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X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

hindustantimes.com

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Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#291

Post by lazide »

smnthermes wrote: post #287
api wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The same thing happens to heads of state. Putin thought he could take Ukraine in a few weeks because he is surrounded by yes men.

If Putin was that stupid, he'd already have been ousted.

The beauty of being rich/powerful enough is that when the yes man turns out to be wrong, you can throw them into the meat grinder too.

Do it enough times, and you end up with yes men that also force other people into the meat grinder well enough you don’t have to care, directly.

It’s a type of genius. It works best when you embrace that everyone wants to suck up to you anyway, and there are always more flunkies where they came from, so you’re really helping the world out by filtering down to the somewhat effective ones ASAP.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#292

Post by anigbrowl »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #158
Zigurd wrote: post #13

This is another piece of a mosaic that is going to reveal that grey zone warfare by Russia against the west has much larger scope than most people are aware of. The UK National Crime Agency uncovered a huge money laundering enterprise based on the kinds of crime that fly under the national security radar in most places.

Most of the problem here is not gray zone warfare but just modern wow gold farmers engagement baiting for a $5 payout.

I don't think so. Political trolling is kind of hard work because you have a lot of people who are suspicious and used to deconstructing arguments. If you just want engagement, is it' easier to pick a sports team or pop star and just bait passionate fans by pretending to support a rival?

That kind of false engagement is also a problem (for advertisers, genuine fans etc) but doesn't shape elections and thus come with policy consequences.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#293

Post by anigbrowl »

maxlin wrote: post #283

Can't beat X. Such a great feature to see which accounts might be trying to astroturf. Already accounts like Republicans For Trump, and several (mostly no-name) US flag -toting accounts were exposed for not even being based in the US. Now if we could have other platforms do the same, and not just accidentally like with the Reddit case lol

This information has always been available in the API, but Musk shut down free access to the API shortly after buying it, erecting a $5000/mo paywall. You can still use it to post, but not for serach or any kind of streaming without paying a fat fee.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#294

Post by anigbrowl »

happosai wrote: post #108
cortesoft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the USA outsourcing rage, it is foreign actors paying to manufacture rage in the USA.

While a handful troll factories are paid to destabilize USA, vast majority operate from 3rd world countries with only profit in mind.

Why do politics though? Trolling people over sport or entertainment or games is massively easier.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#295

Post by anigbrowl »

seizethecheese wrote: post #15
bparsons wrote: post #10

It truly is the sewer of the internet.

You think this is unique to X? If anything, it’s unique they’re exposing this.

When the API was public academics and independent scholars used to do this sort of research all the time, but now it's prohibitively expensive. Read up on the search/streaming API and reflect on the fact that it used to be free.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#296

Post by majani »

Meekro wrote: post #264

Worth noting that these foreign accounts are pretty small. The biggest foreign pro-MAGA account mentioned in the article is "MAGA NATION" with ~400k subs, with the others being in the 10k-100k subs range. Contrast that with legit pro-rightwing accounts: @tuckercarlson (17M), @benshapiro (8M), @RealCandaceO (7.5M), @jordanbpeterson (6M), @catturd2 (4M), @libsoftiktok (4.5M), @seanhannity (7M).

Color me shocked that libsoftiktok is an actual US account. I was certain it was a foreign operative

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#297

Post by awesome_dude »

rightbyte wrote: post #229
awesome_dude wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that ALL communities become toxic as they grow I often hear that one community, or another, is "really good, not toxic at all, which is true when it starts (for tech, whilst it's "new" and everyone is still interested in figuring out how it works, sharing their learnings, and actively working to encourage people to also take interest) Then idealism works it way in - this community is the greatest that every e…

> Then idealism works it way in Uhm I would rather say it is when the idealists are pushed out by grifters is when things get bad for a community.

That sounds like an ideal (but mildly toxic, "grifters" is a negative label don't you think) way for things to be ... :P

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#298

Post by lazide »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #288
lazide wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have that much money, it’s actually hard to find someone who will tell you something you don’t want to hear that is actually true and isn’t doing it just to ragebait you or the like. And I don’t think he’s been trying all that hard either.

The most valuable use case for AI might just be to roast billionaires surrounded by sycophants Instead they built better sycophants

Why would billionaires pay to be roasted when they could pay to be sucked off instead?

And let’s be honest, you know what you’d do too if it was you.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#299

Post by protocolture »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #233
protocolture wrote: post #3

Walk willingly into platos cave, pay for platos cave verification, sit down, enjoy all the discourse on the wall. Spit your drink out when you figure out that the shadows on the wall are all fake.

You’re talking about public school, right?

No. I am considering home schooling my little one, but mostly due to the whole 2 Sigma problem rather than any perceived falsehood with public schooling.

Re: X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run

#300

Post by protocolture »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #240
ragazzina wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you learn in school that was actually fake?

I didn’t say it was fake, per se. What happens is undersampling that conveniently aliases with a supporting story for the present moral zeitgeist. It’s not hard to find samples that contradict the story. This happens primarily in history, but also in auxiliary classes that touch on history or morality such as various humanities courses and what little is covered of economics.

The Private Catholic school I attended was forced to teach a particular religious education curriculum by the state. However, that curriculum was highly modular, and the only testing of their methodology was final test scores. So we skipped the entire section on islam (Test was "Pick 2 religions and compare them, we were given catholicism and judaism), and we also skipped every chapter under catholicism that implied any wrongdoing, historically on the part of the catholic church, like the occupations of the holy land.
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