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Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

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Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#21

Post by m00g00 »

lawlessone wrote: post #12
alkonaut wrote: post #9

I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group…

>What's the reasoning behind that? They want you to be at each others throats. Same reason they assisted brexit.

Do you figure pro/anti-gun twitter posts from actual users are less likely to result in us being at each others throats? Really seems like pissing in the ocean.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#22

Post by krapp »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to we…

Democracy depends on connection, and the free exchange of ideas among an intelligent and informed populace, even in the presence of falsehood and rumor.

The problem here is not democracy being unable to weather the internet, any more than television, newspapers or radio, but of society trading healthy skepticism for cynicism, encouraging disengagement from the political process and failing to raise the electorate democracy needs.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#23

Post by allemagne »

alkonaut wrote: post #9

I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group…

I really don't think potential motivations are very mysterious if the Russian state is actually doing this of their own accord.

Like you said, sowing political discord in general over hot-button issues is a benefit.

But if they're really trying to tip the scales in favor of the pro-gun lobby then that makes sense too. Riling up the pro-gun voters is a way of meddling in the 2018 elections with a pro-Republican/Trump bias that we already saw in 2016.

In addition, it's conceivable that Russia believes that more permissive gun laws will help destabilize America.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#24

Post by croon »

alkonaut wrote: post #9

I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group…

One interesting piece of that puzzle is the book Foundations of Geopolitics from 1997 [1] by Aleksandr Dugin. It is basically a collection of strategies on foreign politics through intelligence arms of the government. There's no properly translated copy of the book available unfortunately, but there are excerpts [2]:

* Ukraine should be annexed by Russia..

* The United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.

* Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

[2] https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%...

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#25

Post by jacquesm »

avs733 wrote: post #18
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to we…

Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an equivalent to teaching understanding. Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by facts that disprove their beliefs. I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of al…

> (i.e., conservatives)

That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not just conservatives that do this.

Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in a relatively friendly setting.

The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones would have been laid differently.

So now you get this weird mix of open societies connected in a very open fashion to outright dictatorships with the additional asymmetries of English being a pre-requisite for trade all over the world and thus a ready and cheap to deploy workforce aided by bots to sow dissention and to drive a wedge between folks in the remainder of the world.

What is sad - and that's why I picked out that fragment - is that once the ball is rolling we will then happily take over beating on that wedge.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#26

Post by username223 »

alkonaut wrote: post #9

I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia. But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group…

"Political division" has been pretty clearly shown: "Newly released Facebook ads revealed Wednesday show that two Russian-linked Facebook groups organized opposing protests last year at the same time outside an Islamic center in Houston."

-- https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-pag...

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#27

Post by jacquesm »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to we…

Democracy depends on connection, and the free exchange of ideas among an intelligent and informed populace, even in the presence of falsehood and rumor. The problem here is not democracy being unable to weather the internet, any more than television, newspapers or radio, but of society trading healthy skepticism for cynicism, encouraging disengagement from the political process and failing to raise the electorate dem…

> Democracy depends on connection, and the free exchange of ideas among an intelligent and informed populace, even in the presence of falsehood and rumor.

That works as long as there are ways to ascertain what is rumor and falsehood and what is fact. As soon as that is impossible the S/N ratio drops to the point where you have a net negative making it much harder to engage in critical thinking. That's why the bot army operators don't really care which side of a particular argument they are taking, all they care about is - just like any other ad network, ironically - engagement so that there are less braincycles left over to think about the stuff that really matters.

> The problem here is not democracy being unable to weather the internet, any more than television, newspapers or radio

Television, newspapers or radio as a rule were not - RT excepted - usually under the control of ideological or actual enemies. And when they were - such as Radio Free Europe - the powers that be tried what they could to control the message. So now we are starting to see what happens when there is no way to control the message at all and individuals can be targeted with messages that are tailor made to excite and enrage them about subjects they care deeply about.

> but of society trading healthy skepticism for cynicism, encouraging disengagement from the political process and failing to raise the electorate democracy needs.

I'd love to live in that place but I haven't found it yet. For the most part people are not at all happy to have to expend time to get educated about subjects they care about, they prefer to have their opinion pre-chewed and in short to repeat soundbites, preferably short enough to be made into bumper stickers.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#28

Post by trothamel »

I always get a little skeptical about articles like this, and the motivation behind them. Are there Russian bots - perhaps, but they tend to sow discord. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the anti-gun tweets are also bot driven.

But at the same time, I have gun owning friends, and they tend to circle the wagons when something like this happens. With 1 in 3 adults in the US owning a firearm, it doesn't take very many of them for there to be a lot of tweets against gun control.

To put their reaction in perspective, realize that since fame appears to be a motive in these shootings, the easiest way to stop this would likely be to pass a law to prevent the media from covering mass shootings, or at least the names and life stories of the shooters. And I think a lot of reactions here would be "we can't do that!", because of the first amendment.

That's how a lot of people feel about the second amendment.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#29

Post by jacquesm »

hodl wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world. It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to we…

Not sure how you can disconnect the internet. Basically would involve disconnecting all comms. Lest someone uses a modem. Then what about long distance RF?

China is a pretty good example of what can be done just short of disconnecting, and as annoying as that is they are doing this because they are well aware of what could happen if they allowed free communications.

They're on the wrong side of the line as far as I'm concerned but in the end the goals are roughly the same: prevent outside influences from destabilizing the country to the point where the whole thing might collapse.

Open societies are probably (I hope) less vulnerable to this sort of thing than closed ones but it would be a huge mistake to think that we are immune to it.

Re: Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting

#30

Post by avs733 »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
avs733 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an equivalent to teaching understanding. Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by facts that disprove their beliefs. I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of al…

> (i.e., conservatives) That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not just conservatives that do this. Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in a relatively friendly setting. The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones…

agreed, and to an extent apologies for the cheapshot, but there is an underlying and important point.

Conservative ideology (holding 'traditional' values and being resistant to change) is ideologically rooted in a non-critical conflation of societal normativity and one's own subjective reality with a shared objective reality. It doesn't mean they uniquely suffer from this problem but it does make them much more susceptible to it. It also makes them, as a group, less prepared to counter it.

Its the same reason the Nazi's were so much more effective than Occupy wall street. In the later, internal dialogues and disagreement is tolerated and even valued to a much larger extent. In the former, its seen as lacking in purity and results in compliance, departure, or expulsion.

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