
Bots Are Playing a Bigger Role in the Election Than People Realize (2016) - bhalp1
https://dev.to/ben/bots-are-playing-a-bigger-role-in-the-election-than-people-realize
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hackeraccount
I understand what they're getting at but it still seems like every single
person is of the opinion that they view the facts and come to logical
conclusion. Everyone also believes that everyone other then themselves is a
simple minded dolt easily manipulated.

In the context of this article my biggest problem is that there's an
assumption that only one side is easily manipulated (i.e. those idiots who
voted for Trump but left to their own devices would have voted for Clinton)
and only one side does the manipluating (i.e. our side puts out an honest
version of the facts which obviously is complicated and difficult to
understand. The other side lies to get morons to side with them.)

If we can all just get on board with the idea that everyone except for me is a
simple minded dolt I think we'll all be happier.

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beaconstudios
so 4chan once again gamed the internet using bots, for their own amusement, to
attempt to help the campaign and to irritate people they see as political
enemies. We've seen this so many times now, why is it still surprising or
attributed to nebulous groups ("it's the Russians!") rather than a well known
group of internet rabble-rousers? Not that this article does so, but the wider
press often seems to.

It wouldn't be half the impact if every time they did something like this, the
wider media brushed it off as "4chan did something that was meant to be
provocative again".

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meowface
4chan (really, just /pol/) is one of many communities doing this. The Russian
government is another entity that's doing this. There's no reason it can't be
both.

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beaconstudios
absolutely, but I guess I'm seeing way too much attribution going towards the
Russians. If some twitter account with an anime avatar tweets some blatantly
incendiary stuff it's "Russian troll accounts" now. It's a bit OTT even for
the scope and scale of the Russian interference, which was grand.

~~~
meowface
Yes, and that was partly the point all along: to spread FUD about people being
Russian agents, events being Russia-manipulated, and ideas being Russia-
propagated. Russian intelligence has surely succeeded on that front.

The rational people out there aren't throwing around any such accusations,
though. Instead, they rely on the documented instances of proven Russian
trolls, as uncovered by law enforcement, the intelligence community, and
Facebook and Twitter's security teams. Accusing an account of being on the
Kremlin's dime is pretty absurd without forensic evidence. Very obviously, the
vast majority of pro-Trump accounts out there are either organic, or not
organic but operated by Trump-supporting US nationals.

