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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

#31

Post by mcphage »

myth_drannon wrote: post #3

Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? They need to run that script again, put it as a cron job!

> Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ?

Twitter has no interest in making it clear just how many of its “users” are actually bots. Politically motivated bots even more so.

Moreover, they’ve shown no interest in making it more difficult to create new bots. They probably had news accounts before Twitter even finished deleting the old ones.

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

#32

Post by sparrish »

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…

Certainly it's about sowing discord... but don't kid yourself, the US does the exact same thing to Russia on any controversial issue there. And don't think the US wasn't bringing its influence to bear during Russian elections. This is all same-old-same-old that's been going on for years.

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

#33

Post by jacquesm »

avs733 wrote: post #30
jacquesm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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 susce…

> ts 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.

There's a link to 'nice people finish last' in there somewhere.

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

#34

Post by jacquesm »

m00g00 wrote: post #21
lawlessone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

To roughly the same extent that throwing burning matches around in an area plagued by drought isn't going to affect the outcome, yes.

See, it can take a long time before a fire erupts from a natural cause but if you are aiming for it the outcome is pretty much guaranteed.

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

#35

Post by dionian »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
krapp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arm…

> That works as long as there are ways to ascertain what is rumor and falsehood and what is fact.

Are you saying that is that the job of the State?

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

#36

Post by moltar »

sparrish wrote: post #32
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…

Certainly it's about sowing discord... but don't kid yourself, the US does the exact same thing to Russia on any controversial issue there. And don't think the US wasn't bringing its influence to bear during Russian elections. This is all same-old-same-old that's been going on for years.

Yep, the very foundational election of new Russia’s first real president - Yeltsin was fully sponsored by US and resulted in a disaster for the country that it’s still recovering from.

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

#37

Post by jacquesm »

dionian wrote: post #35
jacquesm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 arm…

> That works as long as there are ways to ascertain what is rumor and falsehood and what is fact. Are you saying that is that the job of the State?

No, but neither is it the job of the state to facilitate those that wish to destabilize it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This thread has been flagged to death now so I don't think there will be much more discussion. Pity.

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

#38

Post by avs733 »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
avs733 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 susce…

> ts 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. There's a link to 'nice people finish last' in there somewhere.

There is a reason I avoided the value judgement and stuck specifically to the culture of shared cognition.

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

#39

Post by dictum »

croon wrote: post #24
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…

Also notice the symbol in the book cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_of_Chaos

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

#40

Post by m00g00 »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
m00g00 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To roughly the same extent that throwing burning matches around in an area plagued by drought isn't going to affect the outcome, yes. See, it can take a long time before a fire erupts from a natural cause but if you are aiming for it the outcome is pretty much guaranteed.

I think the analogy is more like trying to pin an execution on one particular member of the firing squad.

Everyone is throwing matches, at the same time, into an already burning dumpster fire.

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