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

60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

theprint.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 309 posts

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#191

Post by viro »

thriftwy wrote: post #121
viro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, Putin literally gave a "blood & soil" speech before invading. Do you think the mass graves found are also fake?

These are genuine graves with genuine dead people inside and genuine crosses above them, often trying to describe the contents, such as "17 Ukrainian soldiers".

BUCHA? do these look like soldiers to you? https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/8b286707d5df49...

edit: source = https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-2c77447fda4...

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#192

Post by notahacker »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #141
poizan42 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right wing "ultranationalist" party Svoboda (In electoral alliance with National Corps, Right Sector, Ukrainian Volunteer Army (Azov), Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists) managed to get 2.15% of the votes at the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election. It's pretty difficult for me to see how Ukraine can be "overrun with explicitly neo nazi groups" with that amount of supp…

> Unless of course you live in Russia's fantasy world where a Jewish president can be a neo-nazi Without arguing about the rest of the comment, Russian narrative sees Nazis as a group that want to exterminate Russians, based on what actual Nazis in WW2 did when they attacked. And this "Jewish president" who banned Russian language, banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people and s…

On the other hand, a president who natively speaks Russian himself who respected the ceasefire with the Russian-administered "independent" republics and took a more dovish stance than his predecessor doesn't seem like someone who is obviously on the cusp of exterminating Russians. Putin's armies killed far more Russian-Ukranians than even the worst Ukrainian racists could have managed.

There is a grain of truth in your statement though: Russian narrative does define Nazis differently from the rest of the world (and indeed, from Hitler). It defines everyone that doesn't wish to be subjugated by Russia as Nazis.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#193

Post by IntrepidWorm »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #83
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I’ve only ever used Reddit for like diy, maker type subreddits and those are pretty hard to fake. Between Reddit and twitter, it sounds like we are being manipulated to the moon and back.

Can someone create a Reddit where posts are videos instead of text? The community could downvote people hiding their faces if those chose. In the age of deepfakes would that even solve the problem?

You mean... YouTube?

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#194

Post by yucky »

joecot wrote: post #122
mhh__ wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously better if people always look at things with a sceptical eye but it isn't weird to me people want to support the Ukrainians. Pair the narrative of the smaller country being invaded by the belligerent dictator next door with (in my case) a country where Russia is already unpopular due to various assassinations, sabre-rattling, and so on, its not hard to understand the current balance of In the UK the mai…

Americans have been so indoctrinated to the idea that every issue must have two sides who should be equally considered, that when we have issues where one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong, they don't know how to comprehend it. Our media has made everything a debate game because it gets viewers, and it's rotting people's ability to actually figure out what the right side of an issue is. There is n…

>we have issues where one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong, they don't know how to comprehend it.

The fact that so many believe this to be 100% the case, actually makes the point of the OP. We should be able to condemn Russia and still point out that we're lying when we pretend the US didn't get this ball rolling when we funded and fomented a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and installed our puppets.[1][2]

We should also be able to discuss war crimes regardless of the perpetrators.[3] The fact that anybody who points these things out gets called a Russian bot, really just proves the point. Especially considering which side 90% of the bots are on...

[1]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

[2]https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-go...

[3]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/09/ukraine-must-...

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#195

Post by kaba0 »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #182
igorkraw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so what is your take on the issues GP identified? Or is the only conclusion you can arrive at "it's complicated"? GP made the very salient point that some things are clearly bad . Blind clinging to the idea that everything has two sides is just as simplistic as thinking everything can be viewed from a perspective which is just as moral as every other. Except maybe even more so, because at least the moral simpli…

"The west probably could have avoided (or maybe just delayed) this war if they had taken steps X" is some the nuance you could add to your statements. Simple example of X would be stating Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO. More complicated example would be if Europe prioritized energy independence from Russia putting in a weaker position. An example that loops in nuclear power debate, one which likely could…

I still see zero reason for Russia to start a war against a sovereign country with a democratically elected leader. It’s like saying that the other classmates didn’t let the bully copy their homework so he is right in beating the everliving shit out of a completely different kid.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#196

Post by itwillnotbeasy »

cloutchaser wrote: post #4

So, the million (or trillion) dollar question is, who controls them?

It may be a job for an Olgino trolls, which is being run by Prigozhin aka putins chef https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#197

Post by BrotherBisquick »

thrown_22 wrote: post #80
unsupp0rted wrote: post #20

Reddit is weirdly overflowing with pro Ukraine propaganda and people don't seem to notice. Any even neutral story about Russia brings out vitriol about how obvious Russia's propaganda is. But somehow they miss the same effect when the story is pro-Ukraine, no matter who the sources are, how unlikely the content is to be true, etc. This was to be expected in the first months of the war, but after so many months of a s…

Reddit's weakest link is the moderators. You pay the moderators off and you subvert the whole site. I imagine that's what the Ukrainian propaganda ministry has managed. Outside this I find it somewhat bizarre that we've let the unemployed mentally ill decide what is and isn't acceptable for millions to see.

> You pay the moderators off and you subvert the whole site.

See: r/startrek

Any criticism of Star Trek: Picard or ST: Discovery (or any CBS property) is deleted instantly.

And redditors still have the gall to describe themselves as anti-corporate leftist freedom fighters.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#198

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #87
unsupp0rted wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let it get you down. I was recently banned from a subreddit after one (neutral) comment for being a white supremacist. If I'm a white supremacist, I'd hate to find out what actual white supremacists are. I messaged the mods asking which rule I'd broken (because I hadn't broken one). They responded by muting me for 28 days. Forget it Jake, it's Reddit-town.

It’s not just Reddit, either. This same story has played out for me on Anime News Network’s forums, some gaming forums, etc. Ultimately I just take my toys and go home - they don’t want me there, and it’s their legal right to say so. But it results in a forum of views that appear to show unanimous consensus that {x} is good or {y} is bad, which is potentially dangerous for society at large and certainly bad for an op…

Intentionally stifling debate: Yes, because it's easier to paint your opponent as a monster/dishonest/Nazi/murderer than it is to actually answer their position in a way that other people can follow and understand. It's easier to shut down debate than it is to win debate.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#199

Post by amai »

That is why you don't read news on Twitter. Read a (online) newspaper. For the war in Ukraine specifically:

https://novayagazeta.eu/

https://meduza.io/

And if you are really interested in pro-Kremlin news try

https://www.kp.ru/

All websites can be translated reasonably well with Google Translate. Medusa and Novaya Gazetta also do translate some articles to English, but these are always some days behind.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#200

Post by p1peridine »

drewcoo wrote: post #170
wyager wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one side is the obvious aggressor completely in the wrong If your model of any political situation resembles a moralizing children's cartoon, 99% chance you are a mark, incapable of identifying propaganda. > it's rotting people's ability to actually figure out what the right side of an issue is 99.9% of issues in the population of issues we ever think about do not have a clear right answer, because if they did we w…

> model of any political situation resembles a moralizing children's cartoon I'd actually be interested in those cartoons, if you have links. Propaganda pointed at kids is fascinating!

Alice in Wonderland.
Post reply on HN