Thread: A Bother of Bots

The event last night is now known as #BotRapture.

So basically Trumptards unknowingly and unwittingly allowed themselves to be manipulated by Russian trolls and bots around the election time. Dumb, but kinda understandable to an extent.

What's not understandable though is that - because of Drumpf's "Fake News!" legacy - they now get all of their views from only Fox News and even though it's objectively proven that Russian trolls and bots were meddling... they're still allowing themselves to be manipulated. That's just all kinds of dumb.

And these are right-wingers who generally absolutely love a good conspiracy theory. Climate change? Fake! Pizza parlour? A front for Hillary's child-prostitution ring! Actually evidence of and actual conspiracy and Russian tampering... *crickets*

So many of these conservatives who had gazillions of twitter followers are actually angry the bots were cleaned out and they are left with a handful of actual fans. Now they're gonna sue!

Jaysus!

#TwitterLockOut: New rules to control what goes viral

Twitter said on Wednesday it would no longer allow people to post identical messages from multiple accounts, cracking down on a tactic allegedly used by many organizations and governments to make tweets or topics go viral.


The San Francisco-based social network also said it would not allow people to use software to simultaneously perform other actions such as liking or retweeting from multiple accounts.


Twitter, known for freewheeling discussions in short messages, is under pressure from users and many governments to stem the spread of false news and foreign propaganda, often done with the help of automated accounts known as bots.


Twitter bots disseminated propaganda before the 2016 US elections and have continued to inflame US politics under cover of anonymity, academic researchers and US authorities say.


On Friday, the office of US Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies, including St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency known for trolling on social media. The court document said those accused "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system, including the 2016 US presidential election."


Twitter’s new restrictions are aimed at improving "information quality," Yoel Roth of the company’s policy team said.


"These changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter - including elections in the United States and around the world," Roth said in a statement.


Posting identical messages to multiple accounts, or simultaneously retweeting or liking a message from multiple accounts, could help vault something into Twitter’s trending list, giving a false impression of how viral it is among real people.


Twitter said it would give users until March 23 to comply before suspending accounts. It made an exception for bots of broad interest such as earthquake alerts.


Twitter has cracked down on other violations of its terms of service, including fake accounts by people inflating their following.


Some US users with conservative politics complained their number of followers had gone down after Twitter asked them to verify their identity. #TwitterLockOut was among the trending topics.


Former Twitter user Jared Taylor, editor of the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance, sued Twitter on Tuesday in state court in San Francisco, saying the decision to ban him violated California law governing "privately owned public forums." Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.


Another company, privately held online publisher Medium, recently removed accounts belonging to far-right US commentators including Mike Cernovich, who said on his Twitter account on Wednesday that Medium was acting unlawfully.


Medium said it would not discuss individual accounts, but a recent rule change banned people from spreading "disinformation".

#TwitterLockOut: New rules to control what goes viral | USA News | Al Jazeera

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

So basically Trumptards unknowingly and unwittingly allowed themselves to be manipulated by Russian trolls and bots

it was underlying racism that decided the US election , and I think more manipulation of this was done via facebook with the strategy by cambridge analytics

this manipulation of the spurious now is more for sh1ts and giggles on behalf of the vlads to keep any cohesion forming - I guess they are rather proud of themselves - though the news of the AIVD penetrations of their main groups should have engendered some humility - rather embarrassing

the problems in the future will be that things are going to be harder to muzzle and control for both govts and the current tech companies - I would suggest any shareholders of twit/face/goog plan exit points in the next 5 years - though goog may put its AI to good use to rationalise data from blockchains for human consumption

as blockchains become more common , they will be used for all of the above , but they will be un censorable - which will be the issue of trying to stop dissemination of questionable influence - though not to kid ourselves that any message put out there is not biased in the interests of the spruiker and very few politicians have the interests of their constituents at heart.

the new era of the internet will be programs and applications that interrogate blockchains and collate for us PEBKACs

incentives are what is needed to change the way we think , and at the moment most incentives are marketing and advertising encouraging people to accumulate by any means to buy un needed bling

Originally Posted by baldrick

the new era of the internet will be programs and applications that interrogate blockchains and collate for us PEBKACs

Whut?

PEBKAC - problem(s) exists(ing) between keyboard and chair

Many things we use on the Internet are susceptible to revision or deletion

Blockchains are moving toward removing that issue.

https://btcmanager.com/decreds-polit..._campaign=SNAP

Facebook removes dozens of Russia-linked accounts

Facebook announced Tuesday it has removed from multiple platforms accounts and pages controlled by Russia's Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency.


The social media giant removed 70 IRA-controlled Facebook accounts and 65 Instagram accounts, as well as 138 Facebook pages, which individual users can "like" or follow. Most of the pages ran advertisements and were targeted at Russian speakers. Uncovering these accounts took "months of work," Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos said in a blog post.


"The IRA has repeatedly used complex networks of inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate people who use Facebook, including before, during and after the 2016 US presidential elections," Stamos wrote. Facebook removed the accounts strictly because they were controlled by the IRA and not because of their content, he added.


Facebook will allow people to check if they liked or followed one of the banned pages in the coming weeks, Stamos wrote. The company expects to find more bad actors, IRA-linked and otherwise, on its platform and will remove their accounts too, he said.


Stamos is rumored to be leaving the company due to disagreements over how Facebook handled Russia-backed trolls' use of the platform during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to a report from The New York Times.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...ccounts-498888

Facebook says it supports Honest Ads Act, cracks down on issue ads

Facebook said Friday it was supporting a bill that increases disclosure requirements for online political ads.



Why it matters: It’s the first time the company has endorsed a specific form of regulation of its platform, and it comes as founder Mark Zuckerberg prepares to face irate lawmakers on Capitol Hill next week. As recently as last week, company officials were dodging whether they supported the bill.



The details:

• The bill, called The Honest Ads Act, was introduced in October by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).
• Ad exec Rob Leathern wouldn’t say whether he would endorse the act just a week ago on a call with reporters.
• But on Friday, Zuckerberg said in a post that election "interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform, and that's why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online."

The impact: Facebook's support of the bill is politically advantageous — its competitors haven't backed the bill — but the legislation doesn't yet have the momentum to pass.
Other updates:

• Facebook says it plans to release its highly-anticipated public, searchable political ads archive in the U.S. in June. (The company is currently testing a feature in Canada that lets users see ads being run by a specific page.)
• The company also says that moving forward, only authorized advertisers, who can confirm their identity and location, will be able to run "issue ads," or ads that advocate for a certain political cause. It also says people who manage Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified.

In a twist, the company said it would be applying some of these efforts to Instagram as well.


https://www.axios.com/facebook-ad-ch...9101201f8.html