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Twitter Is Crawling With Bots and Lacks Incentive To Expel Them (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: On Wednesday, the exterior of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters bore an eerie message: "Ban Russian Bots." Someone -- the company doesn't know who -- projected the demand onto the side of its building. Bots, or automated software programs, can be programmed to periodically send out messages on the internet. Now Twitter is scrambling to explain how bots controlled by Russian meddlers may have been used to impact the 2016 president election. Twitter was designed to be friendly to bots. They can help advertisers quickly spread their messages and respond to customer service complaints. Research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University shows that 9 to 15 percent of active Twitter accounts are bots. Many innocuously tweet headlines, the weather or Netflix releases. After the election, there was little discussion inside the company about whether the platform may have been misused, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because it is private. But the ubiquity and usefulness of bots did come up. At one point, there were talks about whether Twitter should put a marking on bot accounts, so that users would know they were automated, one of the people said. Yet most of the conversation after the election focused on whether Trump's tweets violated Twitter's policies, the person said.
Except for you.
As long as the bots are seeing advertisements, it's okay.
As long as humans do what the bots tell them to, it's okay.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Why is there no outrage about David Brock spending $1 million per month on paid trolls for Clinton during the election? Hell they were proud to brag about it at the time. Those same people are now pushing The Russians! nonsense.
If the sign said "ban Indian bots" or "ban Chinese bots" this would be decried as racist, wouldn't it?
Hard to be a bigger source of disinformation than the twitter account for POTUS.
that are transparently enforced?
Much ado about nothing. Allow an API, win stupid prizes.
I am pretty sure that any human being who says they directly use Twitter, is a lying sack of shit. There is no way anyone could keep up, and it's not organized or anything like that.
Any human who is interested in whatever is being posted on Twitter, has got to be using bots to collect and organize it.
And I'm pretty sure that almost everything that posts is a bot too. That's all we use it for: recapping each post to our website, hoping people will follow the link.
Twitter need to have bots. Otherwise, advertisers will find out that Twitter doesn't have that many users.
Source: Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton
As more people become aware of the ever-degrading state of Twitter, and more people think there's something to gain from deploying bots on it, the bot:human ratio will eventually reach the point where they're just not making any money. Bots don't view ads, and they certainly don't contribute meaningfully to conversations.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
If Clinton had won you wouldn't have heard a thing about it. Those who knew would have found themselves wearing concrete shoes.
Now she can play the woman with vapors upon hearing that there's a sex scandal involving some guy she barely knew who contributed a few dollars to her campaign for which she will redirect 10% to other causes [cough Clinton accounts cough]. Oh and aren't all men pigs and why if she were president none of these events would have happened [because again you wouldn't have heard about it esp. from the NYT]. She's shocked - shocked! - to find out these things.
Barely knew? She went to his house. He's been at the White House a bunch. They hung out at parties. They fell in love over the summer.
Both sides used paid shills, or at least organizations supporting each side used them. Not news.
Table-ized A.I.
Have we really forgotten to thank Correct The Record for Trump's historic election victory? They single-handedly turned every online Hillary supporter into a suspected paid shill, all for the low, low price of $6,000,000!
Joke of the day: Hillary Clinton was asked if Harvey Weinstein's behavior reminded her of her husband. She said: "Close, but no cigar".
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think they changed their name to shareblue or something along those lines after they managed to help tank the democrat party under the Correct The Record label. But don't worry, they'll get it right this time! It'll only cost you $12,000,000
Om, nomnomnom...
Why is there no outrage about David Brock spending $1 million per month on paid trolls for Clinton during the election? Hell they were proud to brag about it at the time. Those same people are now pushing The Russians! nonsense.
David Brock is an American Neo-Liberal political operative, author, and commentator who founded the media watchdog group Media Matters for America.
Source: Wikipedia (emphasis mine)
It's not illegal for Americans to exercise their 1st amendment rights to political speech.
Spending money to get out a political message is constitutionally protected speech, per the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.
The whole reason David Brock can spend money like this is because of the conservatives behind Citizens United.
That's right: Your problem with David Brock is your chicken, come home to roost.
Now, the emphasis above: He is an American citizen.
Americans can spend all the money they want to influence American elections.
However, foreign nationals, foreign companies, and foreign countries cannot do this.
Americans who knowingly accept money from foreign nationals, foreign companies, or foreign countries to influence elections are breaking federal law, and headed for federal prison.
And now you know why there is no outrage about David Brock (exercising his rights as an American), and there is outrage about Russian influence.
Democrat Bots and Republican Bots, those are 'good', Chinese bots and Russian Bots, those are 'bad'?
I say, what is the difference? Bots pushing their owners agenda's because the owners don't have enough HUMANS to do it are all bad.
Am I hearing you right that you think it should be illegal for Americans to participate in American elections, including funding ads, if Russians are barred from doing so?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You're wasting your breath. You're responding to the Russian influence.
I guess you're right. The republicans are a little pissed that Trump won. Combined with like minded
votes from across the isle I'm sure they can do something about this pesky free speech ruling. Trump
will make the deal in exchange for Goatse links that actually work. Don't think too hard, you might
sprain something.
How can twitter know for sure that a tweet was created by a bot rather than a person? Short of requiring people to solve a captcha for every tweet, anyone who wants to hide the fact that a bot wrote the tweet can very easily do so.
IMO the only thing that can be done is education the twitterverse. People need to understand that no tweet can be considered trustworthy, in and of itself.
in Brazil, a company named Reweb has inumerous bots. They use to aid child organized crime with child prostitution and drug smuggling. A girl named Ana from a company named Constat works there using a fake name told me about hundreds of fake accounts she has, because she has a list of gmail account passwords. Linkedn is also being used to create bots, because Twitter and Facebook are linked, so, if you only have Twitter, the spammers create a fake facebook profile for you.
>> 9 to 15 percent of active Twitter accounts are bots
Having worked in marketing briefly (shudder), I'd be surprised by any ratio that isn't close to 50/50. And a good chunk of the remaining 50% of humans also seem to be in marketing, either tuning their bots, watching what competitors bots are doing, or otherwise looking busy to keep pulling their social media paycheck. Personally, I've probably posted about 10K tweets, almost all through engines that magnify/schedule/repeat through networks. But I can't say I have enough time to actually follow Twitter for my own interests unless I'm actually at a con or other event where the feed provides some value, and the only email I see from Twitter is when someone contacts me directly.
Come on, people. The Russians no more affected the 2016 election than my dead grandmother. The outcome was influenced by the fact Hillary was the worst candidate foisted on the American people in the history of the Republic. So, you liberals keep whining about outside influence.
Know what REAL outside influence is? How about a $500,000 Russian donation to the Clinton Foundation for her help in securing uranium mining rights in Canada. Or are you all too stupid to understand that?
Pax Vobiscum
I think they changed their name to shareblue or something along those lines after they managed to help tank the democrat party under the Correct The Record label. But don't worry, they'll get it right this time! It'll only cost you $12,000,000
That is Democratic party, Komrade.
Haven't you heard? The real attack vector for those evil Russkies was Pokemon Go.
I swear I'm not making this stuff up. You couldn't, it's just too funny and outre.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
And what makes you think I'm a bot? How do you feel about ?
Actually both sides of the isle voted primarily democrat, not split across the aisle.
I'm pretty sure paid political ads have to be identified as such, and the funders identified. The ShareBlue army of shills pretends to be normal people. That's why they're so destructive to democracy. Their goal is to be, and I quote, "ungovernable" and cause so much chaos that America is seriously harmed. It's treason from within that is the real killer, TEH ROOSHINS simply lack the capability to do any real damage.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Just stop already. All this "Clinton Crime Family" line was a load of bullshit. You have to know at this point that the US elected probably the worst President in US history, so bad that he even makes James Buchanan look sympathetic in comparison. Whatever Clinton's problems, she's a rational human being with political experience who actually understands how the government works. Even if she's as evil as you claim, that would still have made a better president than Trump.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I thought the left didn't believe in corporate personhood?
The argument can be made that you're the Russian spy assigned here to discredit Democrats even more. See how fun this nonsense is?
Congratulations, you basically just unintentionally reaffirmed the Citizens United ruling. I bet you disagreed with it then though.
Whenever I mention Brock on reddit's /r/politics, the post is
immediately moderated down. At a guess, someone is running some
bots to get this point to slide down the memory hole.
So rational with political experience and who understood so much that she lost to probably the worst President in US history. lol.
How is that a good thing? Honestly, that speaks more against her than anything about Trump. He is obviously better at winning the general election than her.
Even if she's as evil as you claim, that would still have made a better president than Trump
Now you are deluding yourself. Trump is probably the worst President in US history because he is stupid, evil or both. You just said that Clinton understood government with experience and campaigned on getting things done. If Clinton was evil and was able to do her evil agenda then that is more dangerous than an idiot or an evil idiot.
It seems impossible to put Clinton in a good light with your comment. Was that your intention?
We're autists, you insensitive clod!
Damn straight. Goddamn bots anyway.
Or, you know, it could be that other people think you're an idiot who's posting moronic comments.
I'm just saying don't blame malice when (your) incompetence is a sufficient explanation.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
whatabout what about what about!!!! And "The Russians! nonsense" in the same line.
Shut the fuck up Ivan, you're not fooling anyone. We know bogaboga and the usual vatniks blew their mod point load on you.
I think his point was that lawful evil is better than chaotic evil in terms of leading a country. Evil is bad, chaos makes it worse.
Problem solved. Same could be said for Facebook.
This post is like the embodiment of the headline...
OK, I'm going to tell you a truth that will shock you.
Twitter, and other social media platforms like Facebook, can both remove and censor bots, especially Russian bots and Nazi bots and accounts.
Want proof?
Set your home country and location data to Germany.
Voila. Gone.
The correct interpretation is both Twitter and FB and other sites like Pintrest and so on can all do this, but choose not to.
Why not?
Because:
1. It artificially inflates their metrics. Their account totals, their ad buy counts.
2. It's not cheap. But they make a profit in Germany, so it is doable. They don't want to.
3. They like Nazis and Russian hackers. They make a lot of money from not just the ad buys, but all the activity, and they want us to yell at each other, because it means more traffic, more fake accounts, and more ad sales.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
9-15%? I'd sooner believe 90-150%.
My usual line is something like "It was a new low for a Democratic candidate when the Hillary campaign hired Brock to release Brock-puppets on-line to demonize Bernie supporters."
The first few times that was hit I figured it was just Hillary supporters. Now I'm wondering if the Brock puppets have really all gone home.
But assuming good faith and intelligent moderation over at reddit... that really would be moronic.
Honestly Hillary would fit in great with Republican establishment like Bush. You could change nothing about her except her party and I can guarantee the rest of Slashdot would consider her the worst candidate in history and be absolutely flipping out. Imagine if her actual crimes got half the coverage of imaginary fake Trump stories.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ok, but what you might have forgotten is that she didn't win, so we get to have whatever dirt she has or thinks she has.
One of the first rules of America is that you're basically a traitor if you aren't always ragging on whoever the president is and whoever/whatever helped the piece-of-shit win. It's open season on presidents, always, because we keep electing the Democrats and Republicans. They're never going to offer a good one, so we're always going to have legitimate complaints.
These are legitimate complaints, I guess, or at least the current half-legit gripe.
The only thing being misrepresented here, is that Clinton is somehow a victim. No, America is always the victim. We're victims of ourselves, but we don't want to change how we vote so we need to rattle off some of our adversaries, and remind ourselves how bad things are. It's all about dodging responsibility since Americans are gullible assholes without the slightest sense of civics, but there is a silver lining: it's all true. The scapegoats actually are our adversaries and things are bad. They might not be the cause of our problems, but they're still a thing to be dealt with.
So campaign ads are the new thing to complain about. What's wrong with that? Yes, I'm sorry to say that in a few years we'll be complaining about something else, but for now, can't we all piss on advertisers? Fucking enjoy it! And if you decide you like this particular bitchfest, then make it last! Keep pissing on advertisers for the next 10 years, right through the next Democrat president and into the first term of the backlash Republican president.
Never let them feel like they're out of the kettle. Ever. Keep them nervous and keep the Secret Service's watchlist so long that it's totally impractical to use, so that it doesn't mean anything. Do your duty as an American and point out that whoever is president, shouldn't be president. Keep doing it, until and unless Americans start to think about what they're going to do before, and during, election day. Until we try to have a real government, WTF is wrong with complaining about the bad government that we always vote for? It creates the right incentives.
There's one thing many people agree on: Trump and Clinton are the worst choices ever. Yet, most of the country voted for them. IOW, any other candidate would be a better president but the people refused to choose a better president. Seen that reality-game show Survivor with their 'tribal council' scene? Democracy is meant to be voting against the biggest arsehole: One knows democracy is fucked when there isn't a 3% swing away from the worst choice. Hell, with 2 worse choices, it should have been a 6% swing: Scary shit to every politician. When that doesn't happen, the Democrats and Republicans can continue, business as usual.
Which imaginary fake Trump stories are you thinking of?
It's "how much fun", comrade.
Much laughs, so fun.
You would say that, you're one of Putin's little helpers.
You're more likely being downvoted for using classic whataboutery. TFA is another chapter in the story of how Russia, a foreign state, stole the presidency for Trump. 75,000 votes, that's all he won by. Another question is whether you're arguing in good faith.
Nonsense. Fun became a valid predicate adjective a long time ago. A few reactionaries still object, but it's a fait accompli.
Otherwise known as mentioning something they didn't want to hear.
I've seen Chomsky accused of "whataboutery" because he thinks US allies should be held to the same standard as US official enemies.
But you no doubt are perfectly in tune with reddit's zeitgeist and are far better suited to comment the discussions I was involved with than I am. How dare I question the "wisdom of the crowds".
Maybe in Moscow.
Like Brexit, there's no accounting for the extraordinary stupidity of voters who think that making a horrible choice somehow makes everything magically better. But it's the Republicans who will wear this. They're the ones stuck in bomb shelter with the malignant moron, and they have no choice but to appease him, or at least make it look like they are, because there's a big enough chunk of their base that is either so fucking stupid or so willfully malicious that they will hold Congressional Republicans responsible for the President's actions.
The Republicans got everything they wanted, and it's tearing them to pieces. They deserve Trump, because they've spent eight years finding ways to blame Obama for everything and now they've got a President so bad that I doubt there's more than a dozen Republican lawmakers who don't wish it was 2013.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
making a horrible choice somehow makes everything magically better.
Because democracy. It isn't perfect but it's better than the alternative. That is partially why direct democracy is bad. You sound like you hold a lot of contempt for your fellow citizen. Sad.
they have no choice but to appease him
Uh, it sounds like you haven't been following recent politics but there are plenty of Republican congressmen that do not try to appease him. They have to appease their voters and the most recent real life poll (election) showed that Trump carried a lot of support in their states. What do you expect to happen?
it's tearing them to pieces.
Right... For winning so many elections I am not sure how you can argue that it is tearing them to pieces. Have you followed any GOP politics for any length of time or are you basing that opinion on recent events? The GOP has always had diverse ideologies under it's tent which comes off as internal division and strife to an outsider. To the point, looking at state legislatures and governorship the GOP looks pretty healthy. Do you think the democrats are tearing themselves to pieces when they cannot decide whether Trump == Hitler or trying to make a deal with him? If they make a deal with Hitler then they are just as guilty as he is for the upcoming genocide!
finding ways to blame Obama for everything
As time has passed I learn more about Obama's administration and he did a terrible job in many respects to proper governing. Sure, it wasn't all Obama's fault but Obama wasn't a good president. After 8 years, dissent isn't racist.
Obama was a middling president. That makes him orders of magnitude a better president than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Kind of funny you say that when it's only been a few months compared to 8 years. From that I gather it doens't matter if he cured cancer you would still think Trump == Hitler.
As far as middling, to each their own.
Well, he hasn't cured cancer, now has he?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
lol, you mean he hasn't cured cancer so far.
Yea, if you'd only been on this site for about a week you could probably make that argument while keeping a straight face, but anyone actually paying attention knows which one of us is the astroturfer.