[HN Gopher] Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinform...
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Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinformation
Author : alexfromapex
Score : 190 points
Date : 2021-01-23 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| godmode2019 wrote:
| How could someone possibly label posts correctly if they don't
| actually know what accounts are bots.
|
| Seems like the training data was selected to aid the answer they
| were looking for.
|
| You have to remember people that believe their point if view is
| correct tend to share more and comment more so other people know
| they are misinformed.
| reddotX wrote:
| youtube is infested with bots
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| I've long suspected there are vast bot networks like this all
| over social media.
|
| YouTube comment sections on videos related to covid are an
| absolute cess pit of covid deniers, misinformation spreading and
| conspiracy theory peddling.
|
| I would like to think these are bots and not a very vocal but
| significant section of society but given recent world events I am
| not sure at all.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| You don't need some exclusive GPT-3 access for this. A simple
| Markov bot is enough to fool nearly everyone they perform
| fairly well when given specific domains, quite poorly in
| general online forums though.
|
| Give that bot a foreign name and virtually every native English
| speaking person will assume it's simply bad grammar.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's Twitter, you don't even need to generate original text:
| likes, comment-free retweets, reaction gifs and posting the
| same text as replies to everything are all actions that will
| boost whatever sentiment or link it is you want to boost.
| simias wrote:
| I genuinely wonder what's the real number. It is easy to find
| accounts that look like they could be bots, but I wonder what
| portions of those are just very dedicated individuals.
|
| I don't use social media a lot but I do regularly post on HN
| for instance. I don't know what my average message rate is but
| it's probably around 1 message/day. Now if I just wanted to
| spam my political agenda on the site (and the site let me do
| it) I could very easily copy/paste the same bullshit a hundred
| times a day on every story on the frontpage. If like 20 other
| people did the same thing the amount of noise we'd generate is
| pretty large
|
| Look at random fan wikis to see the amount of free work some
| dedicated individuals can achieve. I'm certain that many of
| these super active troll accounts are just that, dedicated
| individuals who feel very strongly about something and just
| spend 10 hours every day spamming and harassing and copy-
| pasting. If your output is like 100x that of a normal user (and
| you know how to game the algorithms to amplify your message)
| you don't need a huge number of accounts or automation to
| become a real nuisance.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| We research this stuff - a lot of nation-state and financed
| activity is farms of low-paid people assisted by software
| running multiple and shared accounts. Misinfo analysts
| (including ML tools) can suspect this bc the accounts clock
| in & clock out and follow a talking points script. Except bc
| a low paid person is adding a human touch, account abuse
| teams see it and do nothing due to uncertainty, despite being
| against TOS.
|
| Sometimes it is more obvious. People had MAGA campaign apps
| that lets Trump's team remotely activate otherwise-legit
| social media accounts. So the account is real, but popular
| messages were bot behavior. Twitter is even less likely to
| want to take down such an account, despite the prohibited
| behavior.
| heidar wrote:
| 100%. I find this incredibly interesting and I'd love to
| understand more about what topics they post about. I bet many
| hot topics, especially ones about politics, have a fair share
| of bots commenting.
|
| I think their purpose is equally interesting. I'd guess a lot
| of them are there to polarise discussions and drive people
| apart, but there are probably ones that have an agenda to drive
| a specific opinion as well.
|
| I think this isn't just on Twitter, but other platforms as
| well.
| therockspush wrote:
| I used to run a twitter bot. It didn't create any content. Just
| liked, retweeted or followed based on keywords.
|
| Then my tweets would get liked and followed. 95% of that was
| just bots.
|
| Every now and then I would unfollow a real person and my
| account, which was clearly a bot, would get some hate mail
| telling me to re-follow them.
|
| It was pretty surreal.
| jjcon wrote:
| > given recent world events I am not sure at all.
|
| Have recent events involved significant sections of society?
| imiric wrote:
| Not just YouTube comments, but videos as well have become
| automated or semi-automated to produce the most engaging
| content and maximize ad revenue. There are companies making
| millions by gaming the system. See the Elsagate scandal and
| TheSoul Publishing[1], the company behind those 5-minute craft
| videos and occasional Russian propaganda.
|
| And of course similar things are happening on all social media
| platforms.
|
| It's deeply ironic that the West built all these tools with the
| intention of "connecting" people, something that's still
| Facebook's main mission statement, yet its biggest effects have
| been exactly the opposite, causing division and distrust
| between people, and contributing to real world conflicts and
| toppling of governments.
|
| Social media today is weaponized by political agents to spread
| misinformation and propaganda on an unprecedented scale and the
| platforms are paying them to do it. The current political
| climate in the US is no surprise. It was a coordinated psyops
| attack and its enemies are laughing at how easy and inexpensive
| it was to destabilize a nation compared to traditional warfare.
|
| I fear that we still haven't seen the worst of it, and frankly
| I'm not sure what the solution is.
|
| [1]: https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-
| operation-y...
| rdtwo wrote:
| Honestly a lot of what I use Twitter for is stock alerts and
| giveaways. It's a crap platform for anything else
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Why do we trust twitter etc? We seem to have forgot how
| newsgroups died. The problem is not solved yet, probably never
| will be solved with machine learning. ML just moves the goalposts
| for trusting the algorithm to trusting the employees of each
| company.
| emphatizer2000 wrote:
| We don't trust Twitter. That is just what sensationalist papers
| claim.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > We seem to have forgot how newsgroups died.
|
| When Digg, MySpace, and Slashdot became more convenient sources
| of disinformation?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| i mean earlier when it became overtaken by spam
| dragontamer wrote:
| There were moderated newsgroups for years. There were some
| people who preferred to hang out in the spam-filled,
| unmoderated areas.
|
| But there were plenty of newsgroup users who preferred the
| tightly moderated newsgroups.
| superflit wrote:
| I choose 4 of my followers that I did not agree ideological and
| surely their Botometer score was higher than 4.0
|
| Maybe people I disagree they have same arguments and are
| considered bots?
|
| Or they just parrot same things?
| bhawks wrote:
| Not to be snarky - but remove the words Bot and Climate from the
| title - it's cleaner.
|
| Twitter as a platform promotes toxic social interaction,
| tribalism, hot takes, low effort & low impact feel good activism
| and rage driven mobs.
|
| It is literally a hack on human neurochemistry that hurts
| individuals and society as a whole. People should be connecting
| with others in a rich, high context, cooperative and supportive
| environment - like we often have in our physical communities.
| That is by definition healthy and productive. I wish social
| platforms were the virtual version of what we have in the real
| world - not this twisted and broken imitation. Twitter is the
| worst but that doesn't mean any of the other forums are much
| better. HN is often ok - but has its flaws too.
|
| Tldr everyone thinks everyone is a bot AND there actually are
| bots too. That's because twitter is virtual heroin and it is
| hurting us by design. :(
| barney54 wrote:
| With articles like these, I wish they would provide examples of
| what they they are talking about. As in, examples of likely bots,
| and examples of the problematic tweets. It's not too hard to
| provide the evidence to really make their case.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Here are the training sets used for the bot detection tool:
| https://botometer.osome.iu.edu/bot-repository/datasets.html
| Shivetya wrote:
| They won't and they don't have to because for the most part
| articles like this just appeal to people who believe it to be
| true anyway. They don't need to read further than the headline
| to have their beliefs verified.
|
| Hell, you want climate denial, just go publish old stories
| about lack of ice in certain port cities in the early 1900s and
| lack of snow or increasing strong storms. What is fun about
| perusing old news is how that much of the same claims made then
| are no different than today.
|
| Make your own decision but never blindly trust even stories you
| agree with.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| > lack of ice in certain port cities in the early 1900s and
| lack of snow or increasing strong storms.
|
| speaking of people whose mind is made up...
| spikels wrote:
| And Scientific American is a major source of politicized science.
| krona wrote:
| I just ran my own Twitter account through the so called
| 'Botometer' used to form the conclusion of the article.
| Apparently I'm 4.7/5 bot.
|
| Needless to say I didn't finish reading the article.
| styluss wrote:
| Curious if you get a similar result with BotSentinel
| https://botsentinel.com/
|
| NB: not affiliated with Bot Sentinel
| blakesterz wrote:
| I tried both this and the other and I am happy to say I am
| not a bot on either. I did get a .7 on the other and a 0 on
| this one.
|
| Interestingly it identified my sister in law as a bot, but
| looking at her account, I'd assume the same. Anyone else I
| checked seemed accurate as well.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Stepford Wives...
| Berobero wrote:
| A ML model giving a single false positive is generally
| uninteresting and meaningless in evaluating its overall
| performance. Also, note that the details clearly state that,
| even for high bot scores, some non-trivial percentage of
| examples in their training data were still labeled as human.
|
| As an aside, for those interested, the GitHub page for the
| tool's Python API (https://github.com/IUNetSci/botometer-
| python) lists relevant papers regarding the functioning/design
| of the tool.
| dlkinney wrote:
| I follow a (very) wide spectrum of accounts on Twitter and the
| following seemed true for the accounts I follow which scored
| highly likely to be bots:
|
| - it's 50/50 accurate picking _actual_ bots I know I follow
|
| - the more simple the reading level, the higher it scored
|
| - however, _extremely_ heady accounts also score high
|
| - the farther right/left the account goes seems to up the score
| a little
|
| - accounts that quote authors frequently score very high, even
| if they're human behind them
|
| - _everything_ from Chinese state media scored higher than
| anything
|
| - _everything_ that was frequently highly critical of China
| scored extremely high
|
| - most Trumpers and Antifa I follow had very low scores (but
| most are high-up/origin accounts)
|
| - most news organizations from both sides scored middle range,
| including known propagandists and "reputable" organizations
|
| - accounts from both sides of the COVID discussion were mostly
| low
|
| Hard to say, but my best guess is "low effort" is the defining
| factor. Only exception is the pro/anti-Chinese stuff, which is
| definitely a mix of real people and bots.
|
| I keep pretty good tabs on the accounts I follow and I think
| I'm pretty good at determining who is "a real person with real
| feelings saying real things they really think" and bots, and
| from this analysis, I have zero faith that this tool has any
| modicum of reliability in a research setting.
|
| I think it's possibly accurate enough to say "yes, this is
| _definitely_ a human ", but totally fails to identify bots.
| Thus, any research that uses this tool as a measure of bot
| influence is way off, because there are way too many false
| positives. Which I guess is a good thing for anyone who wants
| to say, "look at all these people being suckered by all these
| bots!" which is pretty unscrupulous.
|
| YMMV
| delecti wrote:
| I ran my account through it and got a 0.0 rating, and ran it
| against my followers, and got similarly low scores for the
| accounts that I know to be real people (the highest score for a
| follower I know to be a person was 0.8). I saw higher scores
| for either accounts that followed me out of nowhere (I'm not
| interesting enough to draw real strangers), or for accounts
| that are run as public profiles (an artist with a public
| account for their comics). I'm inclined to assume that you
| likely have either atypical or impersonal twitter habits.
| [deleted]
| Zuider wrote:
| You may need to test for confirmation bias. I am sure you and
| people you know are well behaved and courteous on twitter and
| social media in general, and so would not trigger any alarms.
| Have you tried the bot-test on more contentious accounts that
| you know to be human?
| true_religion wrote:
| If only this was 2 weeks ago, we would know a certain
| contentious presidents' account to bot tests... but as of
| now, why follow anyone who is not well behaved?
| delecti wrote:
| I just checked a few of the more abrasive people I know,
| both of whom also do a lot of non-quote Retweets, and both
| also scored quite low (0.4 and 0.1).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Or maybe that's just buggy software.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's not buggy: it detects patterns like the majority of
| posts being retweets instead of new posts; any new post
| consisting of an image and accompanying text instead of a
| message or thread; replies being short comments on top
| responses to popular posts; and a high degree of
| connectivity to other accounts that are likely bots.
|
| False positives are generally curated accounts, corporate
| accounts, and government accounts (which are really bots
| with their software in managerial documents); porn
| accounts; and people who reblog the news but don't really
| "use" twitter.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| And if it's anything like some other naive bot detection
| algorithms I've seen, it might be viciously biased
| against non-English-speakers. To the extent of, say,
| labelling anyone primarily using Arabic or Cyrillic
| alphabets as a bot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Or that writes a lot in Dutch.
|
| Just the other day a prominent dutch account got auto-
| blocked on twitter for saying 'Die Rutte toch.', where
| 'Die' (a pretty common dutch word, which in this case
| translates as 'That') was mistaken for a threat to our
| prime minister.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If it detects my account as a bot I would say it's buggy,
| because I've done none of that stuff.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Or you just post a lot of misinformation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| When I was in the spam blocking business we joked about
| the problem of the Russian urologist. Somewhere, there
| must be someone who really is trying to buy Viagra from a
| Russian e-commerce site. But the other 99.99999% of the
| time it's spam. Perhaps this person's Twitter suffers a
| similar fate: all the classification features align with
| robot traffic, but they aren't a robot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Right, yes, that must be it.
| Zuider wrote:
| The article is distinctly Orwellian. I am a climate skeptic and
| have participated in such discussions, and found that my bot-
| rating is very high. Other people whom I know by reputation and
| online presence elsewhere are also categorized as not being
| actual humans.
|
| Along with this, there is the pre-emptive and dogmatic
| assertion without proof or serious argument that any
| disagreement with official dogma must necessary be deliberate
| 'disinformation' spread by those with an immoral vested
| interest in spreading falsehood.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| So now we'll see twitter ban this bot because it
| "dehumanizes" a large group of people like the NPC meme
| right?
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I listened to the drilled podcast two weeks ago and season 3
| was very eye opening to me because they did an in depth look
| at how corporate PR has evolved to influence public opinion
| in very subtle and powerful ways. We're talking oil companies
| setting up contracts the size of $25 million to influence
| opinion on single issues and they work with psychologists to
| take advantage of the shortcomings inherent in our minds.
|
| The result is that in 2021 people tell me things that
| influence their opinions that are either misleading, out of
| date or absolutely false. We're talking things like
| climategate or that volcanoes give off more co2 than all of
| human civilization.
|
| I'm just a regular person, I don't believe in climate change,
| I've researched it, it's something I'm concerned about. A
| million dollar PR campaign against me and my friends, family
| and coworkers is not something anyone can standup against.
|
| The dogma that you perceive comes from people reacting to
| dissatisfaction from an important issue that isn't being
| taken seriously. We are citizens, regular people, against
| what amounts to artificial intelligences that are maximizing
| the number of paper clips they produce. David and Goliath
| doesn't come close to the situation we're up against.
| Retric wrote:
| How on earth do you come to that conclusion? Personally the
| physics of climate change is kind of a basic back of the
| envelope calculation that should be obvious to most
| educated people.
|
| So I genuinely wonder how people can look into it and not
| look at the absorption spectra of CO2 go ahh I see and then
| move on. I mean such a calculation isn't enough for policy
| changes or anything, but it's putting a high hurdle on the
| other side.
|
| Is it some disagreement about the physics involved, or just
| a bunch of people you believe saying something different,
| or what?
| offby37years wrote:
| There are 2 types of people. Those who think in statics
| and those who think in dynamics. Climate change is not
| basic back of the envelope calculation specifically
| because we're dealing with a dynamic system. The more
| complex the world, the less you can grasp it from
| academic studies.
| Retric wrote:
| In what way is that complexity meaningful? If I put a pot
| of water on the stove the specific way the water swirls
| around is a chaotic non linear system, but it's not going
| to keep the water from warming up.
|
| Similarly, if hypothetically increased global temperature
| results in increased cloud formation that reduces the
| impact of climate change that presupposes some increase
| in temperature otherwise the change in cloud formation
| doesn't happen. As such it's reasonable to argue about
| the magnitude of change but not the direction of change.
|
| I can clearly see arguing about a specific location
| bucking global trends because there complexity actually
| plays a direct role, thus the term climate change. But,
| globally I can't see how everywhere on average would buck
| these trends.
| offby37years wrote:
| That complexity is meaningful as it precludes precise
| modelling. Now that does not mean we should not curb CO2
| emissions, rather it is the degree of opacity and
| uncertainty in a system, as well as asymmetry in effect,
| rather than specific model predictions, that should drive
| the precautionary measures.
|
| Push a complex system too far and it will not come back.
| The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case
| for taking seriously the "climate crisis" that scientists
| tell us we face is the opposite of the truth. Properly
| understood, as driving the case for precaution,
| uncertainty radically underscores that case, and may even
| constitute it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The dispute is typically over the practical implications
| of it, not the pure physics of "the average global
| temperature will rise as long as this trend continues".
| And this is a topic where disinformation comes from both
| sides - I pretty regularly run into people who've been
| convinced that climate change means the planet will
| become uninhabitable.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| It seems obvious. Just tell the facts!
|
| You may have great social circles with intelligent and
| curious people, but in my life the facts don't work
| because the facts don't matter. The number of people
| actually interested in the science and not just _the
| science_ (tm) is dismally low, we're talking less than
| 10% in my experience. This includes people who have
| degrees in physics and engineering and a university
| engineering professor I knew.
|
| People are hungry, vulnerable, emotional, scared, and
| prideful creatures. That's what we are; and we like
| stories. We like stories where we're hero's on an epic
| journey with villains to defeat.
|
| If you tell someone a fact that breaks their story, makes
| them scared, and makes them less prideful, you're not
| having a conversation for very long, doesn't matter if
| you can support it with evidence and reasoning. What PR
| added on top of this human tendency is people think about
| climate way more than they otherwise would, they think
| about it in terms of a story, in us vs. them terms (PRs
| narrative), and if you say something counter to that
| narrative, now _you're_ the villain.
|
| I've had people I respect flat out tell me that climate
| change is a hoax and if we reduced carbon emissions it
| would just be virtue signaling. They are not joking, they
| are serious and they've been told this by talking heads
| for over 20 years.
|
| You'll never get to the back of the envelope calculation.
| gweinberg wrote:
| So the correct conclusion is not necessarily that most
| climate change skeptics are bots, but rather that climate
| change skeptics are likely to be characterized by the
| software as bots. I wonder what else makes you more likely to
| be characterized as a bot?
| Zuider wrote:
| >So the correct conclusion is not necessarily that most
| climate change skeptics are bots, but rather that climate
| change skeptics are likely to be characterized by the
| software as bots.
|
| Yes, that is as much as we can deduce from the data
| presented in the paper, given that they apparently just
| took the 'Botometer' verdicts at face value without taking
| the extra steps to see if they were indeed accurate. It
| may, of course, be absolutely true that the 'denier'
| accounts are just scripts, but further investigation is
| necessary to establish this.
|
| > I wonder what else makes you more likely to be
| characterized as a bot?
|
| That would best be established by examining the bot-
| detector's algorithm. Another commenter on this thread
| noted that he received a high rating based on the fact that
| he rarely logged into his account.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Yeah they gave me a 4.1/5 on account of not being active
| enough. Their method is sketchy for sure.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I only get a 1/5 and almost all my followers are bots or
| abandoned accounts I paid for years ago.
|
| Same things with BotSentinel - it's just garbage.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| But... you are not a bot. So the result is arguably right?
| akvadrako wrote:
| If it was really good, then yes it's technically correct.
| But I suspect it just has no idea.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I ran my account through both Botometer and Bot Sentinel. Got
| 0.4/5 on Botometer, and 0% on Bot Sentinel.
|
| Kind of annoyed that Botometer requires me to authorize it to
| access my Twitter account, when all my tweets are public (and
| who cares about bots that make private tweets, if that's even a
| thing). Bot Sentinel didn't require this.
|
| https://botometer.osome.iu.edu/
|
| https://botsentinel.com/
| jacquesm wrote:
| Don't feel too bad, I'm 3.9/5. Must go in for service now.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That was interesting: I tried https://botometer.osome.iu.edu/ ,
| and got a score of 0.2. I then asked it to look at my followers
| and it spotted several obvious spam followers, and correctly
| identified some "quote of the day" accounts as bots.
| gsich wrote:
| I don't know what the Botometer does, but it labeled my clear
| as hell bot account (automatic posting of started games in a
| computer game) as human. Also I found no output of applications
| that were used to send a tweet. Most bots can easily detected
| by that. Mine also.
| baud147258 wrote:
| What I don't get is why they need to access my account to check
| public tweets from another account.
| mgoblu3 wrote:
| Most of these things just use it for API access, from what
| I've gathered. Haven't looked into this one specifically.
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| To run more Twitter bots, perhaps? (to counteract climate
| disinformation with the absolute climate truth and science-
| based conclusions, of course)
| jhardy54 wrote:
| What kinds of things do you post about?
| krona wrote:
| As far as I can tell the score is based on levels and
| patterns of activity, and whether 'bots' follow you. Not the
| actual contents of the tweets.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Interesting. Nobody in my network scores over 2.0, mostly
| not over 1.0.
| ratsmack wrote:
| I have never had a Twitter account, so unfortunately I cannot
| do the same. I'm hoping more people here do the same as you so
| we can get a cross section of the accuracy for that specific
| bot detector.
|
| I have problems with articles on both sides of the issue using
| all kinds of speculation and innuendo to try and discredit the
| opposite side. I would rather just read articles that cover
| studies explaining results (data) and methods used to support
| their position.
| ant6n wrote:
| Who are these opposite sides?
| dboreham wrote:
| Presumably people who want to stop cooking the planet vs
| people who are ok with that as long as they make more
| money?
| tmpxgdqrcKFuG wrote:
| Have you ever injured a human being or, through inaction,
| allowed a human being to be harmed?
| eplanit wrote:
| While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down
| and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and
| flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its
| belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn
| itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are
| not helping. Why?
| [deleted]
| secondcoming wrote:
| Just uninstall Twitter. Easy.
| rvz wrote:
| > Easy.
|
| Yes. it's that _Easy_ and the most obvious solution to getting
| out of that echo chamber.
|
| I know it's hard for many to actually _uninstall_ and _' delete
| their accounts'_ but perhaps this sounds like a great new years
| resolution plan to stick to.
|
| This time, you can do it.
| undefined1 wrote:
| Unfortunately won't work until journalists and politicians
| uninstall it.
|
| Until then, Twitter has an outsized influence on the world.
| Helloworldboy wrote:
| This
| chapium wrote:
| This just tips the discourse more in favor of those running the
| bots. Also, since most of the world is governed by democracy, a
| key requirement is to have informed citizens so they don't vote
| for policies based on misinformation. One may not wish to use
| twitter (myself included), but a significant amount of the
| world population does.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Yes, but imagine how brilliant it would be for twitter to be
| only full of bots spewing disinformation at each other (and
| the few human conspiracy theorist who would be lost for the
| cause anyway), while concerned citizens are... Getting their
| disinformation from somewhere else. Never mind.
|
| Still, all this puts "prevent bit usage by design" on the
| feature list for the next generation of social media (that
| and "prevent sharing without human moderation beyond a
| certain virality point", "clever shadow banning" ,and an
| eliza mode for those times you juste want to yell at the
| clouds...
| DFHippie wrote:
| Right. And I suspect the people most likely to delete their
| accounts are the ones least likely to be influenced by bots.
| zionic wrote:
| Honestly this should be the top comment.
| rriepe wrote:
| Maybe second after "Build your own Twitter"
| grkvlt wrote:
| Instructions unclear - I got a bunch of threatening letters
| from the alleged 'owners' of the twitter.com domain. Do you
| have some more details on how to uninstall someone else's
| website, please?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Wow, what a great joke. Most people use the twitter app. That
| can be uninstalled.
| spoonjim wrote:
| "Bot" is the new "square" -- just a generic insult for people you
| don't like. I, a meatspace human, have been called a "Russian
| bot" when I disagreed with liberals and "Leftist bot" or similar
| when I disagreed with Trumpists.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Probably by real bots. Wish there was a study on what
| percentage of bot accusations are bot to meat, bot to bot, etc.
| twirlock wrote:
| Oh no better make the SPLC in charge of banning people for
| wrongthink now.
| Dem_Boys wrote:
| If these findings are true, this should be no surprise. If I had
| to guess, it's big oil that is backing the bot propaganda
| efforts.
|
| I assume if there is large amounts of money or power to be made,
| then there are most likely some type of digital propaganda
| efforts ongoing. This includes oil, big tech, and political
| parties just to name a few.
|
| If a semi competent programmer can make a simple twitter bot in 4
| hours, imagine what a well funded organization like a multi-
| billion dollar company can accomplish.
|
| People are very easy to manipulate with propaganda, especially
| when most of the public are not aware that their social news
| feeds are likely filled with disingenuous information likely
| from, or influenced by, carefully crafted digital propaganda
| campaigns
| hg35h4 wrote:
| Your propaganda is defined by anything you don't agree with
| trying to persuade you. Big green isn't propaganda, only big
| oil right?
| Dem_Boys wrote:
| The bias you try to point out is not present within me. I
| also have no proof that big oil is behind this. It's only a
| guess.
|
| I also agree with your thinking. I'm guessing green energy
| companies are likely running digital propaganda campaigns
| trying to sway people away from oil.
| nexthash wrote:
| Propaganda as defined by the Encyclopaedia Britannica is the
| "dissemination of information--facts, arguments, rumours,
| half-truths, or lies--to influence public opinion." While
| organizations commonly characterized as "Big Green" or "Big
| Oil" may both have used propaganda-like strategies, that
| doesn't take away from the fact that an organized Twitter
| disinformation network definitely falls under this
| definition, whether "Big Oil" runs it or not.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| "Big oil" is not a person. These companies are made up of
| people, who are motivated differently than the entity
| (entities) as a whole would be.
|
| Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be rather
| small and only accrue over the long term. It would therefore be
| of little use to, say, some PR executive at Shell.
|
| "Big oil" is also made up of a number of companies. Any
| benefits would be spread out among all of them, while any costs
| would fall to just the one doing it.
|
| As for costs: the big one would be the damage to your
| reputation, as an individual, company, and industry, that would
| follow if the public found out. I'm having trouble imaging a
| scenario where you run such an operation, certainly involving a
| dozen people or so, without ever pissing one of them off
| sufficiently to see them calling a reporter.
|
| I don't know what's going on here. The tobacco industry comes
| to mind as one that engaged in such tactics even though a lot
| of the above was true for them as well. But "big oil" seems
| more diverse, including foreign firms and governments,
| companies that embrace the future such as Shell as well as more
| "conservative" donate-to-republicans-and-hope-this-will-blow-
| over kingdoms of darkness such as Exxon. Tobacco was a far more
| like-minded, sometimes family-owned community that would have
| been easier to co-ordinate in such conspiracies.
| tw04 wrote:
| > Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be
| rather small and only accrue over the long term. It would
| therefore be of little use to, say, some PR executive at
| Shell.
|
| I'd argue that's pretty easy to refute. Just look how quickly
| the Q-Anon nonsense has spread. And they weren't even trying
| to pretend to be legitimate, they just kept making up crazier
| and crazier statements "for the lulz".
|
| > As for costs: the big one would be the damage to your
| reputation, as an individual, company, and industry, that
| would follow if the public found out. I'm having trouble
| imaging a scenario where you run such an operation, certainly
| involving a dozen people or so, without ever pissing one of
| them off sufficiently to see them calling a reporter.
|
| They were already caught funding the climate science denial
| reports despite knowing what was really going on. There was
| almost no backlash, why do you presume it would be any
| different this time?
|
| https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-scientist-oil-
| com...
| Zuider wrote:
| I am sure you meant it in good faith, but your link
| provides an appalling slander on the reputation of Dr. Wei
| Hock Soon, a solar physicist of good standing. The lurid
| claims that a coal company bribed him to produce results
| that were false and favourable to them is demonstrably
| untrue. In the interests of collegiality and civilised
| conversation, please retract it immediately.
| tw04 wrote:
| Appalling slander? He was caught taking proverbial blood
| money thanks to the FOIA from companies like the Charles
| Koch foundation. I will absolutely not retract the
| statement, and unless you have a better explanation for
| his funding than he did, I'd suggest you retract your
| claim that he's been acting honorably or honestly.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-
| cash...
| sjg007 wrote:
| Big oil, Russia and maybe China. There's the money and then the
| political influence.
| admiralspoo wrote:
| Anyone remember the late 90s when Scientific American didn't
| publish clickbait?
| emphatizer2000 wrote:
| For the millionth time: the number of bots tweeting about
| something doesn't imply a lot of people are actually seeing the
| tweets.
|
| Also, afaik all the botometers are crap, so studies based on them
| are also crap.
| Zuider wrote:
| The bot detectors are not very sophisticated, and they
| definitely have categorised several individuals whom I know to
| be real humans as 'bots,' apparently based on their political
| persuasion. It is ironic that human beings can fail a Turing
| test carried out by scripts, and disturbing that those peoples
| voices should be silenced based on such shallow criteria.
| ihsw wrote:
| That criteria was always meant to be political in nature.
| ihsw wrote:
| Or the current cohort of climate-change policies are deeply
| unpopular, including among the educated and well-informed.
|
| There are climate-change policies that are not deeply unpopular
| but it seems the powers that be are not interested in them.
| hntrader wrote:
| The problem of addressing global warming is very much one about
| persuasion. That means getting beyond people's tribal defences,
| which are a big part of climate change denial. Disinformation
| campaigns play a significant role, but the reason the
| disinformation is so effective is it plays into people's
| confirmation bias which is driven by perceived threats to their
| status in society. They see this liberalism as threatening, of
| which anthropogenic global warming is a part, and reject it
| outright, willing to accept any information that confirms their
| prior emotional decision.
|
| I believe that we need a Greta Thunberg-like figure who is
| conservative-leaning on literally every major topic of political
| contention, except believes that anthropogenic climate change is
| real and we should take significant action to mitigate it, and
| then we need the media and entertainment industries to prop them
| up as virtuous. People's instinctive defences will be lowered and
| we will be surprised at how easily people's minds can be changed.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| No offense, but it's clear you've never spent enough real time
| with people who are "deniers" to really understand anything,
| especially if you think what's missing is a celebrity.
|
| I would say the bulk of the resistance I see comes largely from
| distrust of institutions and people who are very pro climate
| change, and then secondary worry about the financial impact of
| decarbonization on them personally as well as losing
| competitiveness to countries like China who are huge polluters
| and honestly dgaf.
| JarlUlvi wrote:
| There are a number of claims being made which are inter-
| related, not all of which are claimed by all proponents
|
| 1. CO2 is the primary global warming gas, and other gases
| contribute also 2. CO2 precedes temperature change 3. The
| warming trend is unique to earth because of human activity 3.
| We understand the Climate science and carbon processes well
| enough to make accurate predictions 4. Climate modeling is
| accurate, and contributes to knowing what will happen 5. Our
| temperature measurement systems are accurate and
| scientifically valid 6. We understand all the interplay
| between albedo, cloud formation, and water vapor at different
| altitudes 7. We understand why the earth appears to be
| getting larger 8. The earth's warming is due to human
| activity and is not a natural process of warming and cooling
| driven by solar activity and events 9. Solar activity levels
| play no part in global warming; these changes are from human
| activity 10. Green biomass has decreased, not increased due
| to human activity
|
| Alternative claims exist such as:
|
| 1. CO2 is primarily plant food 2. CO2 is a trailing indicator
| of temperature change 3. The warming trend exists among
| multiple planets not just earth 3. Climate science and carbon
| process knowledge are in their infancy 4. Climate modeling is
| inaccurate, and has been very inaccurate thus far 5. Our
| temperature measurement systems have been contaminated by the
| heat island effect, and are not accurate and scientifically
| valid 6. We do not yet understand all the interplay between
| albedo, cloud formation, and water vapor at different
| altitudes 7. We understand the earth appears to be getting
| larger but we do not know why 8. The earth's warming is to a
| natural process of warming and cooling driven primarily by
| solar activity and events 9. Solar activity levels play the
| most significant part in global warming; these changes are
| not only from human activity 10. Green biomass has increased
| due to human activity
|
| Regardless of position, I don't believe name calling will
| convince people either way.
|
| I have no personal interests in either idea though I have
| some investments in green energy & petroleum. As green energy
| is not self-sufficient, I expect that petroleum will continue
| to be around for many years as we transition to future energy
| sources.
| hntrader wrote:
| The deniers I know are conservatives who reject it outright
| simply because it's what the liberals believe (or perhaps, to
| find some common ground, it's what liberal institutions
| believe). They've read little about it and assume that it's
| hysteria.
|
| Maybe my idea of a conservative celebrity is a silly idea and
| won't work, but I believe the root cause is one of tribal
| conflict (combined with cynical disinformation campaigns),
| and to change their mind requires getting around these tribal
| defenses in some way.
|
| According to Pew, 84% of Liberal Democrats think that humans
| significantly contribute to global warming, whereas 14% of
| Conservative Republicans do. I think this helps to confirm
| that there's a pretty important tribal dimension at play here
| (although we also can't rule out that financially self-
| interested people have self-selected themselves into the
| latter category).
| bkirkby wrote:
| You might want to consider that "the deniers I know..."
| Indicate you might have created your own ideological bubble
| and don't realize it.
| rriepe wrote:
| I'm a heretic and you can e-mail me about it if you want
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The Botometer is a non-explainable ML model, not a scale or a
| photodetector, so I'm not convinced it's actually valid to use it
| for this kind of study. Did the researchers verify that "spreads
| climate disinformation" is not itself a factor in the Botometer
| classification?
| twirlock wrote:
| If similar political "studies" have been any indication, no.
| They didn't.
| dfilppi wrote:
| Once you call climate change an 'existential crisis', you've
| pretty much lost your sane audience.
| raarts wrote:
| I tried to read the paper but I need to pay EUR45 for it. Thanks
| but no thanks.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Yes, people labeling real people as bots so that they can
| disregard their viewpoints. Mostly it's democrats / liberals who
| do this. Oh, you support republican policies? You must be a
| Russian bot! Oh, you are skeptical of climate change? You're a
| bot!
| guscost wrote:
| Nah you're not a bot, you would know. It's your _friends_ who
| are bots! You are a member of a tiny cultish minority, living
| in a fantasy world, foolishly believing a con while the woke
| right-thinkers (who have a lot of real friends) laugh at you.
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