you scroll) looks visually interesting.
- gen_greyface 4y ago
  its not smooth, but interesting nonetheless
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  > blending in diagonally with the same text green on white as you scroll I took a quick look - initially I was thinking they'd be doing something smart, like using CSS blending filters or a text-mask technique as to avoid duplicating HTML markup - but alas, no: duplicating HTM is exactly what they're doing: there's two copies of the sidebar HTML (`div.gta-article--scroller--top` and `div.gta-article--scroller--bottom`), the one with white-text is z-ordered above the scrolling gradient, the other (with green text) is z-ordered behind it. I'm surprised at the extent people still compromise their HTML for CSS effects when it really isn't necessary - the curse of divitis still exists :/
  - iainmerrick 4y ago
    The other way of looking at it is, this is the brute-force way of doing it that works and is probably reliable on lots of browsers. Trying to do it in "proper" CSS could be fiddly to get right, and may or may not work the same in all browsers. (I don't know off-hand about this particular effect, but I've done some work with CSS gradients recently and they really don't compose well with other features.)
    - abluecloud 4y ago
      yep. why spend more time to achieve the same effect? as long as you've marked the elements as "invisible" so a screen reader wont read them both out, and it works, what really matters. of all things, the extra few divs and css isn't gonna cause issues here.
throwaway290 4y ago
Read the article, it's quite enlightening. Russia today's follower count jump... My take: This happens just as another Tesla factory in China opens. Anyone who thought buying Twitter (now X corp) is about some free speech absolutism lives in a fantasy world. Musk has Teslas to sell (and make). CCP can single-handedly take away the 2nd biggest market and expropriate all IP from factories, and they know he owns Twitter.
- JacobThreeThree 4y ago
  By not censoring state media accounts that proves he's not a free speech absolutist?
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Your comment is a straw man. They were labeled as state media but not censored, anyone could follow and read them. The difference is that now their tweets are actively fed to people. Also, nah, free speech absolutism starts with removing algorithmic feed and stopping profiting from ads. By not having the guts to do that Musk already proved himself not a free speech absolutist. This incident is just icing on the cake. But still I have to ask, those countries that themselves do not have free speech and do not allow their own citizens to read Twitter but spend big bucks on information war against the west? You see amplifying their content and giving it the same weight as regular personal accounts as free speech absolutism? Imagine you removed all rules on people behavior and make it free for all, except some people have bare hands and a knife while others have tanks and rocket launchers. Ask yourself, is it absolute freedom? Freedom for whom exactly?..
    - stainablesteel 4y ago
      you claiming that government accounts are amplified is a strawman > free speech absolutism starts with removing algorithmic feed and stopping profiting from ads if you can't make money off it, the platform will cease to exist. its cherry picking to say that something isn't perfect because of this when its the same as everything else on the internet.
outside1234 4y ago
Just move to Bluesky
- delecti 4y ago
  Lets just hope their slow rollout of invites doesn't Google+ their launch hype.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  Or better still the fediverse/activitypub.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  Bluesky is destined to fail for the same reason every other attempt has failed, it only attracts a certain crowd, which ruins the point of the platform. Twitter is full of diverse thoughts and opinions; with news you can't get elsewhere. People also aren't going to dump their millions of followers to have to rebuild their brand elsewhere, so they'll post to both; and unlike with Tiktok, etc where your posts would be unique to that platform, you are just posting the same things you'll post to Twitter. I don't see Bluesky lasting more than a few years. The best bet is that Elon will get bored with Twitter and appoint a CEO that is competent.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  The moment Bluesky moves out of beta and allows new accounts without invites, it turns into Twitter.
paganel 4y ago
This website is in itself state-controlled, if only on a second degree (or 3rd degree, if one wants to get technical and not call the Atlantic Council a state-controlled entity): > The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I am reminded of the saying: “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
  - paganel 4y ago
    Not sure what that was supposed to mean, I was just pointing out that this is part of a State-vs-State propaganda battle. That doesn’t make this article any less interesting, to the contrary.
JonathanBeuys 4y ago
Since I recently tried Nostr, I am much less worried what goes on with Twitter and Co. Nostr is crazy cool and feels a lot like it could become the future of publishing. I basically just started posting on the first random client I found on Google (iris.to) and ... it works: https://iris.to/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93wnssvs4euquqqh2cs08 https://iris.to/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93... No signup, no decision to make which host to use, no nothing. Just save the private key (which iris.to creates for you) and you are good to go forever. The content you post gets relayed everywhere: https://snort.social/p/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93wnssvs4euquqqh2cs08 https://snort.social/p/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxv... So it does not matter if the client you used changes their policies, their algorithm, deplatforms you, goes down or whatever. You can just use any other client and keep posting. And since the protocol is using websockets, one can write a client in a static html page without any server backend. And it needs surprisingly little code to do so. I really enjoyed this video of a guy writing a Nostr client in a simple html file with like 50 lines of code or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbicnlCXg_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbicnlCXg_Y
- pavlov 4y ago
  > “Just save the private key” A massive usability hurdle for any hope of mainstream adoption. People say Mastodon is hard to join because you have to pick a server. It’s on another level if you also have to pick a service to hold your private key, and you can lose your account if you don’t do this.
  - JonathanBeuys 4y ago
    I just marked the key with my mouse, pressed ctrl+c, went to a text file, pressed ctrl+v and saved it. If someone is not capable of doing that, I am not sure I want to read their articles. Not sure what you are referring to with "pick a service to hold your private key". The whole point of Nostr is that you don't need any service to hold anything for you.
    - Xeoncross 4y ago
falcolas 4y ago
Tangentially related, Musk now wants NPR to tweet again, under the threat of giving away NPR's handle for disuse, contrary to Twitter's inactive account guidelines. To preempt "musk hate" arguments, I'm attributing this to Musk and not Twitter because the emails were sent directly from Musk to NPR. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-threatens-to-reassign-npr-twitter-account-if-it-wont-start-tweeting-again/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-threatens-t...
- jszymborski 4y ago
  This does not sound like a reasonable way to build trust between brands and Twitter. It truly boggles the mind why Twitter/Musk/wtv is so aggressively attacking the goodwill of advertisers and brands with this whole blue check and state/public/government media debacle.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    I’m pretty sure Musk is not a good manager, but he can select good operators for his vision. Tesla and SpaceX’s successes I believe at this point should be attributed to their other executives and leadership, with Musk just being the marketer for a bold idea and not the actual executor of that vision. Musk is hands on with Twitter and it is a disaster.
    - rjzzleep 4y ago
      Twitter was managed well before? They were burning money on useless people like no tomorrow, hardly rolled out any new useful features and spent all their time policing the platform. Whatever Musk is it's certainly not worse off then before. NPR threw a tantrum because of a label that wasn't the same as what Chinese and Russian media had, which they disingenuously claimed was the same. Then they threw a tantrum when Musk in response removed all labels from ALL media organizations. Musk is certainly not building trust with the advertisers, but neither are the advertisers acting in good faith. It was also quite the spectacle to see all those blue checkmarks flip out at losing something they got for free to the extent that they went around saying that peoples lives would end because of it.
seydor 4y ago
Meanwhile, private media introduce more designs that don't allow you to read the summary
lesuorac 4y ago
I am kind of surprised there isn't a media company with a twitter clone. We're your one stop shopping for information. Want to know what Jones bought today? Here's a picture they uploaded (to their feed or w/e)! Want to know what the weather is? Here's an account for NYC weather! It's a bit risky slotting ads next to random people's content but you'll know which feeds are very commercialable. The weather feed is always going to be SFW, etc. Plus you can always use unfilled ads slots with ads for your own content (just focus on ads for the lower tier-content to avoid associating Greys Anatomy with some beheading video).
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  Substack is doing this isn’t it?
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    IIUC, you're referring to Notes [1]. I'm not familiar with it but mostly yes I think so although I was thinking more of a legacy media company from the one thousands. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/11/23677946/substack-notes-twitter-throttled-blocked-links https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/11/23677946/substack-notes-t...
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > I am kind of surprised there isn't a media company with a twitter clone. The same reason there isn't a traditional publisher with an Amazon clone. One-stop shopping does win, but very few traditional media companies would willingly distribute content for their competitors (probably you could replace "very few" with "none"). Even if they were willing to do that, the antitrust people would be on their butts in short order.
somenameforme 4y ago
Twitter's recommendation algorithm has long since been completely open sourced. It's available right here: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
- kijiki 4y ago
  Maybe I'm just getting old, but calling 5 weeks (well, it'll be 5 weeks tomorrow) "long since" seems odd.
  - stainablesteel 4y ago
    when the article says: "While open-source researchers cannot access Twitter’s algorithms directly," its been quite a long time for them to get that fact straight. that they're not just lying, they're gaslighting. this is disinformation, that's the point.
    - richbell 4y ago
      They uploaded sanitized point-in-time snapshot of the algorithm code. It did not include all the information necessary to actually understand how the algorithm works, nor is it an accurate reflection of how the algorithm currently works. I do not see how saying "While open-source researchers cannot access Twitter’s algorithms *directly*," is disinformation.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        That is their complete recommendation algorithm and the repo is regularly updated. Soon they will even be uploading their test suite so you can build and even test the entire recommendation system. This is complete disinformation coming from the Atlantic Council. [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council
hunglee2 4y ago
what is the problem with this. State controlled media are useful accounts to follow, they will tell you the policy position of the governments in question. If they gain followers presumably this is one the volition of those who choose to follow, free competition for ideas and all that. Suppressing accounts is preferring comfortable ignorance over discomforting awareness.
- richbell 4y ago
  State-controlled media are used to publish disinformation and misinformation. There is no "free competition for ideas" when certain actors will blatantly lie; removing warning labels guarantees that users will stumble across demonstrably false information from an unreliable source and falsely believe it credible.
  - stainablesteel 4y ago
    the twitter community notes are amazing at handling disinformation and misinformation. better than anything else on the internet that i've seen. its open source and it requires multiple different echo chambers to agree in order for it to come into effect. multiple politicians have already been caught lying on the spot and it points it out. any individuals, corporations, or state actors trying to do the same thing will face the same consequences. personally, i care a lot about receiving and working off truthful and factual information. i can't think of a better platform for all these assholes to have to communicate through.
    - richbell 4y ago
      They're useful for providing context for one-off tweets. Account labels like "state controlled media" provides context for known bad actors.
  - hunglee2 4y ago
    agree with your assessment - this is still a competition, perhaps less for ideas, more for 'narrative dominance'. US state controlled media has an extraordinary advantage in this area, I see no reason why it should require a platforms additional support to win this contest. It's like prime Mike Tyson needing the referee to hobble the guy in the other corner - totally unncessary!
RobotToaster 4y ago
>The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council [0] >Four separate U.S. government donors were listed in 2021, with a total value between $1.5 million and $3 million. [1] This is literally published by state controlled media lol. [0] https://dfrlab.org/about/ https://dfrlab.org/about/ [1] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/atlantic-council/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/atlantic-council/
boomboomsubban 4y ago
The largest change shown on those graphs is a gain of about ten thousand followers, the smallest shown is a couple hundred. Without more data, it kinda feels like this could be natural fluctuations.

57 points by WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

LOL, as NATO/US Propaganda would not been there... Spoiler: we see it. In the mean time, Assange is still in prison. We need more journalist, this is why people don't trust media anymore. COVID Lies anyone?

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

orig headline: State-controlled media experience sudden Twitter gains after unannounced platform policy change (trimmed to fit)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wildpeaks 4y ago

Unrelated to the content of the article, the effect on the left sidebar (white text on green, blending in diagonally with the same text green on white as you scroll) looks visually interesting.

gen_greyface 4y ago
its not smooth, but interesting nonetheless
DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
> blending in diagonally with the same text green on white as you scroll I took a quick look - initially I was thinking they'd be doing something smart, like using CSS blending filters or a text-mask technique as to avoid duplicating HTML markup - but alas, no: duplicating HTM is exactly what they're doing: there's two copies of the sidebar HTML (`div.gta-article--scroller--top` and `div.gta-article--scroller--bottom`), the one with white-text is z-ordered above the scrolling gradient, the other (with green text) is z-ordered behind it. I'm surprised at the extent people still compromise their HTML for CSS effects when it really isn't necessary - the curse of divitis still exists :/
- iainmerrick 4y ago
  The other way of looking at it is, this is the brute-force way of doing it that works and is probably reliable on lots of browsers. Trying to do it in "proper" CSS could be fiddly to get right, and may or may not work the same in all browsers. (I don't know off-hand about this particular effect, but I've done some work with CSS gradients recently and they really don't compose well with other features.)
  - abluecloud 4y ago
    yep. why spend more time to achieve the same effect? as long as you've marked the elements as "invisible" so a screen reader wont read them both out, and it works, what really matters. of all things, the extra few divs and css isn't gonna cause issues here.

throwaway290 4y ago

Read the article, it's quite enlightening. Russia today's follower count jump... My take: This happens just as another Tesla factory in China opens. Anyone who thought buying Twitter (now X corp) is about some free speech absolutism lives in a fantasy world. Musk has Teslas to sell (and make). CCP can single-handedly take away the 2nd biggest market and expropriate all IP from factories, and they know he owns Twitter.

JacobThreeThree 4y ago
By not censoring state media accounts that proves he's not a free speech absolutist?
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Your comment is a straw man. They were labeled as state media but not censored, anyone could follow and read them. The difference is that now their tweets are actively fed to people. Also, nah, free speech absolutism starts with removing algorithmic feed and stopping profiting from ads. By not having the guts to do that Musk already proved himself not a free speech absolutist. This incident is just icing on the cake. But still I have to ask, those countries that themselves do not have free speech and do not allow their own citizens to read Twitter but spend big bucks on information war against the west? You see amplifying their content and giving it the same weight as regular personal accounts as free speech absolutism? Imagine you removed all rules on people behavior and make it free for all, except some people have bare hands and a knife while others have tanks and rocket launchers. Ask yourself, is it absolute freedom? Freedom for whom exactly?..
  - stainablesteel 4y ago
    you claiming that government accounts are amplified is a strawman > free speech absolutism starts with removing algorithmic feed and stopping profiting from ads if you can't make money off it, the platform will cease to exist. its cherry picking to say that something isn't perfect because of this when its the same as everything else on the internet.

outside1234 4y ago

Just move to Bluesky

delecti 4y ago
Lets just hope their slow rollout of invites doesn't Google+ their launch hype.
jszymborski 4y ago
Or better still the fediverse/activitypub.
partiallypro 4y ago
Bluesky is destined to fail for the same reason every other attempt has failed, it only attracts a certain crowd, which ruins the point of the platform. Twitter is full of diverse thoughts and opinions; with news you can't get elsewhere. People also aren't going to dump their millions of followers to have to rebuild their brand elsewhere, so they'll post to both; and unlike with Tiktok, etc where your posts would be unique to that platform, you are just posting the same things you'll post to Twitter. I don't see Bluesky lasting more than a few years. The best bet is that Elon will get bored with Twitter and appoint a CEO that is competent.
Pxtl 4y ago
The moment Bluesky moves out of beta and allows new accounts without invites, it turns into Twitter.

paganel 4y ago

This website is in itself state-controlled, if only on a second degree (or 3rd degree, if one wants to get technical and not call the Atlantic Council a state-controlled entity): > The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
I am reminded of the saying: “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
- paganel 4y ago
  Not sure what that was supposed to mean, I was just pointing out that this is part of a State-vs-State propaganda battle. That doesn’t make this article any less interesting, to the contrary.

JonathanBeuys 4y ago

Since I recently tried Nostr, I am much less worried what goes on with Twitter and Co. Nostr is crazy cool and feels a lot like it could become the future of publishing. I basically just started posting on the first random client I found on Google (iris.to) and ... it works: https://iris.to/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93wnssvs4euquqqh2cs08 https://iris.to/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93... No signup, no decision to make which host to use, no nothing. Just save the private key (which iris.to creates for you) and you are good to go forever. The content you post gets relayed everywhere: https://snort.social/p/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxvua2ym93wnssvs4euquqqh2cs08 https://snort.social/p/npub14cxhrehjln8r4fqgc8uvatkjv5dlwzxv... So it does not matter if the client you used changes their policies, their algorithm, deplatforms you, goes down or whatever. You can just use any other client and keep posting. And since the protocol is using websockets, one can write a client in a static html page without any server backend. And it needs surprisingly little code to do so. I really enjoyed this video of a guy writing a Nostr client in a simple html file with like 50 lines of code or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbicnlCXg_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbicnlCXg_Y

pavlov 4y ago
> “Just save the private key” A massive usability hurdle for any hope of mainstream adoption. People say Mastodon is hard to join because you have to pick a server. It’s on another level if you also have to pick a service to hold your private key, and you can lose your account if you don’t do this.
- JonathanBeuys 4y ago
  I just marked the key with my mouse, pressed ctrl+c, went to a text file, pressed ctrl+v and saved it. If someone is not capable of doing that, I am not sure I want to read their articles. Not sure what you are referring to with "pick a service to hold your private key". The whole point of Nostr is that you don't need any service to hold anything for you.
  - Xeoncross 4y ago

falcolas 4y ago

Tangentially related, Musk now wants NPR to tweet again, under the threat of giving away NPR's handle for disuse, contrary to Twitter's inactive account guidelines. To preempt "musk hate" arguments, I'm attributing this to Musk and not Twitter because the emails were sent directly from Musk to NPR. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-threatens-to-reassign-npr-twitter-account-if-it-wont-start-tweeting-again/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/musk-threatens-t...

jszymborski 4y ago
This does not sound like a reasonable way to build trust between brands and Twitter. It truly boggles the mind why Twitter/Musk/wtv is so aggressively attacking the goodwill of advertisers and brands with this whole blue check and state/public/government media debacle.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  I’m pretty sure Musk is not a good manager, but he can select good operators for his vision. Tesla and SpaceX’s successes I believe at this point should be attributed to their other executives and leadership, with Musk just being the marketer for a bold idea and not the actual executor of that vision. Musk is hands on with Twitter and it is a disaster.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    Twitter was managed well before? They were burning money on useless people like no tomorrow, hardly rolled out any new useful features and spent all their time policing the platform. Whatever Musk is it's certainly not worse off then before. NPR threw a tantrum because of a label that wasn't the same as what Chinese and Russian media had, which they disingenuously claimed was the same. Then they threw a tantrum when Musk in response removed all labels from ALL media organizations. Musk is certainly not building trust with the advertisers, but neither are the advertisers acting in good faith. It was also quite the spectacle to see all those blue checkmarks flip out at losing something they got for free to the extent that they went around saying that peoples lives would end because of it.

seydor 4y ago

Meanwhile, private media introduce more designs that don't allow you to read the summary

lesuorac 4y ago

I am kind of surprised there isn't a media company with a twitter clone. We're your one stop shopping for information. Want to know what Jones bought today? Here's a picture they uploaded (to their feed or w/e)! Want to know what the weather is? Here's an account for NYC weather! It's a bit risky slotting ads next to random people's content but you'll know which feeds are very commercialable. The weather feed is always going to be SFW, etc. Plus you can always use unfilled ads slots with ads for your own content (just focus on ads for the lower tier-content to avoid associating Greys Anatomy with some beheading video).

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
Substack is doing this isn’t it?
- lesuorac 4y ago
  IIUC, you're referring to Notes [1]. I'm not familiar with it but mostly yes I think so although I was thinking more of a legacy media company from the one thousands. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/11/23677946/substack-notes-twitter-throttled-blocked-links https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/11/23677946/substack-notes-t...
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> I am kind of surprised there isn't a media company with a twitter clone. The same reason there isn't a traditional publisher with an Amazon clone. One-stop shopping does win, but very few traditional media companies would willingly distribute content for their competitors (probably you could replace "very few" with "none"). Even if they were willing to do that, the antitrust people would be on their butts in short order.

somenameforme 4y ago

Twitter's recommendation algorithm has long since been completely open sourced. It's available right here: https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm

kijiki 4y ago
Maybe I'm just getting old, but calling 5 weeks (well, it'll be 5 weeks tomorrow) "long since" seems odd.
- stainablesteel 4y ago
  when the article says: "While open-source researchers cannot access Twitter’s algorithms directly," its been quite a long time for them to get that fact straight. that they're not just lying, they're gaslighting. this is disinformation, that's the point.
  - richbell 4y ago
    They uploaded sanitized point-in-time snapshot of the algorithm code. It did not include all the information necessary to actually understand how the algorithm works, nor is it an accurate reflection of how the algorithm currently works. I do not see how saying "While open-source researchers cannot access Twitter’s algorithms *directly*," is disinformation.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      That is their complete recommendation algorithm and the repo is regularly updated. Soon they will even be uploading their test suite so you can build and even test the entire recommendation system. This is complete disinformation coming from the Atlantic Council. [1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council

hunglee2 4y ago

what is the problem with this. State controlled media are useful accounts to follow, they will tell you the policy position of the governments in question. If they gain followers presumably this is one the volition of those who choose to follow, free competition for ideas and all that. Suppressing accounts is preferring comfortable ignorance over discomforting awareness.

richbell 4y ago
State-controlled media are used to publish disinformation and misinformation. There is no "free competition for ideas" when certain actors will blatantly lie; removing warning labels guarantees that users will stumble across demonstrably false information from an unreliable source and falsely believe it credible.
- stainablesteel 4y ago
  the twitter community notes are amazing at handling disinformation and misinformation. better than anything else on the internet that i've seen. its open source and it requires multiple different echo chambers to agree in order for it to come into effect. multiple politicians have already been caught lying on the spot and it points it out. any individuals, corporations, or state actors trying to do the same thing will face the same consequences. personally, i care a lot about receiving and working off truthful and factual information. i can't think of a better platform for all these assholes to have to communicate through.
  - richbell 4y ago
    They're useful for providing context for one-off tweets. Account labels like "state controlled media" provides context for known bad actors.
- hunglee2 4y ago
  agree with your assessment - this is still a competition, perhaps less for ideas, more for 'narrative dominance'. US state controlled media has an extraordinary advantage in this area, I see no reason why it should require a platforms additional support to win this contest. It's like prime Mike Tyson needing the referee to hobble the guy in the other corner - totally unncessary!

RobotToaster 4y ago

>The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) at the Atlantic Council [0] >Four separate U.S. government donors were listed in 2021, with a total value between $1.5 million and $3 million. [1] This is literally published by state controlled media lol. [0] https://dfrlab.org/about/ https://dfrlab.org/about/ [1] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/atlantic-council/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/atlantic-council/

boomboomsubban 4y ago

The largest change shown on those graphs is a gain of about ten thousand followers, the smallest shown is a couple hundred. Without more data, it kinda feels like this could be natural fluctuations.