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False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

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Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#111

Post by gibba999 »

chrisjc wrote: post #67
gibba999 wrote: post #15

Without commenting on China specifically, a few facts: - The cheapest, safest way to "invade" the US (or any Western democracy) isn't through an army, but through manipulation of news, social media, and elections - Indeed, if I'm Iran and I want Iraq attacked, it's much cheaper to manipulate the US into doing the dirty work than to attack myself. - Much of the same is true of corporations -- a million spend lobbying…

Agreed. Whether a relatively paltry (harmless compared to conventional bioweapons) virus like COVID was ever considered as a weapon hardly matters at this point. What really scares the absolute poop out of me is that the west has shown its hand, and exposed stress fractures that could easily be exploited by foreign actors. I'd say that the lines between what you have delineated as first and second cheapest attacks ar…

That's an interesting hypothesis: The antivax/antimask/etc. movements as social media manipulation in preparation for a bioweapon.

What's interesting is the dynamic between the epi community and the security community. I'm not sure if I'm naming those correctly:

* The security community does a lot of threat modeling (how might we be attacked? how might we have been attacked?), which is helpful. That doesn't suggest they believe those things actually happened.

* The epi community views this as coded language for believing in bizarre conspiracy theories.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#112

Post by MagnumOpus »

VLM wrote: post #108
chrisjc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Whether a relatively paltry (harmless compared to conventional bioweapons) virus like COVID was ever considered as a weapon hardly matters at this point. What really scares the absolute poop out of me is that the west has shown its hand, and exposed stress fractures that could easily be exploited by foreign actors. I'd say that the lines between what you have delineated as first and second cheapest attacks ar…

> Effectively destabilizing and splintering western societies. There's a biological analogy where a predator can't move into a niche if its already populated. In the USA we already have groups we're not allowed to criticize, we're only permitted to fight with each other about how rabidly we support them more than inferior people whom don't support them as much as we do, look at my halo, etc. Or there are countries wi…

Interesting hypothesis, but it doesn't hold up to even cursory scrutiny. The most obvious counterexample is that the foreign state actors (not China but others) could successfully suborn and control several of these niches, and steer the groupthink of these groups in a direction favourable to themselves: Most obviously the take-over of the NRA in 2015 and the successful influence campaign on the "gun nut" niche by the Russian state; but there are countless other examples.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#113

Post by stronglikedan »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #46
ilamont wrote: post #23

Suspicions were aroused after researchers found a third of the accounts under investigation to have been created within minutes of each other. They exclusively promoted UK-based PRC diplomats, ignoring those in other countries. So human researchers were able to spot a pretty obvious pattern. How come Twitter's own staff and algorithms never seem to catch on, despite having even more data to look at? It amazes me that…

I don't think Twitter allows it maliciously, as it tends to hurt their PR every time, and paints a target on their back for governments to attack them.

Wake me when they're meaningfully hurt and/or attacked. Until then, they will continue to do these things intentionally (which they do), whether the intent is malice or a political agenda.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#114

Post by heurisko »

johnday wrote: post #107
heurisko wrote: post #47

A fraction of the population of the UK are on twitter, but it is used to drive media narratives. I'm skeptical, as it feels like the narratives are more to do with they are cheap to write about, rather than meaningful journalism. For example, after black players missed penalties in the Euros, there was wall-to-wall coverage on the BBC about racist comments directed at the players on twitter, provoking discussion on h…

> A fraction of the population of the UK are on twitter This is not a very useful statistic, given that it's always going to be true (0% and 100% would both be "a fraction of the population"). For some actual numbers, there look to be around 17 million Twitter users in the UK, or around a quarter of the population.

It's not a statistic, rather it's an idiom, meaning "a small part of".

If US statistics are anything to go by, then it will be 10pc of those 17 million, sending 80pc of tweets, so the media is primarily focusing on what a very vocal 2.5pc are thinking.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-tw...

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#115

Post by boomboomsubban »

Chris2048 wrote: post #81
boomboomsubban wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, there point was that this post seems to engage in similar tactics. The report existing doesn't mean this isn't some counter information campaign. Second, the post links to an article about that report, and though the article mentions 189 twitter accounts the report only lists 62. Similarly, they don't show close to the 62000 tweets mentioned in the article from what I could see.

> The report existing doesn't mean this isn't some counter information campaign But it uses the name/rep of an actual university, and presumably is data is open for peer review? a "counter information" campaign that fights falsehood with truth is fine in my book. I'd call that an "awareness campaign". > this post seems to engage in similar tactics In what sense?

You are only looking at the report. As a comparison, the report is like the Ambassador's tweet, though it may be biased it's unlikely to be part of any disinformation campaign. The article and the article being posted here are like the bot retweets and replies, taking one legitimate piece of information and both distorting it and spreading it wider than it normally would go.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#116

Post by boomboomsubban »

qsort wrote: post #19
boomboomsubban wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, there point was that this post seems to engage in similar tactics. The report existing doesn't mean this isn't some counter information campaign. Second, the post links to an article about that report, and though the article mentions 189 twitter accounts the report only lists 62. Similarly, they don't show close to the 62000 tweets mentioned in the article from what I could see.

1) The point is bogus. The upvote trajectory is typical for a HN frontpage submission. If you think there's an upvote ring, the appropriate behavior is to message moderators. The expected value of throwing around a random accusation without proof is zero. 2) I don't know where they took the 189 from, but the other numbers match what the report says. It could be that the article is garbage, but that is a very minor po…

1 is a fair criticism of that post. Posting the report isn't.

>It could be that the article is garbage, but that is a very minor point. It's referencing research from a reputable institution, if you want to criticize the research or methodology, do so upstream.

It's not a minor point, the article was what is posted here for discussion. No matter how reliable the report is the article may be suspect.

I figured out how they got the 98000 too, it's the total number of interactions the Ambassadors tweets got. Using that number in the bullet point when the report claims well under half of them were part of the campaign is intentionally misleading.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#117

Post by tomjen3 »

ilamont wrote: post #23

Suspicions were aroused after researchers found a third of the accounts under investigation to have been created within minutes of each other. They exclusively promoted UK-based PRC diplomats, ignoring those in other countries. So human researchers were able to spot a pretty obvious pattern. How come Twitter's own staff and algorithms never seem to catch on, despite having even more data to look at? It amazes me that…

I remember some years ago I would get messages from Twitter bots that all had an overly sexualized picture, and were named a womans name and then some random digits. It was so obvious that I don't understand why Twitter didn't stop it.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#118

Post by tomjen3 »

gibba999 wrote: post #15

Without commenting on China specifically, a few facts: - The cheapest, safest way to "invade" the US (or any Western democracy) isn't through an army, but through manipulation of news, social media, and elections - Indeed, if I'm Iran and I want Iraq attacked, it's much cheaper to manipulate the US into doing the dirty work than to attack myself. - Much of the same is true of corporations -- a million spend lobbying…

You are right about your points, except that I think even with a vacine in hand you risk too much with an effective bioweapon, and you will look guilty as fuck if you somehow have a vacine in time (with sufficient production) and the rest of the world does not.

I do wonder (and I am not proposing anything here), that without the gatekeepers and with the industrialized spread of information on the internet, that we have reached a point where we can no longer have freedom of speech, simply because it makes it too easy to spread things. Are we forced to got into "information lockdown", and if so what is to stop it from becoming perpetual?

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#119

Post by fastglass »

dirtyid wrote: post #34

~60 accounts. TBH, another weak sauce, script kiddie tier effort comparable to other exposed PRC social media networks from the past couple years. Getting pretty incredulous that western researchers have only managed to uncover these these low-effort campaigns far below the competency of a state actor with PRC resources. Either PRC is still that incompetent at manipulating western platforms, or competent enough that…

We can go deeper..

the PRC could use low-effort attacks just as fodder which mimics any actual false flag performed by any country. And, this isn't conspiracy, either, yet maybe too speculative for your average HN user (who doesn't seem to think too highly of your post, either), but if its already known that you have a problem with unscrupulous conspiracy theorists then that's a vector for state actors to exploit/inflame/exacerbate it across multiple channels/theaters. I'm not sure if it extends across the entire western countries, but here in America we already have an admitted problem with so-called conspiracy theorists.

I say this much because I highly agree: 60 accounts says this isn't serious. And, if its not "serious" then this is more psychological than cyber.

Also, you have to consider the open use of war games which would simulate a de facto false flag, without being a de jure false flag.

Welcome to the lowest rung of hell, I'd say! The realm of perfidy.

Re: False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

#120

Post by smegger001 »

rchaud wrote: post #110
kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, wouldn’t it be great if reporters rarely/never wrote a story about ‘what someone said on Twitter’?

It would indeed be great if reporters were somehow immune to the pressure to constantly churn out stories to compete with the algorithm's recency bias, 24 hour news networks, pseudo-news outrage channels and the like.

Maybe if we would limit the number of time a news outlet could publish to once or at most twice perday, then we could have all stories spell, grammar, and fact checked by a editor. Then all of the stories compiled and even printed. It would allow journalist to properly research and not be under to write something just so that they have it out minutes before the competition.
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