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The Yang Gang and Its Bots

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Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#161

Post by dragonwriter »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #153
dragonwriter wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yang campaign is actually seeing exponential growth. In what? His polling position has been bouncing around within the margin of error with no progress for months. Yang's got some good ideas, and he's certainly one of the most interesting candidates of the cycle. But he's got no momentum.

Yang is polling at 8% nationally now. That's more than margin of error.

> Yang is polling at 8% nationally now.

Yes, there's now been published a single poll which has him outside the MoE of zero. (Not outside the MoE of his polling average for any month since October, though, and statistically you'd expect with the number of polls at least one with him at 8% if he was just hovering at 3.5% for this long.)

While that's a landmark, I guess, it's a thin reed to ground a conclusion of any, much less rapid or exponential, progress.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

hanniabu wrote: post #148
dragonwriter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most recent poll has Yang at 8% nationally, beating Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar. Paying attention to individual polls produces more noise than useful information; you get more value (though less cherry-picking opportunities) from a poll aggregator like 538s. But if you want to play that game, the most recent national primary poll I can find that includes Yang has him at 3%, the best recent polling was at 5%…

If he is left out of numerous polls, then I don't see how an aggregate would be very accurate to portray his numbers.

A naive aggregate (e.g., a simple or recency-weighted average) wouldn't, but 538 and some others aren't using naive aggregates.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#163

Post by shiftpgdn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #161
shiftpgdn wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yang is polling at 8% nationally now. That's more than margin of error.

> Yang is polling at 8% nationally now. Yes, there's now been published a single poll which has him outside the MoE of zero. (Not outside the MoE of his polling average for any month since October, though, and statistically you'd expect with the number of polls at least one with him at 8% if he was just hovering at 3.5% for this long.) While that's a landmark, I guess, it's a thin reed to ground a conclusion of any ,…

6 months ago the majority of the US didn't know about Yang (or much more importantly, basic income.). If 8% of voters now know about him and this issue it's a huge win.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#164

Post by grumple »

raz32dust wrote: post #91

The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he mig…

> The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey.

Multiple accounts with the same name, image, and profile, coupled with radical changes in the types of content posted, and also with superhuman (clearly automated) posting rates? What more evidence do you need?

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#165

Post by joejerryronnie »

godelski wrote: post #142
speedplane wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Serious question, why is this a metric? Changing your mind should be a good thing. ... why is consistency such a highly regarded metric? It's not about consistency, it's about being right consistently. Unfortunately, most decisions whether made by an individual, CEO, or politician have to be made with imperfect information. The data just isn't there to do a full analysis. In data's absence, when you need to make a…

> it's about being right consistently Does that even exist? We're not talking about something that can be scientifically modeled here. There's always going to be a "better" answer post hoc. Like you're suggesting. So it seems like a weird metric still. I think you're agreeing too. But it takes more critical thinking to judge someone on the decisions they made given the data available to them vs judging them based on…

I think it’s a balancing act of adjusting your position based on new information without straying from your core principles. This is most definitely an art more than a science and requires extremely effective communication to explain why you’re making a better decision vs. flip flopping or poll chasing.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#166

Post by godelski »

Grue3 wrote: post #146
gremlinsinc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang. Yang is still my 2nd though, because unlike Yang Gang folks, I don't base my support on the followers of a candidate cause that's just lunacy. I've chimed in on a few to set the record A. we're not all that bad. B. You can't blame us for what gets banned by mods of a reddit when they use bots to do…

>I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang Well, Bernie's subreddit literally bans every single person who makes a post containing the word "Yang". They even remove him from the poll results. Certainly doesn't give any socialist dictatorship vibes (that, and his support of Venezuela).

Come on. People will get upset at you for speaking like this on the Yang subreddit, expect the same here. It doesn't matter if another group is more toxic or not. It isn't a competition about who can be more toxic. We say "Humanity First". If you really do support Yang, stand by that. You're talking to another human and you're also representing Yang. Be kind. We're running a campaign about unification, so expect to be called out if you're causing division.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#167

Post by mnowicki »

raz32dust wrote: post #91

The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he mig…

> Full disclosure: I like Yang.

Like, 'like like'? Or just 'like'?

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#168

Post by godelski »

grumple wrote: post #164
raz32dust wrote: post #91

The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly, and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on twitteraudit.com tells that he mig…

> The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them being closely connected and cliquey. Multiple accounts with the same name, image, and profile, coupled with radical changes in the types of content posted, and also with superhuman (clearly automated) posting rates? What more evidence do you need?

> What more evidence do you need?

HN tends to be a more technical place. So when we have two competing narratives and analyses people become suspicious (high number or retweets, high number of likes). When one analysis basically characterizes bots similarly to how the president tweets, people get suspicious. When one analysis characterizes bots as having expected behavior of users (Yangers having connections to MAGA, which was a MAJOR part of her analysis), people become suspicious. When the author says that they only identified 3 bots from Trump's twitter account, one becomes suspicious. When you link to Mother Jones as your coup de ta and the article doesn't characterize your link's words, people become suspicious.

So forgive me if I personally need more evidence.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#169

Post by godelski »

ben509 wrote: post #54
roywiggins wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm half convinced that the thing that broke everyone's brains is Trump handily winning the electoral college but also clearly losing the popular vote.

Part of the cognitive breakage was that he won the electoral college by taking states that had been traditional Democratic strongholds.

A lot of people still don't understand that a lot of pro Bernie people ended up voting for Trump. After the DNC stuff people went even harder for Trump. People also don't get that Trump supporters are jumping ship to support Bernie and Yang in this election (e.g. this article suggesting connection to MAGA bots is evidence that Yang Gangers are bots).

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#170

Post by pstuart »

pstuart wrote: post #113
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that perspective and appreciate the comment. To be more clear, the weird thing to me is the __degree__ of fanaticism. I understand being passionate, there are many things I'm passionate about. But there are very few things where I would drop everything and campaign for someone. This REALLY reminds me of religion (I left a religion that sends people to go knock on peoples' doors for 2 years of their lives). I al…

To take the religion + politics thing further, consider that the president is hailed as being sent by God, and is surrounded by Christian Dominionists that are actively trying to apply make the U.S. a theocracy. That's bound to stir up some passion on both sides, being that the stakes are rather high.

My comment was based on facts, not opinion or conjecture. I guess certain people just don't like facts that don't look good to them.
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