Bot Accounts - Disinformation and the removal of centre ground

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

mcmoustache wrote: »

The Mueller investigation has indicted and identified the organisation responsible, the building in which they do their shilling, the people running it, their accountant, the botnets and samples of the tweets. The indictments also describe in detail how this worked and how it was paid for. It's a literal A to Z of Russian state-sponsored trolling. It has a lot to do with this thread.

I think people have lost the plot talking about Trump.

dr.fuzzenstein

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

I think people have lost the plot talking about Trump.

Your point being?

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Your point being?

That people are disproportionately concerned with Trump considering this is an Irish message board.

dr.fuzzenstein

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

That people are disproportionately concerned with Trump considering this is an Irish message board.

From a European standpoint, I am worried about Trump. This may be an Irish message board, but the world doesn't cease to exist outside of Ireland's little bubble.
Trump dislikes Europe's trade power and Putin wants to wrestle back control of Eastern Europe.
Trump is definitely beholden to Putin and both don't like the EU one little bit.
Strife and discord will certainly play into their hands, so we're too busy arguing about refugees, Brexit, Neonazi sh*theads and the EU in general to notice how we are being attacked on both sides.
When you see the utter bitterness and abject stupidity spreading through the internet, well, I refuse to ascribe it solely to stupidity (unless a large proportion of the world's population has an IQ of about 50), there has to be some malice to it.

mcmoustache

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

I think people have lost the plot talking about Trump.

Ctrl-F "Trump". I haven't mentioned him until this post.


If you want to keep going on about Trump, there's a thread here for it. This one is about bots and it's impossible to talk about them without discussing their influence and the US investigations into them which demonstrated their existence and capabilities to the world. Trump is going to come up in that context in the same way that a discussion on poor refereeing decisions will end up with Thierry Henry being mentioned.

Tell me how

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

That people are disproportionately concerned with Trump considering this is an Irish message board.

mcmoustache wrote: »

Trump is going to come up in that context in the same way that a discussion on poor refereeing decisions will end up with Thierry Henry being mentioned.

I'm with mcmoustache on this one. Think it is absolutely necessary to consider his election and presidency within this topic. Especially given Bannon and the relationship with Cambridge Analytica.

As an aside though, I think it is very dangerous for people to stop paying attention to and talking about what he is doing as it has the potential to be world changing and also will influence politics for years to come. Ivanka Trump for President in 2032 after 8 years of Nikki Halley anyone?

Trumps success and any overlap with subversive bots or accounts means that the latter is here to stay. It's only a question of whether we can see it and ignore it or if we fail to see it.

mcmoustache

Trump is just one example of many bot campaigns but he and Brexit are the only ones that we're going to hear about. I don't think many of us follow Ukrainian, Finnish, Baltic or Former Yugoslavian countries' politics so Trump and Brexit are the only context that most of us will be able to relate to.

With regard to what they're likely to promote in Ireland, I'd say it'll just be far right and far left stuff although anti-eu sentiment will be a common thread. It's less about picking leaders and more about sewing division. The data on the US, which is publicly available and verifiable demonstrates this - they were pushing BLM and Sanders too.

mcmoustache

Tell me how wrote: »

Especially given Bannon and the relationship with Cambridge Analytica.

There's a small distinction between CA and the Russian program. CA are a data analytics and advertisement targeting company that sell their expertise to people running for election. Russia's program is just shít-stirring abroad.



That's not to say that their interests align sometimes though in terms of collaboration. It hasn't been definitively shown yet so I'm inclined to stay away from that angle until more information is available.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

mcmoustache wrote: »

Trump is just one example of many bot campaigns but he and Brexit are the only ones that we're going to hear about. I don't think many of us follow Ukrainian, Finnish, Baltic or Former Yugoslavian countries' politics so Trump and Brexit are the only context that most of us will be able to relate to.

With regard to what they're likely to promote in Ireland, I'd say it'll just be far right and far left stuff although anti-eu sentiment will be a common thread. It's less about picking leaders and more about sewing division. The data on the US, which is publicly available and verifiable demonstrates this - they were pushing BLM and Sanders too.

This is what I was trying to get at with my opening comment. Politics on this site has 40,000 posts about the Trump presidency, and 20,000 on the lead up to his election. It really is only looking at this through one focused lens. We are in the relative infancy of mass online communication, and we have reached a tipping point only very recently that online behaviour can have an influence on real world politics.

Yet Trump, Brexit, Sanders and BLM all addressed very real issues to people already, and they have their infancy long before Russian botfarms. I think that it's really good if people become engaged and aware of how propaganda can be used against voters in the digital medium. The likelihood of bad actors at play in the digital world and being successful is almost certainly only going to grow.

This is an evolution of how disinformation is at play. But disinformation comes from all sides in varies degrees and in different ways. And propaganda and lies have been used by powerful players for as long as time itself.

TheIrishGrover

Part of the issue is is that it becomes so partisan: "You are only saying it's a bot because it's saying something I agree with. You want to look at a bot? Look at the things this one is saying.
I absolutely believe that these are malicious actions intended to seed confusion, distrust and sow hatred and fear. These bots are cheap (Relatively speaking) to operate and have a massive impact.

You are always going to have a certain percentage of easily-led people who are easily swayed by Twitter, Facebook and other social-media platforms. Platforms with no fact-management: Once it's on the net and there is more than one link to it then it's fact.

Facebook and Twitter and Social Media in general are cesspits of hatred and propaganda and lies. This is unfortunate but that's human nature. People will vent their own spleens online and nothing can be done about it. There is just too much out there to police. Even if they did try you will have people claiming censorship. They will say: Why did you remove my post? "Because it was an unsubstantiated post that was verified to be a lie". They will state and what about their post? "That was verified independently as fact". "Yeah but it's Fake News and you are biased.

There is no such thing as "Fake News". No such thing. It does NOT exist. There is accidentally incorrect information (Mistakes), correct information (Facts) and intentionally incorrect information (Lies). Whether someone deems a correct information (fact) to be newsworthy or not does not classify this as "Fake News".

So, sorry, off on a tangent there Issue is that any action taken against these bots (Even if something could be done) would be considered partisan and censorship. Look at how long it took social media platforms to even begin to tackle disgusting, dangerous, hate-mongering trolls like infowars.

mcmoustache

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

There is no such thing as "Fake News". No such thing. It does NOT exist. There is accidentally incorrect information (Mistakes), correct information (Facts) and intentionally incorrect information (Lies). Whether someone deems a correct information (fact) to be newsworthy or not does not classify this as "Fake News".

I think that the term Fake News, outside of authoritarian types, has come to mean a specific type of disinformation. I guess it would fall under the Lies that you mentioned but more recently, it has come to mean lies presented from a medium that looks like a news website. They often mimic the layouts of other sites and have similar names to actual news such as cnn.co.ga or Bloomberg.com.au etc but the content is just made up. It is quite specific though and doesn't cover mistakes or facts that people don't like.


The thing with fake news is that without botnets and paid promotion on social media, it wouldn't have the reach that it has now.

TO give an example of how this works, lets say I created a website where I just made up stories and I had one story where Hillary Clinton was caught in a threesome with George Soros and Nancy Pelosi in the basement of an abortion clinic in Chicago. At first, this story isn't going to show up on google. So how do I get this story to as many people as possible and better yet, to as many people who are likely to believe it?

One way is to pay facebook to show this to people with certain demographic traits. In this case sending it to a bunch of east-coast, college-educated professionals won't gain much traction but if I send it to a demographic that has already been shown to believe that stuff, then they'll "like" or whatever it is and the story will spread organically to others with similar profiles. To give that spreading a boost, though, if I had access to someone who controlled 100 facebook pages, I could get them to promote the story even further. Soon enough, this story is seen by millions of the sort of people who are most likely to believe the story.


On twitter, it would be even cheaper to spread the story. All you need is control of a bunch of accounts, tailored for your target demographic - blonde female profile picture, American flag, references to God and military etc. Have them regularly retweet popular conservative twitter feeds and conservative news organisations for a while and have them retweet and like each other's activity. These can be automated or controlled by humans from poor countries. Soon enough, tweets from these accounts will be showing up in the timelines of the type of people you're after. Then it's just a matter of having that botfarm tweet the cr*p out of that story and it'll make its way to the kinds who are likely to believe it.

All of this is relatively inexpensive and both private and state actors have been caught doing exactly this.

TL;DR

Fake News (not mistakes or news people don't like) gets spread by bots and shills on social media by targeting demographics that are likely to believe and spread the fake story themselves. The bots/shills don't do all the work but they boost the story among likely believers. It's cheap and easy to do so it's not surprising that private entities and states would use such techniques.

TheIrishGrover

mcmoustache wrote: »

..........

TL;DR

Fake News (not mistakes or news people don't like) gets spread by bots and shills on social media by targeting demographics that are likely to believe and spread the fake story themselves. The bots/shills don't do all the work but they boost the story among likely believers. It's cheap and easy to do so it's not surprising that private entities and states would use such techniques.

Well, the issue is that these all get lumped into one group: this (Extremely cleverly, if hateful) term "fake news".

So mistakes and lies get lumped in with facts that the target wishes people to ignore. Seemingly unrelated true facts that would be embarrassing or potentially damaging. When it's a mistake it's "Lie/Fake News". When it's a mistake it's "Lie/Fake News". When it's embarassing/damaging it's Lie/Fake News". When they are called on it as being a lie they trot out "We never said it was a lie. We said it was Fake News"

So the target says "Fake News". Their supporters assume this means lies (Never mistake or fact) and ignore it. Their detractors assume this is fact that they wish to hide but cannot engage in debate because their opponents consider this Fake News: Lies.

As you said, once it is promoted heavily on social media it is now "fact" to a certain group of easily-swayed people. These people then are happy pawns of these bots.

All it would take is a twitterbot post and three other "Unrelated" twitterbot retweets for this to become fact. "Well, everyone is saying it. Look, @yeehawUSA says so and he couldn't possibly be a Russian with that name.

Look at your Facebook page (If you still have one). What percentage of the posts are actually people posting something of their own: Photo or update or something. And what percentage is clickbait spam. If I see one more post from a friend of mine about how "this supermarket is selling rotten meat. The answer will surprise you".

But, as I said, bar manual monitoring of every single post before being allowed online (Impossible) there is nothing social media companies can do. Even then you will hear cries of "Censorship".

mcmoustache

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Look at your Facebook page (If you still have one). What percentage of the posts are actually people posting something of their own: Photo or update or something. And what percentage is clickbait spam. If I see one more post from a friend of mine about how "this supermarket is selling rotten meat. The answer will surprise you".

But, as I said, bar manual monitoring of every single post before being allowed online (Impossible) there is nothing social media companies can do. Even then you will hear cries of "Censorship".

I've been lucky enough never to have had a facebook one. I did have a bebo briefly but that was maybe 15 years ago. These days, I'm only here and on twitter.

You're right about this being hard for social media companies to police. They can easily stop the obvious stuff but it's just going to be an arms race. Whenever the social media companies take measures, the bot and troll farms will just change their behaviour to defeat these counter measures.

While the social media companies can help, the only thing that will really work is a population that is aware of what's going on but I don't have a lot of faith in that happening.

Anyone have opinions on Correct the Record? Seems rather similar to everything else being mentioned.

VinLieger

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

That people are disproportionately concerned with Trump considering this is an Irish message board.

America are our largest trading partner and a massive amount of people are employed by American companies here. Not to mention their continuing closening of ties to Russia who have very clearly made it a goal in the last decade to do everything they can to weaken and dismantle the EU.



You might want to open your eyes to the bigger picture?

Pelvis

Chris_Heilong wrote: »

The whole Russian bot thing is just a fairy-tale, it is shocking the amount of people who buy into this.

Countries used to go to the trouble and expense of flying airplanes and dropping millions of leaflets containing propaganda. But yes, having people post on the internet from thousands of miles away and creating bots to do so automatically, THAT'S the fairy tale.

Speaking of Fairy Tales. A while back I delved into the Twitter API and decided, for the heck of it, to 'publish' a book on Twitter, the book I chose was Alice in Wonderland. Here's the account if you want a read! 1123 tweets posted in just a few days, and that was only running when I was at home!

That shows just how incredibly easy it is, even for a dope like me, to post information online automatically.

seamus

I've been noticing this with Facebook accounts more recently. Accounts throwing out extremist/contrarian views on public shares. And when you look into them have very little activity over a number of years, despite have public profiles. There are some genuine ones out there. You look at them and see patten of similar comments and posts.

It's the accounts with one or two profile pictures, nearly ten years old but without any posts.

"Bot" is probably an unhelpful pejorative. Because it implies an automated algorithm which can be fooled. This is not the case; there's someone behind the account who will often respond when called out. Then you look silly for calling it a "bot" account. But nevertheless, the account is not a genuine individual's account.

Tell me how

seamus wrote: »

"Bot" is probably an unhelpful pejorative. Because it implies an automated algorithm which can be fooled. This is not the case; there's someone behind the account who will often respond when called out. Then you look silly for calling it a "bot" account. But nevertheless, the account is not a genuine individual's account.

i wonder when we hear of user accounts being compromised, is there a chance that log in details for such dormant accounts make their way to the black market and hence they become active.

I wonder how many accounts are being started and "cultivated" now for active duty at some point in the future.

I suspect the whole of FB might be just 10,000 people with multiple accounts fighting various arguments and causes. :pac:

OneOfThem Stumbled

dudara wrote: »

This, it’s far more likely it was a dormant account that was hacked or bought. But other than that I don’t disagree.

I do believe that internat trolls or deliberate dispruption is a thing. What’s even worse though is the huge swathes of people who willingly drink the kool-aid. There’s something disturbing about our willingness to be polarised.

We tend to (by nature) focus on the most extreme, and media producers follow suit to fill this natural preference.

Who is interested in seeing someone at a rally with a relatively neutral opinion?

What is more likely to gain attention? Focusing on a Neo-Nazi Trump supporter, or a steel worker Trump supporter? What's more likely to gain attention? A feminist championing minor legislative or social change, or one who is screaming that all men are rapists?

Having positions we might not necessarily agree with associated with people who are repulsive we are more likely to find ourselves polarised, whilst simultaneously feeling a greater certainty of our own correctness

VinLieger wrote: »

You might want to open your eyes to the bigger picture?

I've heard that Xi Jinping is a swell guy

dr.fuzzenstein

seamus wrote: »

I've been noticing this with Facebook accounts more recently. Accounts throwing out extremist/contrarian views on public shares. And when you look into them have very little activity over a number of years, despite have public profiles. There are some genuine ones out there. You look at them and see patten of similar comments and posts.

It's the accounts with one or two profile pictures, nearly ten years old but without any posts.

"Bot" is probably an unhelpful pejorative. Because it implies an automated algorithm which can be fooled. This is not the case; there's someone behind the account who will often respond when called out. Then you look silly for calling it a "bot" account. But nevertheless, the account is not a genuine individual's account.

I absolutely agree. These are accounts that go back absolute yonks. One pic, zero activity and suddenly it springs into action 10 years later.
And I've noticed that they go very quiet, very quickly when called out on it.
One would have to be a bit simple or have an interest in disputing their existence to say otherwise.
Waving them away or saying"shurr, this is Ireland", why bother posting? It's don't know, don't care, move along, nothing to see here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/world/europe/russia-troll-factory.html

mcmoustache

seamus wrote: »

"Bot" is probably an unhelpful pejorative. Because it implies an automated algorithm which can be fooled. This is not the case; there's someone behind the account who will often respond when called out. Then you look silly for calling it a "bot" account. But nevertheless, the account is not a genuine individual's account.

Troll seems to be the current word but, like a lot of internet words, means different things to different people.

listermint

seamus wrote: »

I've been noticing this with Facebook accounts more recently. Accounts throwing out extremist/contrarian views on public shares. And when you look into them have very little activity over a number of years, despite have public profiles. There are some genuine ones out there. You look at them and see patten of similar comments and posts.

It's the accounts with one or two profile pictures, nearly ten years old but without any posts.

"Bot" is probably an unhelpful pejorative. Because it implies an automated algorithm which can be fooled. This is not the case; there's someone behind the account who will often respond when called out. Then you look silly for calling it a "bot" account. But nevertheless, the account is not a genuine individual's account.

When the term bot is used I'd implies that people might have knowledge of what a bot is and how sophisticated they are. I have good knowledge of them via my work and I can tell you there are vastly more sophisticated machine learning bots accessing terrabytes of conversational responses that the average person wouldn't have a clue about

We aren't talking about under funded banking or insurance bots used on their customer care site we are talking about sophisticated code .these are built like someone's child the programmer cultivates them and grows them grows their knowledge and language skills. The typical punter wouldn't have a clue.

I see this stuff in action

Hotblack Desiato

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I absolutely agree. These are accounts that go back absolute yonks. One pic, zero activity and suddenly it springs into action 10 years later.

I don't do FB, but during the Repeal campaign there were loads of accounts on Twitter exactly like that, posting the same links to the same anti-choice websites. Either long-dormant genuine Irish accounts which were hacked, or recently set up shill accounts using stolen profile pics and a few words thrown in to make it sound like an Irish person. Obvious as hell that they weren't real people. Twitter did nothing of course.

KyussB

The best way to control discourse online, is to do it in a way that chills discussion, without the participants knowing that what they are doing, chills discussion.

Boards is the best example of it in Ireland. If there's someone with a consistent viewpoint threatening enough to one influential party/class or another, the sites tendency to over-moderate (heavily over-moderate, at times), is not difficult to indirectly deploy against 'problem posters', with the right combination of tactics across multiple legitimate accounts.

Here was a good recent article I read, on a similar issue:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/10/16/self-censorship-where-the-real-damage-is-being-done/


It's the height of gullibility that people think foreign powers all the way over in Russia, have more of a stake in influencing online discourse in Ireland, than domestic powers.

dr.fuzzenstein

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

I don't do FB, but during the Repeal campaign there were loads of accounts on Twitter exactly like that, posting the same links to the same anti-choice websites. Either long-dormant genuine Irish accounts which were hacked, or recently set up shill accounts using stolen profile pics and a few words thrown in to make it sound like an Irish person. Obvious as hell that they weren't real people. Twitter did nothing of course.

I have noticed an interesting development on FB.
If there is anything like a left leaning post, or post sympathetic to foreigners (read: "brown" people) in Germany, there will be outraged and hostile comments.
But not from Germans, but from profiles purporting to be either black, Turkish, Syrian or something along those lines.
One example was a sketch by the Turkish comedian Bülent Ceylan, where he played a Nazi skinhead, along with a black comedian, playing a skinhead who was unaware that he was black. And of course the first skinhead being completely ok with that.
If a white German comments"this is disgusting and not funny", you can immediately dismiss him/her as right-wing.
But post the same from a fake black/Turkish/Syrian account, well, as a white German I can't argue with that without looking like a complete tit.

Also, added intimidation on the Neo Nazi accounts, usually containing pictures of a group of musclebound skinheads, all wearing the same, standing in a group and adopting a threatening stance.

One would have to be as innocent as a new born kitten to dispute the existence of bots and trolls on the internet, or have an interest in disputing that fact.

Tell me how

KyussB wrote:

Boards is the best example of it in Ireland. If there's someone with a consistent viewpoint threatening enough to one influential party/class or another, the sites tendency to over-moderate (heavily over-moderate, at times), is not difficult to indirectly deploy against 'problem posters', with the right combination of tactics across multiple legitimate accounts.

Don't agree with this.

Look at how Irish society has swung in last 30 years. Voted first to prevent divorce, then to allow it. First to ban abortion, then to allow it. We've had FF, FG, Sinn Fein, Labour all go through periods of being popular, then unpopular. The PD's went from being in government, to being wiped out within a short period.

We have a largely informed and engaged population and open local, national and European elections at least every 5 years. Anyone can attempt to get involved in the process but most are not willing to put in the groundwork of starting at a local level. Some do jump straight to national but usually after having been involved in politics thorough their families over their life.

By its very nature, if a viewpoint was consistent, it would rise to the top. But, people confuse "their opinion" and that if a few like minded people (on all sides) as being consistent on a national level.

There are attempts to control the narrative somewhat, see for example newspaper advertorials praising government initiatives but to suggest the likes of Boards is involved in systematically quelling and directing opinion to conform to a viewpoint selected from uphigh is untrue and is giving them way too much credit for the capacity they have to influence things on a significant level.

There are keyboard warriors, and inevitably, some will make it to become mods but that isn't a strategy or organised process in my view.

Chips Lovell

Mod Note

KyussB wrote: »

Boards is the best example of it in Ireland. If there's someone with a consistent viewpoint threatening enough to one influential party/class or another, the sites tendency to over-moderate (heavily over-moderate, at times), is not difficult to indirectly deploy against 'problem posters', with the right combination of tactics across multiple legitimate accounts.

If you've a problem with how the site is moderated, please open a Feedback thread. This isn't the place for airing complaints like this.

Thanks

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

VinLieger wrote: »

America are our largest trading partner and a massive amount of people are employed by American companies here. Not to mention their continuing closening of ties to Russia who have very clearly made it a goal in the last decade to do everything they can to weaken and dismantle the EU.



You might want to open your eyes to the bigger picture?

How do you think Russia has been able to weaken or dismantle the EU in recent times? Are there examples?

The US have toppled more governments than nearly every other country in the world put together over the last 50 years. The also have employed enough people in the NSA to push whatever narrative they feel like online. It would be naive to think they are not doing this.

Israel has been paying people to fight online battles for at least 5 years at this stage.

The term Shinnerbot has been used on this website as an accusation towards posters here for years. Whether paid for or not, they are clearly at the very least always out to bat for their political party.

I have my eyes as open to the bigger picture as possible. I very clearly posted on this very thread that I think...
"Russians, Shinners, FF, FG, the NSA (who have over 40,000 employees and they are not all looking for terrorists or playing solitaire), right wing Christians, left wing Antifa types, Conspiracy folks, even big corporations like McDonalds or Burger King ect. ect. ect."
..have people online that are being paid to push a particular objective.

I think the problem is that many people are only looking at this through the prism of American Democrat politics. This is clearly a worldwide issue. Focusing solely on the Russians being the only bad actors at play in this is truly not seeing the bigger picture.

*If you mean the bigger picture in this is how the US has brought so much FDI and jobs into the Irish economy then fair enough. When it comes down to it Ireland has to take the Americans side in this. But from a neutral standpoint, I think it is fair to say this is a bigger problem than only Russianbot farms.

Strazdas

There was that "David Jones, Southampton" Twitter account which was sending out constant pro-Brexit tweets until the media started noticing the account in 2017. It had 100,000 followers and sent out a staggering 140,000 tweets before it was shut down. Analysts who investigated it noticed it was sending out around 100 tweets an hour, 12 hours a day, without any interruptions or going offline for a few hours.

James Brown

Terrorism is another one. Not a peep about the people murdered in Pittsburgh in comparison to one of those driven vans running people over ISIS likes to take credit for. Home grown white terrorism doesn't have as much cache it seems. Not suited to any useful agenda.
I think of Russia as a company with Putin as the majority shareholder, except they don't adhere to any trading standards authority.