Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#2It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#3It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
Since it's more widely accepted to be a significant part of the threat model, there should be more attention and effort focussed on identifying and revealing information about it.
OTOH, there will be misinformation directed to confuse the public about that, too, and that may be challenging to sort out.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#4It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
Since it's more widely accepted to be a significant part of the threat model, there should be more attention and effort focussed on identifying and revealing information about it. OTOH, there will be misinformation directed to confuse the public about that, too, and that may be challenging to sort out.
It's also possible to talk about it without sounding crazy.
Of course, some people will still try and make it seem like it's a crazy idea, but they do the same with AGW.
Having media sources most people respect on board with the basic notion should help.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#5100 K on Facebook and 274 K on Twitter: I remember a lot of detractors saying that both campaigns spent way more (in the tens of millions or higher AFAIK). What about ads on Google Ads and other ad networks? What does the total dollar value of Russian ad spend in the November 2016 US election have to be for those detractors to think again?
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#6It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
> basic information about last year's misinformation campaign
You mean when all of the U.S. press spent the year beating up on Trump?
It was pretty obvious, just from looking at the front pages. That was the Russians? Wily buggers.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#7> On average, our automated systems catch more than 3.2 million suspicious accounts globally per week — more than double the amount we detected this time last year.
Holy crap that is a lot of suspicious accounts!
It's impossible to find political conversation on twitter without multiple accounts named like `HouseWifeXX937` (always something with weird characters then numbers at the end) in the middle of the conversations and rarely reply like you would expect a real person to do. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in a conversation entirely with bots and it gets depressing; why would I even want to bother using Twitter beyond talking with people I know are people?
Nowadays I mostly ignore any strangers.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#8100 K on Facebook and 274 K on Twitter: I remember a lot of detractors saying that both campaigns spent way more (in the tens of millions or higher AFAIK). What about ads on Google Ads and other ad networks? What does the total dollar value of Russian ad spend in the November 2016 US election have to be for those detractors to think again?
Naturally these figures are related to specific accounts, too. I wonder if they can aggregate spending based on origin location and how much higher the amount would be.
For example if you're doing something fishy with moving money around you wouldn't move, say, $100k from a single place. No, you'd move $5k 20 times from likely multiple places. It's trivial to setup new accounts to then use for ad buying.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#9It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
Yes, accepting bets for how much money Thiel will be paying. He's already on "5 times russian bogeyman":
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-do...
I guess he gets a sweet rate at Facebook, too.
Re: Update: Russian Interference in 2016 US Election, Bots, and Misinformation
#10It seems to have taken about a year for basic information about last year's misinformation campaign to come out. 3 years from now there'll be another election and presumably another misinformation campaign. Should we be optimistic that someone will be on top of it before the election?
Since it's more widely accepted to be a significant part of the threat model, there should be more attention and effort focussed on identifying and revealing information about it. OTOH, there will be misinformation directed to confuse the public about that, too, and that may be challenging to sort out.
>a significant part of the threat model
Right, but for who?