
How Twitter Is Being Gamed to Feed Misinformation - nature24
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/technology/how-twitter-is-being-gamed-to-feed-misinformation.html
======
Florin_Andrei
> _Twitter is making the news dumber. The service is insidery and clubby. It
> exacerbates groupthink. It prizes pundit-ready quips over substantive
> debate, and it tends to elevate the silly over the serious — for several
> sleepless hours this week it was captivated by “covfefe,” which was
> essentially a brouhaha over a typo._

This paragraph captures the essence of it perfectly.

The medium basically encourages superficial thinking, or lack of thinking
altogether. It's appropriate for rumors and informal shout-outs and chats, but
not much more than that.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
It "encourages" superficiality because it _precludes_ "substantive debate" by
reason of its artificial character limit.

I'm surprised. I managed to make that point in 120 characters. I've had
several accounts, over the years, trying to get into it. I can't stand that
you can't really put anything substantive in 140 characters, and I hate split
tweets, to provide context, just like this, even more.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
There's tons of superficial and annoying posts on Medium and Facebook posts,
as well as people sharing screenshots of their iPhone notes app on Twitter.
Most of their authors posted them because they want attention.

It's not about the character limit. It's more about how humans want attention
and there's an infrastructure to support that desire.

~~~
saurik
But there are also tons of reasoned and interesting posts on those mediums...
the closest that exist on Twitter is the occasionally burst of tweets that you
probably didn't even read on Twitter but saw on one of those Twitter
conversation archiving websites, as the burst of tweets is totally untraceable
:/. Twitter doesn't just "encourage" superficial content with its character
limit: it actively _enforces_ superficial content if you want to participate.
I have _half a million followers on Twitter_ and I essentially don't ever post
anything there as it is next to impossible to say anything of value in 140
characters :/. Everyone I know in my field with Twitter accounts and a ton of
followers essentially just use it to post snide bullshit and start arguments,
or try _and fail_ to be informative and spend the next week trying _and
failing_ to correct some misconception people got due to lack of context. The
closest it comes to ever working is in the small community of people who
_seriously take to reddit to discuss what someone said on Twitter_ , which is
the dumbest thing I could imagine... and it isn't even like Twitter is some
amazingly successful company that can say "you are wrong, this works great":
most of the talk about them is that they will fail or be acquired at a much
lower valuation than they had many years ago.

~~~
ikeyany
Twitter is an endless bag of potato chips for the mind. However, it's within
our nature to seek the path of least resistance, and munch on snack food to
keep busy.

------
TheRealDunkirk
Seems to me the whole article is an excuse to "debunk" the conspiracy theory
around the obviously-suspicious Seth Rich story.

This sort of thing just confirms, to my satisfaction, that facts will have
essentially no bearing on the next US presidential election. The journalists
have had their day. Future political wars will be waged and won on social
media, based on propaganda and confirmation bias.

~~~
lj3
> The journalists have had their day. Future political wars will be waged and
> won on social media, based on propaganda and confirmation bias.

What do you think the news has been for the last 100 years (or longer)? It was
never unbiased. The news has always pushed the agenda of the entity that owned
it.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Well, sure, but there was very definitely a clear ethical line in proper
journalism, as a profession. You had to have the basic facts right, by at
least 2 different sources. I think this has changed now.

For instance, is Trump in league with the Russians? What are the facts? On the
other side, did Hillary break the law with her email server? What are the
actual facts? In both of these cases, you can trace the points of argument ad
nauseam, and an unbiased observer can come away with a feeling that both sides
of both of these issues make good points. I know it's not a popular position
to take on HN, but that's the way I feel about AGW. I think both sides have
good points, and I don't know what to conclude.

I'm not entirely clear that it's completely nefarious. I just think we've
reached a point as a society -- almost like a Maslow hierarchy -- where any
problem we discuss is so complicated that there are (at least) 2 sides to
anything worth discussing, and they make internal sense, and the difference is
the worldview you bring to the argument.

With the drubbing the major news outlets took being COMPLETELY wrong about the
last election, I think they've squandered the last bit of trust people had in
them as objective reporters of fact. And, if it's all about opinion, then
people are either going to reinforce their biases, or simply check out.

~~~
cheetos
The phenomenon you're describing: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
truth_politics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics)

------
pillowkusis
a suprisingly self-aware and perceptive piece from a member of the media
"digestive tract" that produces this problem day in and day out.

I think this sheds too much blame away from major news media outlets, whose
whole job _should have_ been to fact check the stories they hear on the
"ground" (twitter). But it assesses twitter's role correctly.

The piece I think people forget is that twitter has absolutely no financial
interest in solving the "misinformation" problem. Fake news drives engagement.
People like and retweet everything, regardless of if its true. Twitter is a
key tool for the media (and I suspect that's where the vast majority of its
value comes from). It's at the centerpiece of the news cycle now. Twitter is
great for short, digestible snippets and one-liners that the media (and fake
news) thrives on. At every level, they are incentivized to drive "engagement"
and this can mean at the cost of truth.

Nothing will change (significantly) until twitters bottom line (user
engagement as a proxy for ad money) changes.

~~~
visakanv
> Nothing will change (significantly) until twitters bottom line (user
> engagement as a proxy for ad money) changes.

This has been a problem for media since the dawn of man, I wonder if we can
really solve it within our lifetimes. Seems improbable.

------
joezydeco
Trump currently has 30 million followers, 15 million of which are fake or
bots. About 8 million just showed up in the last 5 months, 2.5 million _in the
last 4 weeks_.

[http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-twitter-followers-
fake-...](http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-twitter-followers-fake-617873)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/05/31...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2017/05/31/something-fishy-is-going-on-with-trumps-twitter-account-
researchers-say)

------
nfRfqX5n
fairly easy to spot the bots, but they all follow each other and have at least
one (usually only one) picture of "themselves" to seem legit. the content of
their twitter is all retweets or harsh responses. click on any political
trending topic and see for yourself.

this has been going on for well over a year now, really surprised twitter
can't figure out a decent solution like shadowbanning

~~~
linkregister
I agree with everything you said, the bots will respond with inapplicable
snarky responses to the target their programmer wishes to delegitimize. "Check
your sources" for a post from CNN talking about their lunch today, etc.

I disagree that shadowbanning is a good idea; any frequent Twitter user
remembers the controversy surrounding various outspoken celebrities claiming
they were being shadowbanned as a result of their views.

Probably a better solution would be to require a daily captcha or other
solution to add friction and cost to bot operators.

------
extr
"Twitter is basically a bunch of 00s forums that would all hate each other
mashed together but also for some reason, professional journalists" \-
[https://twitter.com/StuntBirdArmy/status/733846091347693568](https://twitter.com/StuntBirdArmy/status/733846091347693568)

Couldn't agree more. But I really enjoyed 00s forums so I really enjoy
twitter. The journalists, if anything, are ruining it by treating it as a
clubhouse and a legitimate proxy for what's on the nation's mind.

~~~
bbctol
Something about the structure of twitter makes things that happen there seem
much larger than they are. It's an OK platform if you recognize that the
communities on it are really, in the grand scheme of things, very _small_
\--but so many (especially media types) apparently view every random
controversy caused by 3-4 highly-followed users saying something dumb as a
vast cultural trend that needs to be reported on.

~~~
RugnirViking
This is an important thing to remember. I wish the bbc would remember this
when they post random twitter comments as if it were representative of the
people reading their story.

------
siegecraft
It's amusing to see owners of disinformation platforms lose control of their
content. They are put in the losing position of always playing catch-up to
censor information which is often a pointless endeavor since by the time they
catch up the mob's attention has moved on (but sometimes they can stop kill
movements in their infancy). This is just the first wave, though. Newer
platforms will be even more heavily AI-censored and manipulated; hopefully
adversarial / chaos content keeps slipping through.

------
awinter-py
I'm a twitter troll but not by choice -- you need to have organic activity to
advertise on their platform.

Selection bias at work here but my push-stream is 80% journalists/writers 20%
schizophrenics. I can't imagine anyone being on there by choice. My adrenal
glands are shot from 6 weeks of semi-pro use.

If NYT is going to argue that people are being deceived they need to explain
what people are doing on the platform. Is anyone on there really not complicit
in having strong emotions spewed at them by B-list brookings wonks?

------
morsmodr
This is exactly what technology platforms bring out, the public decides what
is of importance. But the issue isn't the platform itself. It just shows us on
a large scale what drives the mentality of 80% of the population. Group
mentality always lowers the IQ of individuals who are part of it. Ever heard
of herd mentality?

A friend in one of my whatsapp groups shared an image with the meaning of
covfefe yesterday, and I had no clue what it was about. I am on twitter but do
not follow public personalities with the exception of 1 or 2 of them from my
country. The beauty of twitter is in following people who aren't public
personalities but are doing some cool/unique work in their walk of life.

Now this decision making is up-to the individual, to elevate one's own
thoughts, ideas by focusing on good posts or to drown in mediocrity. The point
as an individual for me is that exactly, strive to stay away from the noise-
makers and focus on what is truly important. I would not be surprised if my
comment gets a troll or a pissed off response that says 'I love stupidity,
revel in it, keep your elitism to yourself' The best would be no comment or
probably a comment which builds the conversation. But this isn't my choice, is
it? Controlling what types of comments are allowed.

\- _The idea of freedom is that even stupidity can be practiced (my own
quote)_

------
HoppedUpMenace
America is driven toward having the information of the world encapsulated and
fed to the masses as quickly and as often as possible. In my experience, this
reflects any conversation I've ever had with most people in real life, give
the bullet points, spare the details. If people really wanted details, they'd
have to actually care about what is being discussed instead of looking to be
mildly entertained, for example, 2 people conversing in real life:

"Trump is de-funding planned parenthood, that really sucks." "Wow... Really?
Did you hear about his Covfefe tweet this morning? What an idiot!"

------
snickerbockers
> After last year’s election, Facebook came in for a drubbing for its role in
> propagating misinformation — or “fake news,” as we called it back then,
> before the term became a catchall designation for any news you don’t like.

Don't lie NYT, that was always the point.

------
wand3r
NYT is being gamed to feed misinformation so this is ironic to read; like the
BuzzFeed article on fake news. I'm no Trump supporter but I have screen caps
of single digit election predictions; e.g. 90/10 Hillary. It's owned by a
Billionaire Mexican communications mogul[1] and is pretty much leftist & big
business propaganda.

The only difference on Twitter is that a lot of little voices parrot 1 message
instead of one loud one. The bots are great. You need both sides of propaganda
to comfortably land in the middle; or at least be informed.

[1] Please don't pretend the founding family stock split helps them retain
control.

~~~
epistasis
> I'm no Trump supporter but I have screen caps of single digit election
> predictions; e.g. 90/10 Hillary.

Yes, of course you do, these have been well documented by the same sources
that produced the models. Why would you feel the need to screen cap them? Why
would you put this statement next to fake news?

Do you not understand what was in your screencap?

~~~
wand3r
538 was being laughed at for 70/30 or greater and HuffPo and NYT had Hillary
dancing on stage with Jay Z. I screen capped various organizations refusing to
update polls, refusing to post WikiLeaks info and above all refusing to _do
the fucking news_.

NYT broke Watergate which was embargoed by the president. I will never forgive
them for how shameful and cowardly they have become. I am sure there are great
men and women who work there, and for them I feel the worst.

~~~
linkregister
_> refusing to post WikiLeaks info_

NYT, among others, has been widely castigated by Democrats for putting Hillary
Email stories on their front page.

~~~
jjawssd
"Widely castigated" is a huge hyperbole. Suppression of the email stories is
absolutely critical for maintaining political control by the Democrat party.

Is there any other reason the NYT would suppress this story?

~~~
linkregister
What are you saying, that the Democrats celebrated the move?

Are you disputing that the email story made it to the front page of the NYT?

------
creaghpatr
Would be interested to know what percent of the NYTs twitter followers are
fake.

~~~
sp332
An estimate of course, but ~30 million real, 7 million fake.
[https://www.twitteraudit.com/nytimes](https://www.twitteraudit.com/nytimes)

