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Twitter Deletes Over 10,000 Bots That Discouraged US Midterm Voting (cnn.com)
Twitter has deleted over 10,000 disinformation bots discouraging Americans from voting in Tuesday's midterm elections.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Twitter said that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had brought the accounts to their attention. "For the election this year we have established open lines of communication and direct, easy escalation paths for state election officials, DHS, and campaign organizations from both major parties," the spokesperson said. The company said it believes the network of accounts was run from the United States.
The 10,000 accounts were deleted in late September and early October, Reuters reports: The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort... The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party's inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters... The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Twitter said that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had brought the accounts to their attention. "For the election this year we have established open lines of communication and direct, easy escalation paths for state election officials, DHS, and campaign organizations from both major parties," the spokesperson said. The company said it believes the network of accounts was run from the United States.
The 10,000 accounts were deleted in late September and early October, Reuters reports: The number is modest, considering that Twitter has previously deleted millions of accounts it determined were responsible for spreading misinformation in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Yet the removals represent an early win for a fledgling effort... The DCCC launched the effort this year in response to the party's inability to respond to millions of accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms that spread negative and false information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other party candidates in 2016, three people familiar with the operation told Reuters... The DCCC developed its own system for identifying and reporting malicious automated accounts on social media, according to the three party sources.
Everybody owes me a platform, waaah waaaah waaaah!
Signed,
The Party of Personal Responsibility
Since Twitter now needs phone numbers as an anti bot measure, trace the companies giving out phone numbers to bots.
The party of "science is fake but QAnon is real" sure is in a great position to mock safe spaces, huh.
With a byline like If you have reservations, vote Democratic, vote third party, or stay home in the 2018 midterm elections , I would hope the USA Today twitter account was also deleted (not holding my breath).
Your claims are so false, it's actually more illustrative to link a Google search instead of any one Snopes page https://www.google.com/search?q=snopes+illegal+voting&oq=snopes+illegal+voting&aqs=chrome..69i57.6253j1j7&client=ms-unknown&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
The number of people on voter rolls doesn't change anything, and meatbag impersonation is ineffective and stupidly easy to catch, which is why it's so rare. There are TONS of ACTUAL problems with our electoral system, the chief of which is that we have a system that protects the two party system, but I haven't seen the GOP ever offer a solution to a problem that exists in the real world.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Interesting how I don't read too many stories about Republicans trying to register illegal aliens and dead people to vote yet every 2 years it happens in Chicago, California, Detroit.
Funny how you don't read stories like this one then.
Meanwhile, your claims of dead people being registered to vote are as bogus as the claims about busloads of illegal voters.
How do we know? Because we found out they lived.
Legit question for you AC- are there any legit reasons to try to suppress voter fraud? And I mean the real fraud committed by people, not the mysterious claims of machines miscounting their votes.
Flawed vote counting is actually a good concern. Why exclude it?
But here's your problem. They aren't trying to suppress voter fraud. By their own documented admission, they are trying to gain partisan advantages by suppressing the actual voter participation.
A common theme in American history. And all the false hysteria that are the mantra of the Kobach's and O'Keefe's of the world only further serves to weigh against the GOP.
Posting the same reply I gave you last time you linked the same article, which you didn't answer. Presumably because you couldn't find a Breitbart article that had an answer and you're not capable of coming up with one by yourself.
No, they admitted under oath that their automated system deleted 48% of the tweets. Breitbart didn't omit those details, why did you?
Also, why continue to vote for the Republicans in charge of that committee who failed to do anything after Twitter admitted that? They don't advocate for you, so why do you still support them? They took the side of big business, as usual, yet I doubt you're gonna vote to remove any of them from office in 2 weeks, are yah?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
In the little over an hour since this story about trolls being removed from Twitter was posted, 34 of the 38 comments posted here were from anonymous cowards, and most of those were trolling, with comments like, "only n i g g e r s use Twitter" and "go choke yourself" and "it's an attack against conservatives" and how "the bots stuff is bullshit".
I count five making the case for not voting and three others making the "both sides are trash" argument (which is also a case against voting).
You don't have to go to Twitter to see this effect in action. The problem is, it's not working as well this time around.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Interesting how all the voter supression and election fraud comes from the Republicans.
Nope. According to The New York Times,
The North Dakota Democratic Party posted a misleading ad on its website and on Facebook that suggests state residents should reconsider voting in this year's election if they have hunting licenses in other states.
. . .
A look at the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party's claim:
CLAIM: "By voting in North Dakota, you could forfeit your hunting licenses." - posted on the Democratic party's website this week.
THE FACTS: The ad is false.
Some of my best friends friends are Zombie-Americans (but they prefer to be called the living impaired).
Seriously though, Voter fraud is a red herring to distract from Voter Suppression. Jury Duty, Voting on Tuesday, disenfranchising felons (and making it impossible for them to get their rights back), the constant voter roll purges (targeted at left leaning voters) and my personal favorite stationing armed police in riot gear outside polls in predominately black neighborhoods to "keep order". Heck, there's been a few instances of people being prosecuted and jailed for "voter fraud" because they helped an elderly relative who couldn't see vote, which is in itself suppression (don't vote or we'll throw you in prison).
This stuff works, especially in a country with such slim margins of victory. Trump one the Whitehouse by a few hundred thousand votes.
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My settings render them mostly invisible, so I can't count them, and I sort of resent the time wasted by references to and citations of the invisible trolls, whether or not they are zombies. This whole AC thing has become an abuse of anonymity. There should be a simple option: "By default my comments are AC (or not)" and you should retain the option to override. Only a slight extension from the current situation, which pushes the "not" on people who might feel otherwise in this age of privacy intrusions.
Me? I think the only justification for anonymity is prior anonymity. For example, you wouldn't need to worry about being called out as a whistle-blower if the person and crimes you were blowing the whistle on were already known in public.
Most of the trolls are merely abusing our human tendency to be polite to strangers. There are evolutionary reasons why we are that way, but it seems our evolutionary weaknesses are on the edge of destroying our civilization. Thus endeth the Fermi Paradox.
I think the general solution [Gads, what fool thinks of discussing "solution" on today's Slashdot?] remains a stronger reputation system so that we don't have to waste so much time figuring out who is worth listening to. In other words, the time should be spent for the listening to, not for the figuring out.
I've already spent too much time on this comment. The story is about Twitter and Twitter is fundamentally FUBAR, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
going on this year. If you can't win, cheat. It works.
Good election = good candidates
Bad election = bad candidates (and may the lesser evil win)
Worst election = bad candidate lies and "wins" by destroying the good candidate
Character assassination should not be the best campaign strategy.
Perhaps our best hope for democracy right now would be the hope that November 6th is actually a 3-way election between:
(1) Democratic candidates who want government of the people, by the people, for the people
(2) "Traditional" GOP candidates who want government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and
(3) Trump and his lackeys who merely want government of, by, and for the Donald
Oh! Wait! There are no category (2) candidates left on the ballots so they can't divide any elections. So much for that hope.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
What vote are they supposed to be suppressing by posting that on their own website? Interstate-hunting democrats?
Yeah and for some goddamn reason the Republicans haven't been able to JACK SHIT to curb illegal immigration despite having several opportunities over the years to do so.
Republican majority in House? Check.
Republican majority in Senate? Check.
Republican president? Check.
And not a single comprehensive immigration reform law has been passed.
"Democratic candidates who want government of the people, by the people, for the people"
Whoa-ho hehehehehehe wee-hee haw haw hahahahaha! Oh my brother, that's a good one!
I'm definitely going to vote for a populist Democrat - right after I buy a bicycle for my goldfish to ride.
I hate to disagree with you here, but the Republicans controlling the senate can kill the filabuster any time they want. Had I been in charge of the senate the first thing I would have done was kill the closure requirement. The Democrats did it to get there way when they controlled the senate and actions should have consequences. When the Democrats decided to overturn Senate rules that had existed since the time of Jefferson because they couldn't get their way why should the Republicans continue to operate with one hand tied behind their backs?
The only answer is that they don't really want to engender change and fix problems. They want to keep the issues alive as voting issues just like the Democrats. To quote a Dead White Guy, "A plague on both your houses."
"The problem is that he points out citizens as "enemies" and when you do that to an audience of millions there will always be a bunch of nutjobs that takes him seriously."
Meh. His former opponent--a politically savvy, well-connected, well-funded, and "the most qualified candidate ever" but who still lost to a political neophyte--called millions of people "deplorable" and compared members of a civil rights group to terrorists, and once told Anderson Cooper during a CNN interview that she considered members of the opposing party her enemies and that she was proud of that.
But it was a follower of that nice but a little crazy white-haired man who wanted to give everyone free college who went and tried to assassinate as many members of Congress of the opposing party as he could.
Yep nut jobs will be nut jobs, no matter what politicians say.
it's too obvious when you swing an election that way. The exit polls don't match and, well, we've got decades of statistics on exit polls and we know how they should match (e.g. even if they don't match exactly we know roughly by how much they should be off, meaning if you' cheat that way to swing an election you're probably getting caught).
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But you acted enough like one for the trolls to detect your account and report you for suspension. Just part of their tactics for destroying rational dialogue. Longer discussion in some other story, but I don't want to repeat it here. Something about bots to report humans as bots...
You mean he posted opinions that Twitter didn't approve of, so they banned his account. And you're cheering the authoritarianism of it. Thing is, they did the same thing to conservatives here in Ontario during the Doug Ford election. But those thousands of bots, all repeating the same crap and flooding candidates feeds? Those were left up, in every case the candidate was conservative.
Om, nomnomnom...