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'Armies' of Twitter Bots Bolster Both The Trump And Clinton Campaigns (technewsworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
During the first U.S. presidential debate, "automated accounts were tweeting messages with hashtags associated with the candidates. For example, #makeamericagreatagain or #draintheswamp for Trump; #imwithher for Clinton," according to TechNewsWorld. They cite researchers at PoliticalBots.org, who "found that one-third of all tweets using pro-Trump hashtags were created by bots and one-fifth of all Clinton hashtags were generated by automated accounts."
In addition, "Political actors and governments worldwide have begun using bots to manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues... We know for a fact that Russia, as a state, has sponsored the use of bots for attacking transnational targets... We've had cases in Mexico, Turkey, South Korea and Australia. The problem is that a lot of people don't know bots exist, and that trends on social media or even online polls can be gamed by bots very easily."
After the second presidential debate, "Pro-Clinton bots 'fought back'," reported the BBC, adding that they were still outnumbered by the Trump bots.
In addition, "Political actors and governments worldwide have begun using bots to manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues... We know for a fact that Russia, as a state, has sponsored the use of bots for attacking transnational targets... We've had cases in Mexico, Turkey, South Korea and Australia. The problem is that a lot of people don't know bots exist, and that trends on social media or even online polls can be gamed by bots very easily."
After the second presidential debate, "Pro-Clinton bots 'fought back'," reported the BBC, adding that they were still outnumbered by the Trump bots.
That's OK, Twitter fights back against the Trump bots by blocking hashtags from trending. When the FBI reopened the investigation into Hillary's emails, several pro-Trump hashtags (naturally) started trending ... briefly. Then Twitter caught on and suppressed them from appearing in the Trending list.
The same does not apply to pro-Hillary hashtags, of course. Despite the fact that Trump hashtags frequently get many times more tweets than Hillary's hashtags (and if you assume those 33%/20% bot percentages are true and adjust for that, still more legitimate tweets), they're frequently blocked from trending.
And Twitter wonders why no one wants to purchase them.
Each and every realDonaldTrump tweet gets a minimum of 18K likes right off the bat. A lot of those likes have to be automated.
The Russians control a lot of botnets, and our intelligence agencies have fingered them for the DNC hack and the Wikileaks dumps. And lately, Putin hasn't even tried to hide the fact that he wants to work with Trump as POTUS, despite the misinformation from the alt-right about uranium sales and so forth.
Seriously what the hell purpose do they serve? Is Twitter "ok" with having armies of robots pretending to be actual people, for short term gain? Fuck that.
Trump hates DC so much that he just opened a new hotel in Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capital Building and the White House. What a fuckwit.
Twitter is a cesspool of corporate and political propaganda, self-righteous indignation, and minor celebrities trying to make a name for themselves. Why does anybody listen to the crap these people post?
Maybe the bots can talk to each other and leave us out of it.
Very few people use Twitter.
This is just one more reason I don't have any social media accounts and never will. There is far to much manipulation of the results by third parties and shills. I do my best to keep as much of my information private, a near impossible thing I know. The less one confirms information request, turns off and deletes cookies, and caries out guest transactions the better in this day of data mining as a service and money maker.
Clinton's got a lot more money than Trump. She ought to be able to match him here. Conscious Decision maybe? I just don't know why.
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The problem is that a lot of people don't know bots exist
AI revolution will be invisible. Skynet will be frustrated in its desire for attention as people keep ignoring it in the social media.
A lot of featherbrains making a lot of noise over what is essentially birdseed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Eww. Madonna is like 100 years old, couldn't it at least be Lady Gaga?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What a low bar.
Why would you expect them to be equal? You aren't one of those enablers of shitty politicians who go around proclaiming that all politicians are equally shitty, are you? Because we need less people like that, less people giving assholes permission to be assholes.
Trump actually hired real-life 'bots' for his coming out ceremony.
Yeah, but she's got the body of an 80 year-old.
You are welcome on my lawn.
when your average US citizen has to decide on which crook will run their country from prison.
Why not check some of those allegations. Kissing on the cheek is now "sexual assault". Why not check who is paying the people for their "exclusive" story" and who they support politically. Yeah, you are a fucking retard.
But hey, support the lady who attacks women who were victims of sexual assault, has committed perjury, has neglected a public office leading to the deaths of numerous Americans. Those same outlets told you she was fine, and you retarded people believe them.
It's been Trump's strategy since day one to rely almost entirely on "new media" (because it's cheap) - and push a narrative that the "old media" are out to get him. That's why he doesn't care what "the media" says. The only "media" he and his followers are interested in, the only reality they have any faith in, is the one he controls directly.
(And don't get into a discussion of "mainstream" media. All media is just as "mainstream" as all other media. Twitter is manipulated by bots and trolls, newspapers and TV are written by hacks and trolls, and blogs - blogs are exactly the same as newspapers. The brief libertarian fantasy of a world where everyone had a voice and the best arguments could float to the top? - that was a fantasy. Turns out, nobody really wants to spend time sifting through a million arguments and weighing the merits of each one. They mostly want to find a bandwagon and jump on.)
Clinton is still fighting with conventional weapons. We'll know in another nine days how that's worked out for both of them.
Really? Because this administration is waging a proxy war with Russia in Syria, and Hillary wants to create a no fly zone (which would put us at war with them), and she's the one telling everyone that the nukes launch 4 minutes after Hillary gives the order. The whole reason the satirical #DraftOurDaughters campaign (currently NSFW) was going on Twitter has merely served to highlight the fact that she's been very willing to go to war. I mean, it wasn't that long ago when Hillary was talking about how we would go to war with Iran.
Feel free to argue, though: those are mostly videos of Hillary talking. Of course, if you want to say that you don't believe the things she says, I'll be forced to agree with you.
The funny thing about that is that there are some indications that the USA created the whole mess to begin with, hoping to destabilize the region and swoop in and take over if you trawl through the Wikileaks emails. I haven't seen them complaining that they're fake or altered since it came out that the DKIM signatures validate the emails as authentic.
I thought Trump had Billions to self-fund his campaign. Oh, that's right, he's broke, and won't release his tax returns because they'll show he's a complete failure of a businessman. He has nothing but debt, and followers. He stooped to reality TV because it was that or personal bankruptcy.
Learn to love Alaska
How can anyone with half a brain take seriously a communication system that limits people to 140 character posts? Does 141 characters overload primitive logic circuits?
Twitter, Facebook and Reddit will go the way of Digg after the election.
Remember, Digg was key to getting Obama elected the first time. Even Kevin Rose himself was paid off, putting an Obama sticker on his craptop.
They started scamming the public by fudging the algorithms, kindof like Reddit and Twitter and Facebook are doing now.
There's only so much we'll tolerate before we vote with our keyboards.
if Twitter and Facebook were extensions of the United States Government. Last I checked they were privately corporations. I suppose the argument could be made that it's bad for their shareholders to take sides, but the opposite could be made too. There's plenty of arguments to be had that a Trump presidency would be a disaster of trade wars and depressions if he implemented the policies he keeps saying he will. I'm not going to debate that topic right now, but I'm saying it's out there.
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and these people vote how they feel, not how they think. Twitter/Facebook could tip a close election. Both sides in this election feel it'll be a disaster if the other side wins. This isn't like Bush/Gore where we all though it was 6 of 1, half a dozen... That's why we care.
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Twitter is a cesspool of corporate and political propaganda, self-righteous indignation, and minor celebrities trying to make a name for themselves. Why does anybody listen to the crap these people post?
Admirably brief. Doth the lady (or gentleman) protest too much? Looks like a Twitter-trained response to me.
Returning to your Comment Subject:
Re:why does anybody care?
My response is "Concision". Yes, Twitter is a cesspool on its best days, and much worse the rest of the time, but the quest for brevity brings a clarity to the mimes. There are a few gems there. Don't bet on finding any, mostly due to the TwitterBots of this selfsame story.
As usual, I try to see things in terms of solutions, and one solution that could add significant value to Twitter would be TwitterBot filtering. Search results should reduce the visibility of the accounts that behave like TwitterBots. Of course that's a tough call, but one option might be a way to report a Tweet as appearing to come from a TwitterBot. The obvious problem is that you need to prevent the TwitterBots from reporting non-robotic accounts... (I don't want to recurse infinitely, but my first thought is that you discount reports until AFTER the account has established a reputation as being a human being, using information that is not easily visible to TwitterBot herders.)
In spite of my verbosity I confess to significant experience with Twitter. I think the most recent gem of a meme might be the realization that the so-called Republican Party has given up on winning presidential elections by fair means. They will do literally ANYTHING to win. In 2000 that involved dragging the Supreme Court into the political battle, and this year it's the FBI. In Twitter form:
Only way to win the White House is by partisan cheating!
Using SCOTUS in 2000 and FBI this time!
And the solution, a la Twitter:
Hey, Putie! Before you send me my new nonpartisan FBI director, can your goons handle these #BadMimes on Twitter?
True memes, you say?
As usual, disappointed by the lack of insight on Slashdot and even more disappointed by the lack of "funny" on this target-rich topic. Again, considering solutions, I think the editors need to reduce the flow of stories to match the reduced readership and Slashdot needs a better financial model to fix everything else.
(Are you still listening, whipslash? Or did you conclude that Slashdot isn't worth your valuable time?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
What about stealthier hashtags like #StrongerToGetHer?
There is nothing really new here : What is the difference between bots and humans paid for astroturfing or trolling?
Bots have an advantage here: their volume will quickly make everyone realize social media are rigged and irrelevant.
The amount of youtube channels with random names that post videos about Clinton and Trump has skyrocketed. I believe it is Russian propaganda due to the language in the video descriptions, duplicate videos with different titles, a pattern of oddly named accounts. If I were US intel I'd be more worried about those than pithy twitter comments. Youtube videos reach a much much larger audience, it would be targeted more for propaganda campaigns. I believe there is one happening right now on youtube, if I had to guess when it started, about 2 weeks ago.
it's their companies. They can run them as they see fit so long as they're not hurting the shareholder which, as I mentioned, is highly debatable.
And don't be fooled. They'd drop Hilary in a second if they thought it was to their advantage. They're pro-Hilary because, like a lot of the 1%, they can't get a read on Trump. If he actually did the things he's implied he's going to it'd cut off most of their cheap H1-B labor. Given that he just took $900k from the owner of an H1-B contractor firm I'm not expecting it, but facebook et al aren't taking any chances.
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You come across as desperate and angry.
Nobody gives a shit about Trump's taxes or success, except for Trump, and the Democrats who think it matters.
I would vote for him if he was broke, or the richest man alive. Someone's personal wealth is not a reason to vote for them.
In other words, you're just jacking off here screaming into a void of no fucks given.
Whether or not he's actually rich has no impact on his ability to serve as President.
Hillary's health would have an impact if she's actually ill. Where is the independent medical exam?
"Really? Because this administration is waging a proxy war with Russia in Syria, and Hillary wants to create a no fly zone [youtube.com] "....
No *YOU'RE* the poopy face".
"and she's the one telling everyone that the nukes launch 4 minutes after Hillary gives the order "
You're the poopy face, poopy face poopy face, you poops on your face.
"Feel free to argue, though: those are mostly videos of Hillary talking."
You're a nasty nasty poopy face.
Ooohh, big shiny red button, p-r-e-t-t-y.
Trump followers are very intellectual. They are currently faced with either voting for Trump or voting for Clinton, and can weigh the frightening policies and practices of Clinton quite effectively. But you keep on believing you are smart, the Dunning-Kruger effect does catch up to people in the long run.
Whether or not he's actually rich has no impact on his ability to serve as President.
That he's a bankrupt loser indicates he's also a massive liar and fraudster who's unfit to hold the office of dogcatcher, let alone President.
Hillary's health would have an impact if she's actually ill. Where is the independent medical exam?
She's had one and released it. Like the Birth Certificate, anything that says something Trump doesn't like is a cheat and a fraud. Trump was still lying about Obama's birth certificate years after the matter was settled.
Learn to love Alaska
Or maybe I am a real red-blooded American!!! Vote @realDonaldTrump for real change and less Hillary.
So lets get this straight. Despite the fact that Democrats have dominated social internet media, especially at botting, censorship, spamming political crap, and zerging forums into the ground for the last 12 years...OP only made this post just to declare that somehow Trump has more bots despite I've personally noticed the opposite. In short, I've always noticed that with Democrats the simple fact they often only seem to condemn something immoral after they've been doing it for years. Then they turn around and keep doing it anyway. This is one of the reasons why I gave up on liberals.....the endless hypocrisy train. Lets be realistic about this. Trump barely has a presence on the net compared to Ms.Clinton. She's outspending him like a demon. Trump doesn't even have the backing of most Republicans.
Simply stating "We know for a fact that Russia...(or whoever)" doesn't make it a fact.
I call bullshit - that's it.
at his rallies, I'd say most of his followers are genuine. I'm curious about the conflicting poll results we see, in particular the ones speaking against Trump. Again, he's drawing absolutely huge crowds, while Hillary is not. I wonder who the election will be rigged for.
The purpose they serve is to generate activity, so Twitter can point to the activity and claim people are using the service. Bots tweet, other bots retweet. Further bots counter-tweet, with another set of bots that retweet. It's a giant bandwidth and energy consuming automated clusterfuck with a signal-to-noise ratio rapidly approaching zero.
Can't imagine why someone doesn't want to throw $billions at this fine service.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why hire automated bots when you can throw money at actual shills to Correct the Record (tm) ?
and gov approved indexes of tweets...is it any wonder no one wants to buy Twitter???
Oh man. This guy doesn't know how tax returns work. Don't worry, one day you'll get a job, and then you'll see you don't put your net worth on your taxes. Thank God you're not old enough to vote!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Clinton's got a lot more money than Trump. She ought to be able to match him here. Conscious Decision maybe? I just don't know why.
I looked at the article and they never explain how they determine whether a twitter account is a bot. An awful lot of Trump supporters on twitter are anonymous because the left loves to dox people with the wrong opinions and harass them or try to get them fired, etc. Are these really bots, or just anonymous twitter users?
If they're bots, are they paid for by the campaigns? Where's the FEC filings for the Trump bot payments? We know Clinton's spending millions with Correct the Record for her fake online support. Either Trump isn't paying for fake online support, or he's violating campaign finance laws by not properly reporting it.
Possibilities:
1. These aren't actually bots, and the article is fake. Leftists always accuse their opponent of doing whatever they're doing. So once Correct the Record became known, suddenly some story pops up and makes the rounds in the media that Putin's got troll accounts making pro-Trump statements. Of course, the interviewed "researcher" provides absolutely no evidence of this. Not a screenshot, not a single account name, no numbers, absolutely nothing. This looks the same kind of thing. The authors need to show their work.
2. These are bots and Trump is faking his FEC filings for some reason. That's a big story! Some journalist should get on that by tracing the origin of the bots to find out what company's paying for them, and how they're getting paid on the sly by Trump.
3. The Trump "bots" are actually 4chan users who spam twitter to disseminate their propaganda. Real people, real support, just anonymous.
4. The bots actually are from Putin, so they're not Trump's bots, they're Trump-supporting Putin bots. But again, we'd need to see some evidence of this.
My guess is #1. I see this technique too often in the media. Accuse the opponent of doing whatever it is you're doing, state "facts" without proof to create fear, uncertainty and doubt and generally discredit the opposition. "Oh, Trump doesn't really have online support, it's fake bots," distracting from the actual, provable, and disturbing fake online support for Clinton from Correct the Record.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
So for those of us living under a rock, what the hell is #draintheswamp supposed to be referring to?
No, you put your income on your tax returns. Are you saying that someone with $0 gross income is "rich"? They are losing money, not making it. And Trump is a loser.
Learn to love Alaska
The tea party was something that was created b'cos the Congressional GOP was too busy signing on to Obama deals, thereby leaving the public w/ the impression that there are two Democrat Parties in Congress. They were always a faction within the GOP, so it made sense that they'd represent a subset of its members. In 2012, it was not co-opted by anybody - Michele Bachmann was their standard bearer, and she lost badly, and dropped out after the IA caucus.
Last year, they did initially rally behind Cruz, but there were too many other candidates that they could disperse their support behind - Trump, Carson, Santorum, et al. But even here, Trump, who was leading w/ every segment of the GOP vote, lead w/ this one as well. And that was even before Palin's endorsement.
Somehow, Hilary's State Department emails on her private server are not supposed to matter, but Trump's tax returns, which is nobody's business but his, is? He made a public financial disclosure when he announced as is required by the FEC, and that is as legally binding, and a more direct representation of his assets and liabilities
Somehow, it's amusing to see SJWs, who in the past attacked rich candidates like Romney, Bush, Forbes et al of being rich, to attacking Trump contesting his claim of being rich!!! Trump has indeed scored a coup by making it impossible for people to attack him for something he has himself claimed to be.
1. I wouldn't vote for Hilary if the candidates running against her were Abu Baqr al Baghdadi and David Duke. And I'm neither White, nor am I a Muzzie.
2. I use PC-BSD and Windows. So even if I did vote for her, I'd still not get it
3. Had Madonna flipped the offer, I'd not even vote for Trump
you safe space was invaded, and you were triggered, the world is sorry for your feelings being hurt
Don't do that. Don't shoehorn the "safe space / trigger" thing in discussions that don't warrant it, you're just diluting its meaning, like a Starbucks barista that replies "awesome!" when you ask for 2% milk in your americano.
There's ample ammunition you can use in a Clinton/Trump discussion, surely you can find something more pertinent if you're trying to be dismissive or patronizing.
lucm, indeed.
If you want your message to be clear, don't pepper it with "alleged" qualifications for rape accusations. This here is an internet forum, not law school, and double quotes are an established way of communicating disapproval.
As to what you allege to be your point: can you explain why you insist that women specifically should not support a candidate that they believe guilty of sexual misconduct? What about men? See, that's the most insidious form of sexism there is; it reeks of double standards so deeply engrained that even in the context of a gender-sensitive topic you fail to recognize your own bias.
The real question should be: is it acceptable for people (of all genders) to support a candidate that they believe guilty of sexual misconduct? And my answer ro that is a resounding YES because that's what democracy and freedom is all about. Support whoever the fuck you want for whatever reason you want. Just like people who are badly misinformed are still entitled to vote, and just like pedophiles deserve to be defended by the ACLU when their freedom of speech is attacked, there's no reason to look down on people who support a flawed candidate.
Yes, I think Hilary Clinton is a heartless sociopath that should not be allowed to control the US nuclear stockpile, and I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of people who turn a blind eye on her obvious lack of morals because she happens to be the candidate that represents their political affiliation. But I don't think the gender of those individuals (like you) who are paving the way for that corrupt witch to become leader of the free world matters.
lucm, indeed.
If you want your message to be clear, don't pepper it with "alleged" qualifications for rape accusations. This here is an internet forum, not law school, and double quotes are an established way of communicating disapproval.
The purpose of highlighting the words "alleged" is just that, to illustrate that there have been no convictions and the allegations have come from another source see here for an acceptable usage and that it is all speculative by others who have ZERO evidence of any crime beyond speculative media comments and accusations. The only people who know what happened are the Clinton's and their accusers.
As to what you allege to be your point: can you explain why you insist that women specifically should not support a candidate that they believe guilty of sexual misconduct? What about men? See, that's the most insidious form of sexism there is; it reeks of double standards so deeply engrained that even in the context of a gender-sensitive topic you fail to recognize your own bias.
Again you make an assumption and I insisted on nothing, I specifically stated women as a particular example of a recent statistic and series of interviews that I heard and I had to question why and point out I found it shocking. If I had heard interviews with males, I would have included them in my comment, but since I had not at that point, it was not valid to include them. As you said, this is an internet forum and is not a formal debate forum, so you assume because I only stated interviews with women, that somehow I believe that means males are exempt, which is far from the case and is not indicated in my original statements, so again you inject your own opinion in to my statements. For the record, I think Donald's open admittance to how he treats women and how he sexualizes his daughter to be disgusting and I am male; had you asked me whether I think it is more shocking for women to support Trump and believe he is guilty than males, I would have given you my opinion, but you resorted to:
Don't bring the "female supporter" angle into this unless you're ready to fully explore the role of Clinton in silencing and threatening the women who made rape accusations against her husband.
Which again was contrary to the topic at hand and a distraction from my original point; you had an axe to grind, so you decided to grind it with the statement above.
The real question should be: is it acceptable for people (of all genders) to support a candidate that they believe guilty of sexual misconduct? And my answer ro that is a resounding YES because that's what democracy and freedom is all about. Support whoever the fuck you want for whatever reason you want. Just like people who are badly misinformed are still entitled to vote, and just like pedophiles deserve to be defended by the ACLU when their freedom of speech is attacked, there's no reason to look down on people who support a flawed candidate.
I have never stated a person does not have a right to support a candidate for whatever reason and yet again you inject your assumptions in to my statement.
Yes, I think Hilary Clinton is a heartless sociopath that should not be allowed to control the US nuclear stockpile, and I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of people who turn a blind eye on her obvious lack of morals because she happens to be the candidate that represents their political affiliation. But I don't think the gender of those individuals (like you) who are paving the way for that corrupt witch to become leader of the free world matters.
Irrelevant to my original post about Donald Trump and the women I heard interviewed that still supported him.
Oh and BTW:
And you know what, with your insistance on "alleged" you remind of those fuckers who let college athletes get away with rape be