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Manufactured consensus on x.com

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Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#171

Post by gruez »

casenmgreen wrote: post #124

It looks like Twitter is suppressing posts until they are spammed by hate bots and then making those posts visible. https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk... I've also seen evidence of posts Twitter likes (violent and hateful anti-immigration posts - literally a photo of a dummy tied to a chair being shot in the back of the head) being spammed by love bots. Twitter seems to be a propaganda chann…

>It looks like Twitter is suppressing posts until they are spammed by hate bots and then making those posts visible.

>https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk...

This could also very well be explained by a ranking algorithm that optimizes for "engagement". Getting spammed by hate bots = "engagement". This would be perfectly consistent with what the guy is experiencing, minus the accusation that the platform is suppressing anti-ukraine posts, which is totally unsubstantiated.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#172

Post by Llamamoe »

fourseventy wrote: post #155
Tireings wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a propaganda platform since Musk bought it. Im saying this for ages and never joked. Plenty of real situations happening like blocking certain people, stoping of fact checking, bot protection and detection etc. There is a reason why Twitter needed more people before

[flagged]

Yeah I mean, if the only reason you said that was to "piss off the libs" and hate on transgender men, you really shouldn't be shocked that a platform doesn't want that. Being unable to say hateful things without consequence on social media isn't the same as it being a propaganda machine.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#173

Post by gruez »

jandrese wrote: post #158
zoogeny wrote: post #36

It is a bit chilling because of the compound interest that this kind of policy incentivizes. Once you have a handful of powerful X accounts, you have the ability to generate more. So not only can you work to silence others, you can work to increase your capacity to silence others by promoting like-minded allies. We are at the early stages of this, so we are watching the capture of influence. There is some discussion…

It's hard to see how this wasn't by design. Elon loudly released the source code to the algorithm so SEO engineers could optimize their systems to have total control over the narrative. Sure "anybody can read it", but realistically only propagandists are going to go to the trouble and then have the time and resources to act on it. He basically handed the site over to the IRA and told them to go nuts.

>IRA

Irish republican army?

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#174

Post by hashstring »

gruez wrote: post #6

I'm surprised how many upvotes this got (40 points as of me writing this comment), given how little "meat" is actually in this article. The author presents a graph where views for a given user dropped precipitously after a "feud with musk". That's certainly suspicious, and was worth bringing up, but the rest of the blog is just pontificating about "social engineering" and "perception cascades", backed by absolutely n…

Agree about meat, however, the article still made me think.

> What people see feels organic. In reality, they’re engaging with what’s already been filtered, ranked, and surfaced. Naturally, I— and I think many humans have this too- often perceive comments/content that I see as a backscatter of organic content reflecting some sort of consensus. Thousands of people replying the same thing surely gives me the impression of consensus. Obviously, this is not necessarily the truth (and it may be far from it even). However, it remains interesting, because since more people may perceive it as such, it may become consensus after all regardless.

Ultimately, I think it’s good to be reminded about the fact that it’s still algorithmic knobs at play here. Even if that’s something that is not news.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#175

Post by jandrese »

ethagknight wrote: post #47
mrdoops wrote: post #20

Manufactured consensus is everywhere there is enough attention to incentivize such an effort. The worst by far is Reddit.

Manufactured consensus is literally the name of the game for the big news networks. News is/was paid vast sums by the government to tell a certain story. That is Manufactured Consensus. Some countries do a better job making the news seem like a separate arm from the government. The entire point is to direct the populace. That is not the core focus of X, even though it is entirely susceptible to it, and will be encoun…

> News is/was paid vast sums by the government to tell a certain story.

In the US it is not the government paying these sums, it is the billionaires who bought the media outlets. When you look for editorial bias in the US it's not pro-government, it's pro-wealth. Or more specifically pro-wealthy people.

> I would say Wikipedia is even more dangerous because it presents as basic facts.

Can you give some examples of political bias in Wikipedia articles?

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#176

Post by tclancy »

jandrese wrote: post #158
zoogeny wrote: post #36

It is a bit chilling because of the compound interest that this kind of policy incentivizes. Once you have a handful of powerful X accounts, you have the ability to generate more. So not only can you work to silence others, you can work to increase your capacity to silence others by promoting like-minded allies. We are at the early stages of this, so we are watching the capture of influence. There is some discussion…

It's hard to see how this wasn't by design. Elon loudly released the source code to the algorithm so SEO engineers could optimize their systems to have total control over the narrative. Sure "anybody can read it", but realistically only propagandists are going to go to the trouble and then have the time and resources to act on it. He basically handed the site over to the IRA and told them to go nuts.

The ‘ra? Did I miss a step here?

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#177

Post by hammock »

This is a good summary of psyops currently in use by all sides of US and foreign governments and private interests against the American people, and applies to all forms of media, not just Twitter.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#178

Post by asadotzler »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #26
trollied wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN certainly leans one way. X has gone more central. BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow.

> BUT remember that what you see is driven by the people you follow, mostly. Don’t like what they say or their political persuasion? Unfollow. It would be nice if this were true, but I did an experiment where I created a new account on a VM with a new IP not previously connected to me and it almost immediately started serving me right wing slop regardless of who I followed. It seems obvious to me from this anecdote t…

My exact experience. I spent months trimming my follow list down from hundreds to about 25 very carefully selected people and blocking and muting words and accounts, all trying to make my feed about the people I followed instead of what ever the so-called influencers and Musk toadies were peddling. It didn't help much so I created a brand new account from an email address on a different domain using a different web browser on a different machine and the content was no different except that new account also got and about a dozen Tesla sycophants occupying every 4th or 5th post in the feed. So, new accounts get all the same garbage as old accounts with the added benefit of a bunch of Tesla simp pseudo-ads.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#179

Post by hashstring »

jsheard wrote: post #35
qnleigh wrote: post #7

Do we know that this is how the algorithm actually works? The article only shows one plot of one specific instance, and there could be more than one explanation for the sudden drop in viewership (especially given the involvement of Twitter's owner).

> Do we know that this is how the algorithm actually works? Funnily enough we should know that, since Elon promised to open source the algorithm in the name of transparency. But what actually happened is they dropped a one-time snapshot onto GitHub two years ago, never updated it, and never acknowledged it again. Many such cases.

Yes, this 100%.

And never forgot the, isElon boolean var that would increase post visibility. lol, what a shame.

Re: Manufactured consensus on x.com

#180

Post by adeeds »

thmsths wrote: post #129
adeeds wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smaller niche subreddits dedicated to a hobby or type of product are actually some of the worst for astroturfing from what I've seen. It only takes a few shills to start building consensus. There's a really interesting pattern where you'll see one person start a thread asking "Hey, any recs for durable travel pants?" Then a second comment chimes in "No specific brands, just make sure you get ones that have qualit…

How is that not treated as fraud? As you pointed out, with a little bit of detective work (which is well beyond the means and motivation of a casual internet user, but well within reach of a consumer protection agency) it's fairly easy to expose these manipulative tactics. Commercial communication ought to be clearly labelled as such.

I think it is fraud but

a) Is the current FTC going to care?

b) The tricky part is probably proving a business relationship. Otherwise someone could be a jerk and start shilling for their competitors just to get them fined.

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