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

The Yang Gang and Its Bots

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 184 posts

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#61

Post by godelski »

ilaksh wrote: post #58
godelski wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as fu…

WTF makes you think I'm a bot? Because I took the time to write a full paragraph and tried to promote the presidential campaign I have invested my time and money into?

I don't think you are. The comment doesn't come across to me as one. But using the same analysis that the author of this post did, I think they'd characterize you as one. It was more a critique on the post. I think the author has never visited the subreddit.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#62

Post by retsibsi »

scarmig wrote: post #43
ipsum2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like a pretty strange null hypothesis that people are entirely unaffected by the social media they are exposed to. Why? When people measure how ads perform, the null hypothesis is that the ad has no effect on the behavior of the viewer. Bots are sort of like ads that look like native content. That being said, I don't think a single data point (Yang) is enough to be conclusive, but it does change my beliefs…

Individual ads, sure. But an equivalent null hypothesis would be "social media advertising has no effect on people," which would seem pretty strange.

Also, the null hypothesis is just a starting point from which you gather and analyse the data that may disprove it. There's no reason that 'X has no effect on Y' should have a privileged position in messy real-world epistemology; we don't assume that nothing causes anything in the absence of conclusive proof, we keep an open mind and make our best guess based on whatever information we have.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#63

Post by godelski »

vegcel wrote: post #57

I wonder how many people are more of the author's mistaken bots, like Mike mentioned in the article? If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd have a lot of bot like behavior. Activities the author describes as bot-like to me seem like activities a noob on twitter would engage in. Twitter itself does a lot to self-create these node clusters, with a circle jerk of recommended follower…

> If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd have a lot of bot like behavior.

To add to this, that yang subreddit actively encourages people to create Twitter accounts (if you don't already have one) to participate. It is definitely an agenda that is pushed. Lots of new Twitter accounts that are pro Yang is not surprising if you visit the subreddit. It also shouldn't be surprising that these accounts would be associated with MAGA bots and supporters. After all, Andrew is targeting the same demographic as Trump. There's several posts a day on the yang subreddit about ex-Trump supporters turning.

All of this makes me think that it is very hard to distinguish bots from real people who are excited by the campaign.

So I fully agree with this

> I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform to promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#64

Post by Ottolay »

godelski wrote: post #51
ilaksh wrote: post #44

I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But my activity then might have seemed bot-like. Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a…

This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as fu…

I like Yang and it is kind of insulting to be dismissed as a bot for posting a comment supporting him. It feels dismissive and similar I would imagine to being a Bernie supporter and being called a "bernie bros". I know lots of Bernie supporters who are not dumb college males and lots of Yang supports who are not automated scripts (aka bots).

edit: spelling

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#65

Post by charlesju »

godelski wrote: post #59
charlesju wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think it's weird for a group of people to believe passionately about a candidate?

I like Yang, but I've never been one that idolizes another person. I would 100% vote for Yang above another candidate (I'm actually even surprised HN, which is pretty pro UBI, isn't Yang Gang), but I've never been passionate about another person. I don't understand people that will move to another state to campaign for a candidate. I've never been part of that kind of movement before, and in it I don't understand it.…

I understand that perspective, but I hope you can see that unlike a religion, politics, especially in USA is through people. People need to push a specific candidate because they represent a vision for yourself and the people you love.

One key thought experiment I like to do is to project out a behavior pattern for all people and then asking whether that would be a positive or negative for yourself and society. If everyone were to campaign and push for the ideas they care about, I do believe that would result in a more informed and better society. Through the marketplace of ideas, we can fight through the differences and hopefully create better policy and have better leaders execute on our future.

I think for a lot of people, taking action to affect change for the community/society you live in is very natural. On a small scale that can be something like running for class president or joining your HOA. At a larger scale, politics is where change happens.

If you believe in a set of principles, it is sometimes worth your personal time, effort, and money to affect change. Hopefully you can see that from their perspective they are about their own future and this is the most effective way to impact that prospective future.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#66

Post by iudqnolq »

hadtodoit wrote: post #53
iudqnolq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to platform/publisher? If so, it has no legal basis for many reasons, including Twitter's first amendment rights to choose what they show. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no... Also, isn't the whole reason we're on HN the moderation?

He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing an amendment. I don't think that HN, nor the community at large does as much as say twitter or reddit to stifle opposing points of view. Relegating extremist to their own echo-chambers is a good way of proliferating their beliefs. Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, they may be dissuaded from holding s…

> He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing an amendment

I wanted to point out it would require radical changes to our current laws and maybe the Constitution. I wasn't sure if he was aware of that. (Stronger versions of this argument, including ones deployed by members of Congress, have said it described current law)

> Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, they may be dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may see the flaws in their argument.

This is a popular position in a popular argument, and it's been debated to death better than we can. Here's an summary I found useful https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-gl...

One interesting study mentioned in that summation found that temporary internet outages in Germany reduced hate crimes against refugees.

> This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We show that anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage. To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in major Facebook and internet outages, which fully undo the correlation between social media and hate crime. We further find that the effect decreases with distracting news events; increases with user network interactions; and does not hold for posts unrelated to refugees. Our results suggest that social media can act as a propagation mechanism between online messages and violent crime.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#67

Post by proximitysauce »

godelski wrote: post #51
ilaksh wrote: post #44

I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But my activity then might have seemed bot-like. Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a…

This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as fu…

There's nothing bot like about this person's post. It's actually kind of a nice tale of civic re-engagement. It does make me more interested in hearing what Yang has to say because it seems honest and like a statement from someone who hasn't been doing political activism for years.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#68

Post by proximitysauce »

tptacek wrote: post #42
proximitysauce wrote: post #8

That's a lot of narrative overlaid on the data. The author even says this about Democratic politician accounts: > All of them had bot activity of some kind. Given enough time to collect the data, bot networks would eventually appear for all of them. I think the analysis could be very interesting but they're injecting too much personal spin on the motivations of everyone involved. Why is the teenager who follows the Y…

The teenager following the bots isn't sad because he intersects with MAGA, he's said because he's a kid working at Taco Bell who hopes to build up an online fanbase, and unbeknownst to him, all his interactions and affirmations appear to come from bot accounts.

Regardless of why the author thinks they're sad, it's a mistake to project the mental and emotional state of someone based on some facets gleaned from checking out their social media profiles. It's actually kind of creepy to focus on this individual especially since they're a teenager and aren't given a chance to rebut.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#69

Post by godelski »

charlesju wrote: post #65
godelski wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Yang, but I've never been one that idolizes another person. I would 100% vote for Yang above another candidate (I'm actually even surprised HN, which is pretty pro UBI, isn't Yang Gang), but I've never been passionate about another person. I don't understand people that will move to another state to campaign for a candidate. I've never been part of that kind of movement before, and in it I don't understand it.…

I understand that perspective, but I hope you can see that unlike a religion, politics, especially in USA is through people. People need to push a specific candidate because they represent a vision for yourself and the people you love. One key thought experiment I like to do is to project out a behavior pattern for all people and then asking whether that would be a positive or negative for yourself and society. If ev…

I see that perspective and appreciate the comment. To be more clear, the weird thing to me is the __degree__ of fanaticism. I understand being passionate, there are many things I'm passionate about. But there are very few things where I would drop everything and campaign for someone. This REALLY reminds me of religion (I left a religion that sends people to go knock on peoples' doors for 2 years of their lives).

I also think politics (I'm not sure if it has always been that way, but I don't remember it like this when I was younger) has a lot of parallels to religion and that similarity is growing. I do actually believe this is rooted in the growing partisanship. That political answers are not "best solution vs a different solution" but "good vs evil". Partisanism relies on good vs evil. There's a John Cleese skit about extremism that always makes me laugh[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCkxlqFd90

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#70

Post by backupcavalry »

ngokevin2 wrote: post #17
save_ferris wrote: post #4

It’s terrifying how cheap and easy it is to masquerade as hundreds of thousands to millions of people on social media using automation, and how little social media companies are doing to stop it. Regardless of the numbers, the stress it’s placing on discourse is devastating, and there seem to be few serious, market-driven solutions to this problem. The growth-at-all-costs mentality has put companies like Twitter in a…

It's also terrifying that headlines and articles can be taken as valid. Smear articles and misleading information are troubling as well in the upcoming years.

Oh, the irony of an account created specifically to defend Yang in the discussion about bots created to defend Yang.

If you're truly looking to support him this probably isn't a good way to help his case.

Post reply on HN