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

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

#221

Post by MuffinFlavored »

danjoredd wrote: post #131
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit is weirdly overflowing with pro Ukraine propaganda and people don't seem to notice. Can it be called "propaganda" if it's just like, an r/worldnews link to a story on some website and then 100,000 "actual users" (I don't think they're all bots?) on their own volition/will/brainpower spread/support (upvote) the "pro-Ukraine" message in the comments?

If those users are legit, sure. But lets be honest...writing bots in Reddit is stupid easy. I have done it myself. Most things that appear on the front page are most likely not legit. Darknet Diaries, a podcast on hacking, had an episode proving how Apple Podcast top 10s are rigged through bots. Episode 27, specifically. And the thing is...if we can easily do it by pushing mediocre podcasts to the top of a list, why…

> But lets be honest...writing bots in Reddit is stupid easy

Reddit has no captchas whatsoever?

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

#222

Post by ljfp »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #207
yucky wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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][…

Ah now, if the US had formented a coup in 2014 then why didn't the pro Russian people of Ukraine reelect the original people in later elections? It seems to me at least that the Maida revolution was driven more by anger against corruption and a desire to join the EU than the US involvement (which there definitely was, along with Russian involvement).

Because the candidate was banned and the party dissolved.

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

#223

Post by sangnoir »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #210
sangnoir wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple example of X would be stating Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO What makes you certain that this was going to prevent the invasion? Russia gave a number of pretexts for the invasion, some unrelated to NATO: De-nazification of Ukraine, protecting Russian-speakers within Ukraine, among many others. > Russian being the bad guy doesn't make conflict inevitable. Oh, so you prefer the Chamberlain-style "P…

> What makes you certain that this was going to prevent the invasion? It's not certain but assuming the worst is just an extension of the same moral pure-good and pure-evil that this thread is about. My point is that if your view of the world is that Russia is an pure-evil actor that will keep invading more and more countries no matter what the west does then it'll eventually lead to nuclear war. In which case none o…

> It's not certain but assuming the worst is just an extension of the same moral pure-good and pure-evil that this thread is about.

One doesn't need to delve morality to figure this out: empirical evidence alone is sufficient to come to the same conclusion. Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine was in 2014, and it still wants more than the Donbas.

Assuming the best goes against existing evidence. Russia has not explicitly said what the limits to its aggression are. Without invoking morality, why would you assume Ukraine is the limit?

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

#225

Post by notahacker »

wyager wrote: post #220
sangnoir wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple example of X would be stating Ukraine was never going to be part of NATO What makes you certain that this was going to prevent the invasion? Russia gave a number of pretexts for the invasion, some unrelated to NATO: De-nazification of Ukraine, protecting Russian-speakers within Ukraine, among many others. > Russian being the bad guy doesn't make conflict inevitable. Oh, so you prefer the Chamberlain-style "P…

> Russia gave a number of pretexts for the invasion Why would you pay attention to these, except as an exercise in PR strategy analysis?

Because the only reason people would even consider that the invasion would have been avoidable if only Ukraine had ruled out joining NATO is because Russia launched a PR campaign in advance of the invasion insisting that all it wanted was for Ukraine not to join NATO (its most effective PR strategy of the whole war)

In which case it's also worth taking into account that Russia was very loudly coming up with a bunch of other rationales for why it needed to go to war for domestic consumption, none of which would have gone away if Ukraine had ruled out joining NATO, making it even less likely that all Putin cared about was the remote possibility that it might join NATO at some unspecified time in future

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

#226

Post by psittacus »

amai wrote: post #199

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.

Suggesing _russian_ newspapers non-ironically to read news is like suggesting someone to read Daily Mail for latests political developments.

Wherever you read your news at the very least make sure there's no russian trace there.

Russian imperial midset is a huge bias in the current situation and the forementioned meduza isn't any different in this regard.

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

#227

Post by sennight »

Little wonder that things are ridiculous as they are, there are hundreds of PR companies engaged in pro-Ukrainian messaging. Well, that is how they frame the activity - but it is debatable who is ultimately benefiting from the endeavor, aside from the US defense contractors who are definitely making out like bandits.

https://iccopr.com/ukraine-communications-support-network/

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

#228

Post by rat87 »

mc32 wrote: post #48
trasz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Any even neutral story about Russia People tend to approach a country differently depending on whether it's a genocidal regime invading another country, or the defending nation. When thinking about WW2 we think of Nazis in a fundamentally different way than we think of their victims. Another thing is, it's been six months and we can tell how close to reality Ukrainian and Russian propaganda turns out to be afterward…

I think that's fair if you're talking about the warfront. But I disagree that we cannot talk about policies around the war and what the implications are for this Winter, for example.

Sure but what's the discussion?

Will winter gas prices suck for European countries? Yes. Is there anything they can do about it? No. Even if they tried to they can't exactly get Ukraine to give up and surrender and it's in Europe's intrests to help Ukraine win

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

#229

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

canadiantim wrote: post #169
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the story is long. Yes, there are many Russians in Ukraine, especially in the East. Yes, there were some alt-right people in Ukraine, too. No, none of these justifies starting a full-scale war, killing thousands of people.

I think the point he was making is it's tough to pinpoint who start the war, considering ukraine has been a pretty intense proxy battlefield for almost a decade and beyond

You must be kidding, right? Ukraine didn't invade Russia, neither in 2014 nor in 2022.

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

#230

Post by marshray »

joecot wrote: post #188
throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 agree with all of this. The US and EU kept discussing inviting Ukraine to NATO or even the EU, and the US was pushing towards a military alliance with Ukraine. This would've caused tension even if Russia was a democratic country not run by Putin. With Putin it led to near certainty of a conflict with Ukraine. But while it's worth looking backward at that to try to get our leaders to not pull political moves like th…

> USSR's neutrality deal clearly led to the Nazis invading Europe

Hitler (Nazis) and Stalin (USSR) were allies and jointly invaded Poland.

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