My reply to BooMan’s comment …
Re: Another Putin Front? Voice of America (none / 0)
This is an embarrassment to the site.
by BooMan on Thu Mar 23rd, 2017 at 12:46:51 AM PDT
Hillary won the popular vote with a big margin, nevertheless … it’s Putin’s fault.
- In the study, the researchers analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21, this year. They found that a high percentage of the political discussion taking place on Twitter was created by pro-Donald Trump — Republican Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election — and pro-Hillary Clinton — Democratic Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election — software robots, or social bots, with the express purpose of distorting the online discussion regarding the elections. Robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent.
How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election | The Atlantic |
The conservative political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes summed up the relative value of digits in a conversation with Anderson Cooper. “The only place that we’re hearing that Donald Trump honestly is losing is in the media or these polls,” she said. “You’re not seeing it with the crowd rallies, you’re not seeing it on social media–where Donald Trump is two to three times more popular than Hillary Clinton on every social media platform.”
The candidate himself has echoed this argument. During the first presidential debate, he touted a 30-million strong Facebook and Twitter following as a sign of mainstream popularity not reflected elsewhere.
The Clinton campaign, meanwhile, has stuck by traditional polls as evidence of her success.
Bots … Leaving BooMan Behind!
‘Bots’ step up for 2016 election news coverage
If you’re reading about the US election, some of that news is likely to come to you from a “bot”.
« click for more info »
Automated systems known as “bots” or “robo-journalism” have been around for years, but they are playing a bigger role in coverage this year amid technology advances and stretched media resources.
The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Yahoo News and the non-profit Pro Publica are among news organizations using automated technology or messaging bots for coverage in the runup to Tuesday’s vote or on election night.
News organizations are increasing use both of systems which employ algorithms to create text from data, and of automated “bots” delivering updates to smartphones.
Turning data into stories
The nonprofit news site ProPublica’s election data bot, created with Google News Lab, updates every 15 minutes with election forecasts, campaign finance reports, Google Trends and other data.
Another nonprofit called the PollyVote Project delivers similar dispatches based on poll results and other data.
“Every time we get new data we create an automated news item,” said Andreas Graefe, a fellow at Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism who is leader of the project funded by the Tow Center and Germany’s LMU Munich University.
“We can publish articles seconds after we receive the data, and we can do it in an unlimited amount.”Graefe said several studies in Europe have shown that readers cannot tell the difference between a human- or computer-generated news article.
“When you ask people how readable a story is, they rate the human article better, but when you ask them how credible it is, the computer is better,” he said. “We don’t really know why.”
Cambridge Analytica: US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency
It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission.
Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years’ experience in military disinformation campaigns and “election management”, claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers.
From NY Times article:
The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor is unclear …
The story explicitly states ‘a wealthy Republican donor’.
Now if you scroll to the bottom of this article to ‘read more’:
[Source: How US billionaire Robert Mercer influenced Brexit and Trump’s presidential win]
Bloomberg, Jan 20, 2016 – What Kind of Man Spends Millions to Elect Ted Cruz.
Secretive and behind the scenes multi-millionaire/billionaire donors to GOP candidates may not be a dime a dozen, but there are a lot of them. Or maybe we should say more of them than exist on the Democratic side. Or that could be an illusion because big-bucks Democrats aren’t so shy.
○ Dutch private server of the dark web was favorite in DNC attacks by “Russians”
Is that where the DNC attacks hooked up with ‘pizzagate?’
Thanks – I guess. Sorry for making what I thought was a lame joke. Had no idea this crap CT promulgated by the right during the 2016 election (and has found weak minds that continue to obsess over it and insist that it’s true) had migrated. Doesn’t compute for me why pro-government trolls in Turkey consider this a plus for them, but I’m not a Turk and don’t know enough about the specifics of this CT there (and don’t want to know more) plays out there.
Totally disgusts me that people appropriate a real problem like child sex abuse/exploitation/trafficking and turn it into an insane conspiracy among elites in a political faction. “Chicken Little” CT harms the real victims and efforts to rescue them and catch the perpetrators by exhausting public attention over a hoax.
The Guardian – ‘Pizzagate’ gunman pleads guilty as conspiracy theorist apologizes over case
Apologies are lame. What would be satisfying is if James Alefantis could sue Alex Jones and take everything Jones has and will ever get in the future.
I read that the majority of Trump’s twitter subscribers were actually bots. I’ll see if I can find a link.
Well, now we know what to look for, the “bot ballots.” A dastardly clever plot.
Well, the numbers are fuzzier than I’d like. Politico estimated 80% of Trump’s traffic was bot-generated. That’s a fairly respectable estimate since it can look at thing like tweet timing. Followers is more questionable. Only 15% of Trump’s followers were verifiable as real Americans. There are suspiciously high numbers from spam locations like Nigeria. But most have no identifying information so it’s hard to say what they are – human or bot.
No use of “suggested, seems to be, could be, etc,” in the bot lexicon. Simple declarative sentences (and not too many of them) are more persuasive. Sort of the difference between the speech between the two major candidates.
Makes sense. I was in a rush and forgot to add “very surprising, I wonder why”. But you answered my unspoken question.
Vefy interesting post, oui. What a sad, depressing state of affairs.
○ The fake news swirling around the Westminster attack | France24 |
A global nuisance … interference! 😉
The trolls and false flag imaginarians keep growing and getting thicker. Reminds me of those that peddled stories of having been abducted and rode on a UFO back when I was a kid. The consequences of promulgating irrational, alternative “explanations” aren’t benign. They prey on weak minds and hurt many.
“all terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON….” That wasn’t fake news, it was a hoot.
I’ve spent a lot of time in England including a sabbatical year and really appreciate droll English humor.
A lot of the other items were also unmistakably intended to be humorous–the Asian guy in front of a Confederate battle flag? With a sword? how could anyone not see that was a joke?
Is this why the news about all the Jewish centers receiving threats suddenly stopped appearing some days ago?
Haaretz – Israeli Cybercrime Police Arrest Israeli-American Teen for ‘Hundreds’ of Bomb Threats Against Jewish Centers Worldwide
Since he was arrested, it seems he was acting on his own initiative (or, at least, without governmental blessing). And that was misguided in the extreme and incredibly unfortunate.
Hate crimes and anti-Semitism are on the rise, but now the real threats have less credibility, and it gives cover to the people this guy smeared.
Agree with this: the real threats have less credibility, and it gives cover to the people this guy smeared. (Similar to what the ‘pizzagate’ hoaxers are doing and which I’ve already railed about.)
However, this one individual was responsible for hundreds of threats (only arrested two days ago). He alone could account for the reported increase. So, the numbers will have to be recalculated excluding his threats before we know if they have in fact increased. Plus, whenever something proliferates, it encourages others to join in.
My point in posting this news was smaller and simpler. It took two years for authorities to narrow in on one kid making a large number of threats over that period of time. Without any high level tech expertise or equipment. Sort of like ‘Guccifer.’
This is not the first time phenomena happened. I recall a similar case.
Yeah, but it’s difficult for some people to get and heed historical lessons.
Michael Morell, fmr. deputy director of the CIA, discusses the House intelligence hearings and Trump’s claims of surveillance by the Obama administration.
○ Ex-CIA director who endorsed Clinton calls for killing Iranians and Russians in Syria | The Intercept – Aug. 2016 |
○ Former CIA Director Morell will vote for HRC on Nov. 8 | Politico|