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Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

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Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#31

Post by mattigames »

gonvaled wrote: post #27
marcus_holmes wrote: post #20

To answer the question at the end of the post: probably none. As others have said, it's incredibly unlikely that a tweet is going to change your mind about anything. Having worked both in and out of the journalism industry, I know that journalists get a lot more worked up about what people say online than everyone else does. They think it matters a lot more than it does (probably why they got into the job of saying t…

You should probably relay this information to those spending huge amounts in advertising.

Exactly, the mind is the most unstable part of them all, specially given the high levels of ignorance (mostly lack of skepticism) prevalent in the US and the world, pretending reading a text can't change it because its origin its "Twitter" is very naive.

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#32

Post by badestrand »

blunte wrote: post #5

It’s useful to know details such as these, but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it is false. I personally know people that, when provided clear evidence of entirely false and manipulative stories will justify them by saying, “well, this story may not be true, but there are a lot of stories like this that you haven’t seen which are true”. The…

> but the bigger problem is that the audience that most “enjoys” and retweets this stuff honestly doesn’t care that it is false. [...] The point is, they believe what they want to believe, and no amount of proof to the contrary will change their mind

All people are like that, just everyone for different topics. I heard so many people say "There are not enough resources on earth so that everyone can have a mobile phone" or the like, which obviously is false. Don't get me started on all the beliefs of lefts and rights in the refugee crisis in Germany. Or take "the free market solves it all" from many liberals, "capitalism is evil" from young contrarians and whatever conservative thoughts from older folks.

My point is, the problem of blind belief is not specific to the audience of those tweets, it seems human nature.

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#33

Post by nradov »

DFXLuna wrote: post #8
lopmotr wrote: post #3

That's interesting to analyze and everything, but it's surely inconsequential compared to what real people say and all their misinformation, rhetoric and general bias. What's the difference between a popular influencer with a public persona spreading politically biased stories and an faceless account doing the same thing? It sounds like they're looking for someone to blame for right wing candidates' success in the sa…

Didn't the FBI and the Mueller report pretty thoroughly lay out the massive scope of Russian social media influence on the 2016 election and beyond? I thought this was a decided issue but maybe I'm wrong.

Those reports laid out Russian attempts to influence. We have no way to determine whether they actually influenced the behavior of any voters.

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#34

Post by root_axis »

nradov wrote: post #33
DFXLuna wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the FBI and the Mueller report pretty thoroughly lay out the massive scope of Russian social media influence on the 2016 election and beyond? I thought this was a decided issue but maybe I'm wrong.

Those reports laid out Russian attempts to influence. We have no way to determine whether they actually influenced the behavior of any voters.

> We have no way to determine whether they actually influenced the behavior of any voters.

What conclusions can we draw from this fact?

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#35

Post by rjf72 »

DFXLuna wrote: post #8
lopmotr wrote: post #3

That's interesting to analyze and everything, but it's surely inconsequential compared to what real people say and all their misinformation, rhetoric and general bias. What's the difference between a popular influencer with a public persona spreading politically biased stories and an faceless account doing the same thing? It sounds like they're looking for someone to blame for right wing candidates' success in the sa…

Didn't the FBI and the Mueller report pretty thoroughly lay out the massive scope of Russian social media influence on the 2016 election and beyond? I thought this was a decided issue but maybe I'm wrong.

The report is publicly available here. [1] This is mostly covered on pages ~22-26. Quite a short read since it's redacted like crazy. The 'massive influence' seems to have been a company that setup some fake accounts on Facebook with a total advertising spend of $100k, and one that also had a few thousand spam bots on Twitter that 1.4 million people had "been in contact with" - a phrase which was left undefined.

[1] - https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#36

Post by wavefunction »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #28
rafaelm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be underestimating the power of seeing some very subtle opinions over and over online. In my country I've been seeing a constant campaign of subtle disinformation against opposition figures that is very powerful. You check the "user's" Twitter profile and they'll have a bunch of pro-opposition opinions on it. Then, the "user" will start to express disillusionment about certain people, asking them no…

that's very clever, and I'm sure the ~42 people who get to see the entire stream of tweets will be very persuaded by it. And since most of those people work in media, it may even lead to an article which might be read by a few thousand people. Don't get me wrong: I think online "propaganda" can be effective - just not on Twitter, because of its scale and primary audience. But because Twitter is more transparent it ge…

You mention 42, then a thousand, and then we're talking real effects. Twitter gets analyzed by professional analysts. It also gets digested without any analysis by its users.

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#38

Post by kadendogthing »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #20

To answer the question at the end of the post: probably none. As others have said, it's incredibly unlikely that a tweet is going to change your mind about anything. Having worked both in and out of the journalism industry, I know that journalists get a lot more worked up about what people say online than everyone else does. They think it matters a lot more than it does (probably why they got into the job of saying t…

> They think it matters a lot more than it does

We have pretty significant evidence over the last decade indicating otherwise. The RAND institute did an entire paper about it.

>If the politicians are persuaded that any of this matters, then they'll be more inclined to stop it mattering. And that means laws that curb free speech online

Pretty sure misinforming the voting public matters? Uneditorialized journalism and publishing created this issue. Don't try to pretend any law addressing this problem is somehow constraining the free speech of the public.

Re: Coverage of a Disinformation Operation Against 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections

#40

Post by dev_dull »

rafaelm wrote: post #29
marcus_holmes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's very clever, and I'm sure the ~42 people who get to see the entire stream of tweets will be very persuaded by it. And since most of those people work in media, it may even lead to an article which might be read by a few thousand people. Don't get me wrong: I think online "propaganda" can be effective - just not on Twitter, because of its scale and primary audience. But because Twitter is more transparent it ge…

That's the thing, I don't think everyone needs to view the entire stream of tweets from this "person" for this to be effective. You just need one person to latch on to it and start retweeting it. Then this person's friends see it and don't need much convincing...

I’m skeptical that has any material impact on the elections. Why do I think so? Because you can ask someone who holds different opinion than you about those subjects and you’ll know exactly why they vote the way to they do.

You may not agree with it, but I really don’t think you’ll cling to the idea that they’ve been hypnotized by internet trolls.

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