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The Yang Gang and Its Bots

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Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#51

Post by godelski »

ilaksh wrote: post #44

I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But my activity then might have seemed bot-like. Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a…

This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as funny).

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#52

Post by ilaksh »

aazaa wrote: post #11

The fact that Yang's campaign is struggling should throw cold water on the notion that this kind of thing poisons the political process. It remains to be proven whether an armada of Twitter bots can change anyone's mind about a candidate. In the absence of evidence, the claim should be rejected and we should look for simpler explanations for political ills. The more likely explanation, and the one loathed by those wh…

$16.5 million raised last quarter and steadily rising polls. Dave Chappelle is doing a fundraising show at/near Iowa State in a few days. Oprah's "spiritual advisor" is helping Yang campaign.

Still going strong after numerous candidates including senators have had to quit.

"Struggling" is not accurate.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#53

Post by hadtodoit »

iudqnolq wrote: post #22
hadtodoit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Senator who's name I can't recall was arguing otherwise. He said something to the affect of, if social media companies, or websites in general want protection under the law from content generated by their users, then they should not be able to dictate what their users can and cannot post barring illegal content. It's an interesting argument regardless of what you believe, but certainly your first amendment right…

Are you referring to platform/publisher? If so, it has no legal basis for many reasons, including Twitter's first amendment rights to choose what they show. See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no... Also, isn't the whole reason we're on HN the moderation?

He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing an amendment.

I don't think that HN, nor the community at large does as much as say twitter or reddit to stifle opposing points of view. Relegating extremist to their own echo-chambers is a good way of proliferating their beliefs. Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, they may be dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may see the flaws in their argument.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#54

Post by ben509 »

roywiggins wrote: post #31
danShumway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a little bit of dismissal on both sides here, because people want very clear narratives about what happened. Some people feel good saying, "Trump won because people wanted him." Some people feel good saying, "Trump won because the system was hacked." Both of those claims are simple. Either the election was a farce, or nothing is wrong and all the criticism is fearmongering. That kind of simplicity fee…

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.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#55

Post by charlesju »

godelski wrote: post #40

This is an interesting post if you also follow the subreddit for Yang[0]. There are a lot of people there that created Twitter accounts just to follow Yang and participate in those polls about who is more popular. So when the author mentions the creation of new accounts when Yang started, it actually doesn't surprise me. The campaign is very technocentric after all. Also, these people (a lot of them "true believers"…

I'm curious why you think it's weird for a group of people to believe passionately about a candidate?

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#56

Post by lonelappde »

godelski wrote: post #41
waisbrot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is the teenager who follows the Yang bots and MAGA bots "sad"? Is there a corollary teenager following Democrat bots? Are they sad too? Which party do you think Yang is running for? Anyway, the article was clearly describing as "sad" that the teenager is trying to build an online following but his "following" is just bots using him to look less like bots.

One of Yang's pitches is that he is pulling from the MAGA group. Just scroll down the subreddit [0] and you'll see tons of posts about MAGA/Republicans switching sides for Yang. If anything I'd __expect__ a real person to be more likely to be connected to both MAGA and Yang (compared to the average democratic voter). But that also makes it difficult to tell real people from bots, which is what this story is really ab…

Obviously a dark horse Democratic candidate would claim MAGA support, that's a tactic to present as "electable".

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#57

Post by vegcel »

I wonder how many people are more of the author's mistaken bots, like Mike mentioned in the article?

If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd have a lot of bot like behavior. Activities the author describes as bot-like to me seem like activities a noob on twitter would engage in.

Twitter itself does a lot to self-create these node clusters, with a circle jerk of recommended followers based on your activity. If you have a bunch of twitter noobs, all liking and retweeting Yang and his surrogates, they will inevitably get clustered together via twitter's own algorithms.

I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform to promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

I say this as someone who converted an old twitter account from 2011 I used when I was a teenager for spam purposes, to become a Yang account. I'm sure I'm considered a bot by the author's software.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#58

Post by ilaksh »

godelski wrote: post #51
ilaksh wrote: post #44

I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But my activity then might have seemed bot-like. Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a…

This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as fu…

WTF makes you think I'm a bot? Because I took the time to write a full paragraph and tried to promote the presidential campaign I have invested my time and money into?

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#59

Post by godelski »

charlesju wrote: post #55
godelski wrote: post #40

This is an interesting post if you also follow the subreddit for Yang[0]. There are a lot of people there that created Twitter accounts just to follow Yang and participate in those polls about who is more popular. So when the author mentions the creation of new accounts when Yang started, it actually doesn't surprise me. The campaign is very technocentric after all. Also, these people (a lot of them "true believers"…

I'm curious why you think it's weird for a group of people to believe passionately about a candidate?

I like Yang, but I've never been one that idolizes another person. I would 100% vote for Yang above another candidate (I'm actually even surprised HN, which is pretty pro UBI, isn't Yang Gang), but I've never been passionate about another person. I don't understand people that will move to another state to campaign for a candidate. I've never been part of that kind of movement before, and in it I don't understand it. So it is weird to me. I will describe people in Bernie's camp, Trump's, and others the same way. Fanatics confuse me in the same way. I do also have a religious past and it reminds me of the fanaticism of that as well. But we're all humans and see through different lenses. It just is a lens that is odd to me.

Re: The Yang Gang and Its Bots

#60

Post by olivermarks »

Twitter in 2020 seems to be a seething mass of agenda driven automation. I am a Tulsi Gabbard for president supporter and am aware that 'like' counts on pro Gabbard posts appear to be regularly culled, presumably by Twitter themselves. Gabbard's team have complained loudly about this on Twitter (@CullenYossarian for example, Gabbard's press assistant). I recently started reusing Twitter, partially to explore this election cycle and am struck by the number of dissenting tweets appended to pro Gabbard posts (Russian asset etc etc) from obviously recently created accounts with very low 'followers'. (These posters almost never create an original post but retweet other posts 'as themselves' on their main account). If you challenge a comment, asking for proof that Gabbard is a Russian asset for example, the effect is similar to responding to a robocall, with the account suddenly being manned by a human for a few hours. There is typically a hail of abuse and denegration of the candidate, then the poster falls silent again, presumably going off duty. Regardless of who you are rooting for in the election I find this alarming. It is very difficult to know how to go about investigating these networks and who the actors are.
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