Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

analysis.leadstories.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 162 posts

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#31

Post by dillondoyle »

jeffdavis wrote: post #7

It will be interesting when the election cycles start to cross over into eachother. For instance, start lining up primaries for an election 5 years away. We could be in a permenent election, with people slowly positioning themselves to be elected sometime later. Then, we can finally give up and just draft our representatives. Two months before it's time for new politicians to take over, they would draw names, and do…

I might be misunderstand but politicians have always positioned themselves to be elected sometime later. In fact it seems the opposite is just gaining some steam, first time candidates running for high office as first race, when it used to be slowly going from local to national.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#32

Post by catalogia »

avivo wrote: post #14

I actually just published a guide on how you can help ensure that ("deepfake") tools that you make are less likely to end up misused like this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614912/ethical-deepfake-t... Curious what folks think. I also just posted it to /newest if you want to respond there.

Is anybody old enough to remember if people once had analogous reactions to software like photoshop?

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#33

Post by josteink »

andrewbinstock wrote: post #16
ProAm wrote: post #2

What age demographic still really uses facebook? American's 35+? All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. edit dont know why this got downvoted, it was a legit question because everyone knows who the primary age group of votes is, so Im wondering if there is data on age demographics of actual FB use.

> American's 35+? FB has >1 billion real users. So by the simplest arithmetic, the vast majority of its users cannot be American, regardless of age.

The context here is affecting American elections. Given that the only interesting FB demographic to discuss is the American one.

And I say that as a European.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#35

Post by pjc50 »

account73466 wrote: post #23
tabtab wrote: post #3

Fake people reading and writing fake news on fake websites? If this keeps up, we'll end up with a fake President. Don't give me negative points, for this is a fake reply.

The most powerful agent is the one which manages to confiscate our only real asset - our time. Trump is pretty good at it with all the controversies he is generating. AI-assisted systems will be targeted at maximizing this interaction metric. You are slowly cooked by your favorite entertainer of the day to be then fed with an opinion which you take as your own. It is not novel at all.

This. Fact-checking is more time consuming than making things up. So they can drown out the fact checkers easily. And the facts are often uncomfortably murky. Whereas the lies build loyalty and belonging, an ideal basis for a movement.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#38

Post by xrd »

Here are the assumptions I have about what's happening here.

But, the real question I have is: are these thoughts which have been influenced/crafted unbeknownst to me?

Pro tip where I attempt to bring awareness to my thoughts: look for the keyword "automatically" in my statements below.

1. These are pro-Trump sites. Perhaps the author filtered only these groups for their results? The takeaway is that I automatically think pro-Trump groups must be creating these fake accounts. Then, I automatically think "Russians!"

2. There is another article from the NYTimes on Hacker News right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847051). It mentions a pro Falun Gong group behind it. I automatically think this must be a Chinese state funded group doing it to discredit Falun Gong.

This is an amazing bit of research and write up. And, could it be that not everything is what it seems here?

I recently heard a discussion from Ben Freeman on Terry Gross' Fresh Air (https://www.npr.org/2019/11/21/781579229/ukrainian-oligarchs...). Mr. Freeman is the director of the "Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy." His point was that Russia is actually pretty bad at interference, which is why we know about it. Everyone does it, and the Saudi's and Israel and Japan do it with much more class and craft. It makes me wonder whether these fake accounts come from who we think they do.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#39

Post by ConsiderCrying »

buboard wrote: post #13

love how the only facebook comment under the article is a fake "make money from home" bot

If only the political bots were as obvious, though. When you spot one of those "make money easy", you know it's a bot right away, not even two words in. With a political troll, you can't tell unless you know what to look for or can spot a pattern in their behavior.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#40

Post by droithomme »

gesman wrote: post #37

Will there be pre-impeached president, just to skip formalities? Losing party will have free impeachment kit with choice to pick a country that interfered with elections.

Excellent. No one who isn't worthy of impeachment is qualified to be President.
Post reply on HN