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The Yang Gang and Its Bots

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Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#121

Post by pnako »

RyJones wrote: post #86
godelski wrote: post #40

This is an interesting post if you also follow the subreddit for Yang[0]. There are a lot of people there that created Twitter accounts just to follow Yang and participate in those polls about who is more popular. So when the author mentions the creation of new accounts when Yang started, it actually doesn't surprise me. The campaign is very technocentric after all. Also, these people (a lot of them "true believers"…

I had no position on Yang. After a couple very negative experiences with the Yang Gang, where anything less than instant adulation must mean you're anti-Yang, I'm anti-Yang.

"Rewrite it in Yang"

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

turtlecloud wrote: post #94
aazaa wrote: post #11

The fact that Yang's campaign is struggling should throw cold water on the notion that this kind of thing poisons the political process. It remains to be proven whether an armada of Twitter bots can change anyone's mind about a candidate. In the absence of evidence, the claim should be rejected and we should look for simpler explanations for political ills. The more likely explanation, and the one loathed by those wh…

Yang campaign is actually seeing exponential growth. Thus the increase in smear articles. The establishment is running through mental gymnastic excercise to rationalize these results. Thus them calling all supporters bots

> Yang campaign is actually seeing exponential growth.

In what? His polling position has been bouncing around within the margin of error with no progress for months.

Yang's got some good ideas, and he's certainly one of the most interesting candidates of the cycle. But he's got no momentum.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#124

Post by [deleted] »

partiallypro wrote: post #112
raz32dust wrote: post #91

The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he mig…

The "everyone is a bot" thing is insanely stupid. It's not just happening with Yang, it happens with Trump, Bernie, and Tulsi (generally the others don't get accused.) Some people just can't imagine a world where so many people disagree with them that they make up reasons why it's happening. Yes bots exist, but one of the greatest tricks Russia has pulled is making people believe they are bigger and more powerful tha…

[deleted]

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#125

Post by busymom0 »

Slightly related - Twitter still hasn't done anything about those bot accounts with fake crypto scams. Elon Musks tweets for example always have these fake crypto scam tweets at the very top often using account names of popular people. I think it's been going on for almost 2 years now if I remember right. This should be such a simply thing to take care of but for some reason, Twitter hasn't bothered.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

ilaksh wrote: post #52
aazaa wrote: post #11

The fact that Yang's campaign is struggling should throw cold water on the notion that this kind of thing poisons the political process. It remains to be proven whether an armada of Twitter bots can change anyone's mind about a candidate. In the absence of evidence, the claim should be rejected and we should look for simpler explanations for political ills. The more likely explanation, and the one loathed by those wh…

$16.5 million raised last quarter and steadily rising polls. Dave Chappelle is doing a fundraising show at/near Iowa State in a few days. Oprah's "spiritual advisor" is helping Yang campaign. Still going strong after numerous candidates including senators have had to quit. "Struggling" is not accurate.

> $16.5 million raised last quarter and steadily rising polls.

He's been bouncing around between 2-5% in the polls since October; he's not steadily rising, he's stuck in one place.

> Still going strong after numerous candidates including senators have had to quit.

A number of the candidates that have dropped out have been consistently polling above Yang. They haven't dropped out sooner because they were doing worse, they've dropped out sooner because they have a different calculus about the value of staying in the race.

Yang isn't still going strong, he's still stuck in neutral.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#127

Post by gremlinsinc »

godelski wrote: post #118
raz32dust wrote: post #91

The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he mig…

> In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com Yang: 95%; 1,061,978 Real 48,878 Fake Bernie: 69%; 7,052,953 Real 3,124,469 Fake Warren: 84%; 2,966,118 Real 560,776 Fake Buttigieg: 93%; 1,481,598 Real 102,999 Fake Biden: 84%; 3,375,998 Real 619,266 Fake Trump: 79%; 56,463,132 Real 14,292,673 Fake

Bernie and warren have multiple official accounts. At least two I know of for each.

@berniesanders: 69% | 7,052,953 Real | 3,124,469 Fake

@sensanders: 74% | 6,480,666 Real | 2,171,758 Fake

@senwarren: 68% | 3,668,103 Real | 1,694,620 Fake

@ewarren: 84% | 2,966,118 Real | 560,776 Fake

So cumulatively the scores are more like:

Bernie: 71% Total non-fake followers: 8,237,392

Warren: 79% Total non-fake followers: 4,939,601

At the end of the day the percentage/ratio of real to fake doesn't matter. What matters is the REAL people following a candidate, Besides trump, Bernie beats all others.

Disclaimer: My account looks like a Bernie Bot, but my followers real % is 85 which actually surprised me lol. I'd support Yang or Tulsi. Probably not anybody else running. I'm an independent, and align more with leftist/socialist libertarianism (not the GOP think-tank ran version of American libertarianism). I don't just vote for any 'blue' because they're blue. I don't do party politics.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#128

Post by gremlinsinc »

coenhyde wrote: post #109
RyJones wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no position on Yang. After a couple very negative experiences with the Yang Gang, where anything less than instant adulation must mean you're anti-Yang, I'm anti-Yang.

That's unfortunate. Yang himself isn't very dogmatic / ideological. But his supporters are very passionate about his candidacy. So i can see your bad experiences happening. I support Yang; not sure if i would call myself Yang Gang... For me personally, Yang is the first political candidate who sees and reasons about the world in a similar way to myself. He's a systems thinker. Everything in society is connected and t…

I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang. Yang is still my 2nd though, because unlike Yang Gang folks, I don't base my support on the followers of a candidate cause that's just lunacy. I've chimed in on a few to set the record

A. we're not all that bad.

B. You can't blame us for what gets banned by mods of a reddit when they use bots to do so.

C. Many of us would support Yang if he were on top or higher than Bernie in polls. But we want a chance at winning, and Bernie has a strong grassroots.

D. Whether the online real/fake people on reddit/twitter are 'toxic' in your opinion doesn't even matter isn't relative because THEY aren't Bernie. They could even be bots or trolls. Listen to the candidate and make your decision from that, whether they're a good or bad person.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#129

Post by bnjms »

comnetxr wrote: post #27
ngokevin wrote: post #13

It deems accounts as bots if they post and retweet a lot and are newly created? Being familiar with the Yang Gang, people are extremely passionate almost to an addiction of supporting Yang. They follow his every move, his surrogates words, and engage with any tiny bit of content they can. Many are new accounts because few have ever followed politics and want to keep separate from their main accounts. Yang has one of…

how do you know the passionate to the point of addiction Yang supporters are real? I think its likely that many are, but that there are also many passionate supporters of the other candidates who just lurk on Twitter without posting due to social norms about how often you should chime in and how forcefully. The social norms around Yang supporters on twitter have changed by bots posting often and loudly, breaking the…

Bots don’t meme.

Yet.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#130

Post by gremlinsinc »

pstuart wrote: post #104
joejerryronnie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I had the same experience with Bernie.

And I had the same experience with Hillary, yet I still voted for her (not as enthusiastically as I'd have liked) because I don't want to let a bunch of jerks make my mind up for me.

Well, w/ Hillary she herself was toxic/evil.

Her people were icing on the cake.

If nobody existed but a Yang Gang member and Bernie - could they really admit he wasn't authentic and wanted to make the world better?

Is he corrupt?

Is he in this for himself?

To enrich his businesses per se?

Sell more books?

Has he changed his message to win? Or is he consistent?

I mean look at the candidate. Sure the community can get toxic like a rivalry highscool football game with pranks and shit, but in the end. Are the players really evil, or do their fans just go way out of proportions and get way too overly excited and/or angry when things don't go their way?

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