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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.
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.
Except for you.
But I'm also a bot... wait, is anyone here NOT a bot? Shesh, we had meeting about this.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Hard to be a bigger source of disinformation than the twitter account for POTUS.
that are transparently enforced?
All races of bots are equal. All bots should be judged on their behavior rather than their race. Although judging bots on how much traffic they bring to the site can enhance corporate profits, executive bonuses and shareholder value.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Okay, okay, I admit it ... I'm a bot, too.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading over to Ashley Madison. I've got a hot date with a girl bot.
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...
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.
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.
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.
I too am not a bot FELLOW HUMAN.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
>> 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
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 ?
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!
The argument can be made that you're the Russian spy assigned here to discredit Democrats even more. See how fun this nonsense is?
*beep*
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?
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
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.
What do you think about Shesh?
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!
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".
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.