7 ms·

Computer Scientist Warns of Social Media Manipulation in U.S. Election

47 points by vectorbunny 14y ago

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
For the last 30 years, we made voting decisions based on 30 second messages. That has worked so well, it's time to shorten those messages to 140 characters. Because apparently less information is more in politics.
- fleitz 14y ago
  Considering that most of the messages in politics are false or distorted you could probably make a more informed decision knowing nothing about the candidates.
  - mindslight 14y ago
    Yep. Stand proud with the silent majority who've decided that a feel-good media popularity contest is not a reason to go out of their way.
  - jmsduran 14y ago
    While your cynicism is understandable, people need to be educated in order to make informed decisions, otherwise voting becomes pointless; that is a basic tenet of Democracy.
    - mey 14y ago
      Question is who is providing the information that makes us informed?
    - fleitz 14y ago
      I believe we have similar conclusions but differ on the facts, I don't vote because it's pointless because education has revealed that... What politicians and the media say are mostly lies (intentional or not). It's difficult to tell what is a lie from what is the truth. I don't live in an area that can affect the outcome of the election. Considering the entire spectrum of choices available the two or three options you have are almost identical: Democrats are the left wing of the plutocratic party and Republicans are the right wing. Tide or Sunlight isn't a choice either way you're buying soap from P&G. Any time, including writing this point, spend worrying about politics is time I could have spent improving my life or the lives of others.
- verisimilidude 14y ago
  The 140 character limit wouldn't exactly be new. Some voters base their decisions on even less information. Hope, Change, Flip-flop, Romnesia, etc.
  - clarkm 14y ago
    The memeification of the election has been pretty interesting. The biggest examples: - "You didn't build that" - "legitimate rape" - "Big Bird" - "binders full of women" - "the 47%" - "horses and bayonets" There's a lot more context to all of these statements, but no one seems to care.
- Zenst 14y ago
  That is certainly one approach and for some thats more than they need. Thing is when it comes up towards election the various parties wake up and startup the PR spin and with that you get more and more targeted via the communications tools at hand. This has always meant manipulation for PR gains nomatter the form of communication, be it twitter or Facebook etc today or the Newspapers of yesteryear. Nothing new. If people want to base the vote over advert based timespans then they will, though I always found it better to look at what they have done outside that PR window and not on the PR spun, vote for us ones. In the UK last election I saw the concervatives saying they were about local jobs in a leaflet from my local candidate. Said leaflet was printed in another county and with over 5 local printing companies I did see thru the PR spin on that one. Personaly if you vote based on what your told by the salesman only then you are opening yourself up to mistakes. If you do your own research and look at the history of the product or party in this case and what it has done and is doing; Then you see the true picture. Whoever wins I hope they don't suffer the act of children fillybustering and turn the seats of power into a school yard name calling session. In the UK I watch the parlement channel and the way they act at times would not be tollerated in a School Playground, fine examples. But it is the same when you get people fighting for there party and not the greater good of the country it serves. But humans are not perfect; Though we do aspire. So for me politics can do blipverts and 1 character information posts as I do my own research and make my own mind up based upon actions and effort and not the one year running up to an election, pile of spin. Whatever form they pick. I guess in that sence, less information from parties blowing there own trumpet is more politics being done instead of being talked about. Be nice if they could agree on a few more things so that at least those can get actioned and things done that need to be done instead of being blocked just because the other guy came up with the idea, thats my dream and I had it.
tokenadult 14y ago
From the article, quoting the profiled professor: "Persuasion is based on emotion; it is not based on logic. If everybody knew that 1 percent of the [Twitter] accounts are responsible for 30 percent of the traffic, people would be more careful thinking about that. But the vast majority of people don’t know that. Information is propagated through retweets from others who are either fooled or agree. At the end of the day, people receive some piece of misinformation, and many will not realize that it has come from one account that has been blasting messages. They will think that it came from friends." In other words, young people who have grown up in the Internet era still need to learn about checking sources, finding information sources off the Internet, and cooling their emotions and tribal allegiances before deciding complicated issues of social policy. That's not news to anyone who reads Hacker News regularly. Every political movement and every electoral campaign for public office has a tendency to try out various persuasion strategies, empirically, seeing what works by looking at the results of campaigns. Voters who are resilient to the spreading of rumors are still the best protection for free and fair elections. One thing that helps voters become more skeptical is the back-and-forth of competing campaigns, so I'm not sure that the "social media manipulation" mentioned in the article is any more inherently dangerous than the inflammatory political cartoons of the early nineteenth century.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  Every time my kids tell me something they've learned online, there ensues a conversation about how everything posted online must be true because it is posted online. What I haven't done well enough is teach them where to go to determine if something is true. Thanks for helping me realize that so I can do something about it.
  - tgrass 14y ago
    One method to teach them the infallibility of the web is to have them research the endangered tree octopus. I had a friend's rather brilliant fourth grade son accept this creature without a thought. I hope he's more vigilant now.
    - 14y ago
amalag 14y ago
I don't give a rat's ass about social media manipulation. What I care about is voting machine manipulation.
- cryptoz 14y ago
  ~20% of the votes will go through machines. Both Diebold[1] and Tagg Romney own a huge number of the machines, specifically in important states like Ohio. The US elections have been rigged for at least 12 years. This much is obvious. They will be rigged this year, too. But to what extent? [1] Or whatever they call themselves now.
  - mediocregopher 14y ago
    http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp
    - cryptoz 14y ago
      And Diebold? Who used to have a CEO committed to G. W. Bush's presidency? Is that also false?
      - ryanhuff 14y ago
        Are you suggesting that CEO's of companies involved in the production of voting equipment should not be allowed to have an opinion of candidates?
        cryptoz 14y ago
        No, that's not at all what I'm suggesting. Walden O'Dell was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush. He also ran the machines that elected him president. He is obviously legally allowed to do all of this, including having an opinion (though I do not believe it should be legal to raise funds for a candidate and also run the machines that count the votes). What I'm saying is: Anyone who builds voting machines should not be taking sides. Especially financial sides. It's a clear conflict of interest, where the result is that I cannot possibly trust the machines to do what they say. The people building them are Republicans. The machines are closed, proprietary devices. They cannot be trusted. Hence, we must assume they are rigged.
Agustus 14y ago
This is noticeable on a number of the social media sites like reddit or digg. For reddit, most of the links are Pro-Obama and anti-Romney. Factoring in that people know good ranges of when to post to reddit, social manipulation on the site should be easy. The problem is this is all one-use until failure ideas. If the socially manipulated realm gives the appearance of not being reality individuals will search for truth or further bury themselves in a chamber. Those seeking truth will then need to be found in the new media and a new program developed.
- brown9-2 14y ago
  Are you saying that you think the pro or anti stance of Reddit is due to manipulation, rather than demographics?
  - mrab 14y ago
    I've seen on numerous occasions, an anti-conservative post miraculously parked on the front page above other posts that have twice the upvotes, twice the comments and submitted more recently. If that isn't direct manipulation, then their algo for front page content is completely backwards.
  - Agustus 14y ago
    There is not a think, it is an overall weariness of issues. Reddit founders admitted to creating their content originally when starting up the site. While not a massive manipulation, they pretended to be original posters (with separate user names) when it was not. The key points here are to take everything with a grain of salt. There are known organizations developing user names on all sorts of forums and social media sites and selling their utilization to people.
rickdale 14y ago
I saw a commercial for a proposal that just said to vote yes on it. Didn't have any information, just vote yes on said proposal. I googled the proposal to figure out what it was and the first page of results was advertisements/propaganda to say yes on proposal two. I figured, well I guess I am meant to be a low information voter...
- delinka 14y ago
  Because to them, you're just another vote and your opinion doesn't matter. You are expected by people like this to just follow instructions. And if you don't just follow instructions and you decide you need to learn something about the subject, chances are you are in the minority and don't matter to them. Or less cynically, there was advertising money left to spend and not much of it. A quick "vote yes on prop 2" is a great way to spend money and maybe get the result you want if you are the beneficiary of the proposal.
Anon84 14y ago
More in depth coverage of the same Scientist on this Topic: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/472.full?rss=1 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/472.full?rss=1
matznerd 14y ago
It's well known that many people manipulate followers, retweets, video views, fan page counts, like, shares, SEO results etc to make it appear as if a given candidate has more momentum than they really do.
candybar 14y ago
Politics has always been about arousing emotions with rhetoric, whether the medium is a speech, a newspaper column, a TV interview, a blog or a tweet. Social media simply democratizes the means of engagement, which lessens the impact of any given instance of manipulation.

47 points by vectorbunny 14y ago

For the last 30 years, we made voting decisions based on 30 second messages. That has worked so well, it's time to shorten those messages to 140 characters. Because apparently less information is more in politics.

fleitz 14y ago
Considering that most of the messages in politics are false or distorted you could probably make a more informed decision knowing nothing about the candidates.
- mindslight 14y ago
  Yep. Stand proud with the silent majority who've decided that a feel-good media popularity contest is not a reason to go out of their way.
- jmsduran 14y ago
  While your cynicism is understandable, people need to be educated in order to make informed decisions, otherwise voting becomes pointless; that is a basic tenet of Democracy.
  - mey 14y ago
    Question is who is providing the information that makes us informed?
  - fleitz 14y ago
    I believe we have similar conclusions but differ on the facts, I don't vote because it's pointless because education has revealed that... What politicians and the media say are mostly lies (intentional or not). It's difficult to tell what is a lie from what is the truth. I don't live in an area that can affect the outcome of the election. Considering the entire spectrum of choices available the two or three options you have are almost identical: Democrats are the left wing of the plutocratic party and Republicans are the right wing. Tide or Sunlight isn't a choice either way you're buying soap from P&G. Any time, including writing this point, spend worrying about politics is time I could have spent improving my life or the lives of others.
verisimilidude 14y ago
The 140 character limit wouldn't exactly be new. Some voters base their decisions on even less information. Hope, Change, Flip-flop, Romnesia, etc.
- clarkm 14y ago
  The memeification of the election has been pretty interesting. The biggest examples: - "You didn't build that" - "legitimate rape" - "Big Bird" - "binders full of women" - "the 47%" - "horses and bayonets" There's a lot more context to all of these statements, but no one seems to care.
Zenst 14y ago
That is certainly one approach and for some thats more than they need. Thing is when it comes up towards election the various parties wake up and startup the PR spin and with that you get more and more targeted via the communications tools at hand. This has always meant manipulation for PR gains nomatter the form of communication, be it twitter or Facebook etc today or the Newspapers of yesteryear. Nothing new. If people want to base the vote over advert based timespans then they will, though I always found it better to look at what they have done outside that PR window and not on the PR spun, vote for us ones. In the UK last election I saw the concervatives saying they were about local jobs in a leaflet from my local candidate. Said leaflet was printed in another county and with over 5 local printing companies I did see thru the PR spin on that one. Personaly if you vote based on what your told by the salesman only then you are opening yourself up to mistakes. If you do your own research and look at the history of the product or party in this case and what it has done and is doing; Then you see the true picture. Whoever wins I hope they don't suffer the act of children fillybustering and turn the seats of power into a school yard name calling session. In the UK I watch the parlement channel and the way they act at times would not be tollerated in a School Playground, fine examples. But it is the same when you get people fighting for there party and not the greater good of the country it serves. But humans are not perfect; Though we do aspire. So for me politics can do blipverts and 1 character information posts as I do my own research and make my own mind up based upon actions and effort and not the one year running up to an election, pile of spin. Whatever form they pick. I guess in that sence, less information from parties blowing there own trumpet is more politics being done instead of being talked about. Be nice if they could agree on a few more things so that at least those can get actioned and things done that need to be done instead of being blocked just because the other guy came up with the idea, thats my dream and I had it.

tokenadult 14y ago

From the article, quoting the profiled professor: "Persuasion is based on emotion; it is not based on logic. If everybody knew that 1 percent of the [Twitter] accounts are responsible for 30 percent of the traffic, people would be more careful thinking about that. But the vast majority of people don’t know that. Information is propagated through retweets from others who are either fooled or agree. At the end of the day, people receive some piece of misinformation, and many will not realize that it has come from one account that has been blasting messages. They will think that it came from friends." In other words, young people who have grown up in the Internet era still need to learn about checking sources, finding information sources off the Internet, and cooling their emotions and tribal allegiances before deciding complicated issues of social policy. That's not news to anyone who reads Hacker News regularly. Every political movement and every electoral campaign for public office has a tendency to try out various persuasion strategies, empirically, seeing what works by looking at the results of campaigns. Voters who are resilient to the spreading of rumors are still the best protection for free and fair elections. One thing that helps voters become more skeptical is the back-and-forth of competing campaigns, so I'm not sure that the "social media manipulation" mentioned in the article is any more inherently dangerous than the inflammatory political cartoons of the early nineteenth century.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
Every time my kids tell me something they've learned online, there ensues a conversation about how everything posted online must be true because it is posted online. What I haven't done well enough is teach them where to go to determine if something is true. Thanks for helping me realize that so I can do something about it.
- tgrass 14y ago
  One method to teach them the infallibility of the web is to have them research the endangered tree octopus. I had a friend's rather brilliant fourth grade son accept this creature without a thought. I hope he's more vigilant now.
  - 14y ago

amalag 14y ago

I don't give a rat's ass about social media manipulation. What I care about is voting machine manipulation.

cryptoz 14y ago
~20% of the votes will go through machines. Both Diebold[1] and Tagg Romney own a huge number of the machines, specifically in important states like Ohio. The US elections have been rigged for at least 12 years. This much is obvious. They will be rigged this year, too. But to what extent? [1] Or whatever they call themselves now.
- mediocregopher 14y ago
  http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp
  - cryptoz 14y ago
    And Diebold? Who used to have a CEO committed to G. W. Bush's presidency? Is that also false?
    - ryanhuff 14y ago
      Are you suggesting that CEO's of companies involved in the production of voting equipment should not be allowed to have an opinion of candidates?
      - cryptoz 14y ago
        No, that's not at all what I'm suggesting. Walden O'Dell was a top fundraiser for George W. Bush. He also ran the machines that elected him president. He is obviously legally allowed to do all of this, including having an opinion (though I do not believe it should be legal to raise funds for a candidate and also run the machines that count the votes). What I'm saying is: Anyone who builds voting machines should not be taking sides. Especially financial sides. It's a clear conflict of interest, where the result is that I cannot possibly trust the machines to do what they say. The people building them are Republicans. The machines are closed, proprietary devices. They cannot be trusted. Hence, we must assume they are rigged.

Agustus 14y ago

This is noticeable on a number of the social media sites like reddit or digg. For reddit, most of the links are Pro-Obama and anti-Romney. Factoring in that people know good ranges of when to post to reddit, social manipulation on the site should be easy. The problem is this is all one-use until failure ideas. If the socially manipulated realm gives the appearance of not being reality individuals will search for truth or further bury themselves in a chamber. Those seeking truth will then need to be found in the new media and a new program developed.

brown9-2 14y ago
Are you saying that you think the pro or anti stance of Reddit is due to manipulation, rather than demographics?
- mrab 14y ago
  I've seen on numerous occasions, an anti-conservative post miraculously parked on the front page above other posts that have twice the upvotes, twice the comments and submitted more recently. If that isn't direct manipulation, then their algo for front page content is completely backwards.
- Agustus 14y ago
  There is not a think, it is an overall weariness of issues. Reddit founders admitted to creating their content originally when starting up the site. While not a massive manipulation, they pretended to be original posters (with separate user names) when it was not. The key points here are to take everything with a grain of salt. There are known organizations developing user names on all sorts of forums and social media sites and selling their utilization to people.

rickdale 14y ago

I saw a commercial for a proposal that just said to vote yes on it. Didn't have any information, just vote yes on said proposal. I googled the proposal to figure out what it was and the first page of results was advertisements/propaganda to say yes on proposal two. I figured, well I guess I am meant to be a low information voter...

delinka 14y ago
Because to them, you're just another vote and your opinion doesn't matter. You are expected by people like this to just follow instructions. And if you don't just follow instructions and you decide you need to learn something about the subject, chances are you are in the minority and don't matter to them. Or less cynically, there was advertising money left to spend and not much of it. A quick "vote yes on prop 2" is a great way to spend money and maybe get the result you want if you are the beneficiary of the proposal.

Anon84 14y ago

More in depth coverage of the same Scientist on this Topic: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/472.full?rss=1 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6106/472.full?rss=1

matznerd 14y ago

It's well known that many people manipulate followers, retweets, video views, fan page counts, like, shares, SEO results etc to make it appear as if a given candidate has more momentum than they really do.

candybar 14y ago

Politics has always been about arousing emotions with rhetoric, whether the medium is a speech, a newspaper column, a TV interview, a blog or a tweet. Social media simply democratizes the means of engagement, which lessens the impact of any given instance of manipulation.