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False Pro-China Accounts Invade Twitter in the UK

bitterwinter.org

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

#121

Post by smegger001 »

JTbane wrote: post #103
yodelshady wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly, it's good for security discussions. I've tried and in reality whilst some signal is there the noise is just overwhelming. Even with curation, almost 100% of the traffic was unrelated personal conflicts. Hopefully in a few years' we'll rediscover the personal/professional separation.

> Supposedly, it's good for security discussion Can you really discuss anything useful with only 280 characters?

Nope.

I am convinced that twitter is the worst thing to happen to dialog in western society in the last 20 years. No subject of any depth can be adequately examined in 280 characters or less. All nuance is lost, politician try and write for quick viral sound bites rather than reasoned argument.

can you imagine Thomas Paine trying to write Common Sense in 250 charcters, or if Adam Smith or Karl Marx tried to optimize their writting to maximize how viral quotes would be for pwn'ing their opponents

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

#122

Post by ChrisRR »

heurisko wrote: post #114
johnday wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

If the last year has taught us anything, it's that how many people 2% actually is

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

#123

Post by ChrisRR »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #32

I stopped using Twitter a few years ago. Haven't regretted it. I see nothing useful or good there. And it's amazing how it just doesn't matter if you don't pay any attention to it.

I've never used it, because every time I click a tweet, all of the replies are pointless meme gifs, or people desperate for attention

That and the side bar is desperate to remind you about every awful thing that is going on in the world

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

#124

Post by chrisjc »

gibba999 wrote: post #111
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…

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 t…

> The antivax/antimask/etc. movements as social media manipulation in preparation for a bioweapon

Not what I was saying, so apologies if that's how it reads. I'm saying very passive "bioweapons" could be used to cause stress, increase societal friction, disrupt normality, etc over extended periods of time... effectively destabilizing societies from within, causing governments to take their eyes off the ball, letting down their guard, etc...

What's interesting is that the government (forget which department and paper) did have a plan. They had accounted for this scenario. But I guess there's a chasm between having a plan and being able to put it into practice.

What is "epi"?

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

#125

Post by gibba999 »

chrisjc wrote: post #124
gibba999 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> The antivax/antimask/etc. movements as social media manipulation in preparation for a bioweapon Not what I was saying, so apologies if that's how it reads. I'm saying very passive "bioweapons" could be used to cause stress, increase societal friction, disrupt normality, etc over extended periods of time... effectively destabilizing societies from within, causing governments to take their eyes off the ball, letting…

Epidemiology.

Different scientific communities use different scientific methods, and often come to vastly different conclusions as a result. Epi, and related communities, uses frequentist statistical methods. It's an interesting dynamic when two communities have research methods which fundamentally conflict.

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

#126

Post by jacknews »

est wrote: post #75
jacknews wrote: post #70

Isn't twitter banned in China? Why then allow Chinese government officials to have accounts at all?

Because they are diplomats in the UK. The botnet was likely bought from blackmarket to promote their tweets.

They are Chinese officials. The ban should work both ways.

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

#127

Post by 9999px »

NVHacker wrote: post #102
Shadonototra wrote: post #65

can't be worse than anti-china media in the west? right?

Whatever things the western media say about China, they would need to get an order of magnitude "worse" to actually get close to reality.

There is nothing more pathetic than someone being afraid of a country based on what they hear in media and from their own State Department.

I only get this "China scary" vibe from people who've never been or know nothing about the country.

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

#128

Post by silexia »

eertami wrote: post #30
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…

Well yeah, what we see as obvious bots, twitter sees as MAUs which it can include in figures given to investors and shareholders. Because they haven't developed any systems to identify the bots, they can pretend that they do not know they are bots - and their active user figures are not fraudulent/illegal. If they identified the bots, then they would not be able to lie about these accounts.

If a man's salary depends on him not understanding something, you can bet that it won't be understood.

Also - I have seen lots of vigorous defense of the Chinese government here on HN lately. I wonder if there is a similar, but better run, effort here?

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