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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

#231

Post by qsdf38100 »

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 Pro Ukraine propaganda as you call it, is mostly telling somewhat irrelevant things as if it was a good sign for Ukraine and it’s allies. It’s rarely outright fake stories as you will see on pro Russian channels.

Unless you believe that the mass graves being found are fake. If you do, I wonder what other famous war crimes you think are fake.

Also I’m curious, what Ukrainian propaganda didn’t turn out to be true?

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

#232

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

sangnoir wrote: post #223
throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 explic…

If we don't want to believe anything they say then why bother having any diplomatic ties at all? Do you think we'd be in the same or better place if we just cut all communication with Russia?

You only know what they tell you and what your intelligence agencies can uncover. Russia said Ukraine joining NATO was a red line in diplomatic discourse and then they acted on it. Same way the USA told China that aiding Russia in this war would be a red line and China has refrained from providing direct aid even after what happened in Taiwan recently. I don't have any access to classified information so no idea what information is in there but hopefully it's a lot more accurate then what we can read on twitter and Reddit.

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

#233

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #173
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.

> No, none of these justifies starting a full-scale war, killing thousands of people. That's the problem with conflicts that have a long history. You can conveniently choose a point it time, like you choose 24.02.2022 and make a case for the side you already support. For example, if you pick a date in 1944 or 1945 and ignore everything that happened before, you can come to the conclusion that Soviet Union did a full-…

Yes, in his speeches Putin likes to go back to the 16th century and so on. But the truth is very simple: Ukraine was living in peace for several decades. I was there many times and I met happy people, Ukrainians and Russians. Both were very nice, hospitable, and I saw no problems between them. They had different kinds of problems: poverty, corruption and so on.

Putin attacked Ukraine in 2014 because of Euromaidan - because he saw that Ukraine ceases to be under Russian influence. And yet, we decided it is more convenient to trade with him and pretend the shelling doesn't exist and people don't die in Donbas. This emboldened him to start the war in 2022, take over KIev and install his own puppet government. This didn't work well and now Russia is in a very dark place. I hope you can get out of there somehow.

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

#234

Post by cantSpellSober »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #65
cantSpellSober wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was more true a decade ago. Once a reddit gets big enough to be useful, it will be too big. After the_donald and similar, strange white supremacist posts started appearing in, say, small programming reddits that had previously been immune to shitposting.

I also experienced the reverse: programming subreddits, tv show subreddits, and even blogs and mailing lists started telling me to support BLM (which isn't a thing in my country), avoid beating up Asian people (which was easy to do since I was living in Asia), etc I was there for Javascript tricks and they insisted that I check my privilege. It got exhausting, not because it's insulting, but because the signal to noi…

That's not the reverse, we're describing almost the same problem

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

#235

Post by marshray »

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 Yanukovych, after he was removed by Parliament, immediately fled to Russia.

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

#236

Post by qsdf38100 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #29
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 has gotten...weird. It's at the point where I almost consider that most of the people I'm talking to there on the mainstream subs actually are bots.

What about HN then? This thread looks full of anti-Reddit "bots" to me…

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

#237

Post by qsdf38100 »

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…

If it was true then we would see an overflow of pro Putin bots as we see on other platforms such as Twitter.

Is the kgb and it’s army of trolls not aware of Reddit?

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

#238

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

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…

> There is no equally valid argument against man-made climate change, evolution, gay rights, the right for people of color to exist without harassment, or Ukraine defending itself.

While I somewhat agree with you, a discussion is good and necessary. Without such a discussion the subject becomes a dogma, not something reasonable. When someone is against evolution or, say, GMO they most often don't understand it. When they learned how these things work, and maybe making some experiments themselves, they can either accept the facts of decide that their beliefs are more important than facts, which is their fair choice. If you take away a discussion, you eliminate that possibility.

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

#239

Post by qsdf38100 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #63
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…

I used to be a mod of a small subreddit and I was a huge redditor a while ago. It was kind of an open secret that pretty much everything on reddit was manipulated by bots. A huge redditor at the time (unidan) was banned for using bots to pump his posts and comments, and that made bot manipulation a lot less secret for a while. It's an anonymous site and you don't even need an email address to sign up, so it's very ea…

Yet Reddit is still much less affected by obvious and disgusting fake news than all other platforms I know.

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

#240

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

jstarfish wrote: post #211
mc32 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. You are saying, this is so established that entertaining any alternative is wrongheaded. No. That's not how it works. We need dissent even in the middle of battle. We need to re-asses and continuously examine what we hold true to ensure it is still true. People are not gods. We can be in the wrong. This echoes GWBushe's you're either with us, or you're against us. It's a made up dichotomy.

> We need dissent even in the middle of battle. We need to re-asses and continuously examine what we hold true to ensure it is still true. Tacticians act on Intelligence. Dissent is not Intelligence. Dissent is so toxic it is literally weaponized to cripple an adversary with indecision and domestic unrest. It is the militarization of gaslighting. It's not something you want arising mid-campaign, especially when (as i…

I upvoted both of you because you both have valid points in spite of apparent contradiction.

Dissent, if it's based on intelligence, can be extremely useful. It's literally something that can save a society. But intelligence involves a careful analysis of facts, and it's something very hard if you deal with an army of trolls.

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