
How social networks can be used to bias votes - bryanrasmussen
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02616-2
======
whatshisface
If only this level of scrutiny was applied to traditional mass media over the
last century. All of these techniques are just updated versions of handing the
anchorman a biased script.

~~~
rossdavidh
My thoughts exactly. You know what else can bias voters? Expert testimony,
even in fields outside their expertise. Religious leaders. Teachers. Flyers.
Advertisements. In fact, just about any form of communication by anybody.
Without comparing the size of the bias to other forms of influence, this is a
nearly contentless statement.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
Know how you get a human to believe something? Make them work for the
information. The more someone works for information the more likely they are
to believe it is valid. I think this is why you see modern educated people
with such deference to the "experts". They know the hard work and the costs
involved in becoming a academic and as such they value that experience with an
almost religious fervor.

~~~
Lendal
Wow. Are you really equating expertise with religious fervor?

The anti-expertise movement is what I would describe as religious fervor, not
the other way round.

~~~
cat199
here, have some economics experts:

[https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/view/](https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/view/)

[https://www.cato.org/research/growth-
development](https://www.cato.org/research/growth-development)

how big is the middle part of the venn diagram here?

being skeptical of domain-experts is only 'religious fervor' if the field is
cut-and-dried. many aren't

~~~
Lendal
Let me guess. You cherry-picked some cases where experts were wrong. Am I
right? Here, read this: [https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-
Established-...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-
Knowledge-dp-0190865970/dp/0190865970/ref=mt_paperback)

I don't have time for this.

~~~
cat199
cherry picked? yes and no.

These are both hugely influential policy think tanks which hire experts. They
both have hugely differing views on the economy.

Or is providing evidence to support a claim now 'cherry picking' to be
dismissed? And if so, aren't you proving my point?

------
tqi
> We initially assume the payoff to the losing team is positive, b > 0, which
> reflects a ‘compromise worldview’: it is preferable to reach some decision
> than to end in deadlock. This payoff scheme captures the common practical
> value of broad consensus in collective decisions, even as individuals pursue
> partisan preferences12,13. There is ample evidence that large majorities of
> Americans, for example, adopt a compromise worldview in their attitudes
> towards political decisions14. However, others adopt a ‘zero-sum worldview’
> in which they prefer deadlock to their party losing, that is, b < 0\. The
> behaviour of people with a zero-sum worldview is simple: they act as
> zealots, meaning that they always vote for their preferred party regardless
> of the poll that they see. We begin by focusing on players with a compromise
> worldview, and then we study groups with a mixture of compromise and zero-
> sum players, including zero-sum bots.

In the context of voters in our modern politics, does the "compromise"
viewpoint even exist?

~~~
jcranberry
They do, but they're decreasing in number. They're also kind of boring so they
don't get coverage the way highly vocal 'zealots' do.

------
shay_ker
It's an interesting study in terms of how they conducted it, but isn't it
obvious? If political ads didn't swing votes, no one would run them.

~~~
tqi
This study would also indicate that political polling has the ability to
influence elections?

~~~
ekianjo
Of course, anything that brings focus potentially changes the final metric.

~~~
tqi
I would agree, but I think most political reporters and pollsters view
themselves as impartial observers rather than active participants...

~~~
ekianjo
What they view themselves as does not change the fact that they skew things in
one way or another. The only observer that is neutral is the one that is not
seen and not heard of.

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jcranberry
>All data necessary to reproduce the results are available at
[https://github.com/jplotkin/InformationGerrymandering](https://github.com/jplotkin/InformationGerrymandering)

>For example, when just a few yellow-party zealots were deployed strategically
among a larger number of undecided players in the purple party, these bots
were able to sway the majority opinion towards the yellow party. This was true
even when the parties had exactly the same number of members, and when each
player had the same amount of influence.

I'd like to know a little more about the experiment, specifically how much
information was available to individual voters. Did they know the votes of
specific other voters? Of their party specifically? Or just the overall
polling situation? Were they allowed to communicate, like through a chat box
or something?

Without knowing these details I'm finding it a little hard to understand how
these few 'planted' zealots were able to influence the result that strongly.

------
FredrikMeyer
There is an ongoing controversy in Norway right now, where a TV show during
one month tried to manipulate the results of "school elections" (basically
mocks of the real elections, where one votes for the real parties - the
results are often used as an indicator for the real election results some
weeks later).

The goal of the show was to show how election results can be manipulated,
which created some outrage: some of the students are old enough to vote in the
real elections, so they might have manipulated real results.

Norwegian news source: [https://www.nrk.no/norge/folkeopplysningen_-slik-
forsokte-de...](https://www.nrk.no/norge/folkeopplysningen_-slik-forsokte-de-
a-manipulere-skolevalget-1.14688590)

------
maggotmagnet
Yes, it all comes down to money. Money = the means to influence = power. It is
interesting to note that citizens have been self-inflicting political bubbles
upon themselves this for hundreds of years by surrounding themselves with
similar-minded people (i.e., people who aren't going to argue with their
politics).

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ilaksh
Votes are biased by worldview and worldview is tied to group identification.

------
rolph
i think this might cross over to something like: Election campaigns can be
used to bias votes.

That being said social media has a great potential to be used for campaign
violations.

~~~
return0
Elections considered harmful.

------
jessaustin
It's impossible to tell from TFA or the abstract what precisely is meant by
"information gerrymandering". One imagines some sort of graph theory or "six
degrees of Bacon" argument. "This node should only influence some number of
other nodes, but in fact if you count second- and third-order connections it
influences some _higher_ number of other nodes!" Presumably they've picked out
some particular criteria for differentiating justifiable influence from
unjustifiable influence. The criteria are probably fine; since we don't know
them the point is moot.

Even if one accepts all of that, one still can't follow TFA to its conclusion
of "...voters really can be manipulated in the digital age. Legislators and
regulators must take note." We've been working on this "giant graph of nodes
influencing each other" problem for decades now. That's just SEO. That's the
basic thing that Google does. Any network has these properties, even the
"snail" networks of pamphlets and broadsheets that kept our founding fathers
informed.

It was completely appropriate for late-18C pamphleteers to publish and
distribute according to the dictates of their own best judgment. It's
completely appropriate for today's social network operators to do the same.
It's completely appropriate for _users_ to do just exactly as they please,
whatever the TOS say. What is not appropriate is for "legislators and
regulators" to imagine they have a damned thing to say about this process.

1A is not ambiguous on this question. The government don't get to forbid the
public from hearing Trump describing to Billy Bush his techniques of
seduction. They don't get to forbid the public from hearing Clinton tell
bankers they should be able to regulate themselves. [0] It's a conversation
because they _don 't_ get to decide everything that gets said. For three years
now, a segment of the "intelligentsia" have wallowed in a mode of magical
thinking about networks and bots that has left them completely uninterested in
real things. If this research can help them break out of this rut, one
welcomes it. However, that seems unlikely...

[0] [https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-podesta-emails-show-
ber...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaked-podesta-emails-show-bernie-was-
right)

------
ultrablack
Advertising works. News at 11...

Here, all the polls are skewes towards whoever the polsters support. And have
been for many years..

At least they can’t blame Trumps victory on this as the polls showed Hillary
in the lead until after the election.

------
aglavine
Why Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) isn't willing to work with local
media and communities? Maybe off topic but genuine question.

We have traditional media that failed to transition to Web. Same stuff in
different package, instead of collaborative approach.

And we have social media that fails to deliver the promise of communities.
Fails in the transition from virtual to real world.

From my experience, success in Facebook is closed groups. They are the ones
with most activity and the ones that achieves real social events.

Both players (traditional media and social media) have what the other one
lacks. I'm really scratching my head on why they aren't working together.

~~~
Nasrudith
Work with how? What would that entails? What is stopping them from getting
their own right now?

~~~
aglavine
Contributing with collaborative tools, billing, linking communities, managing
users, comments, events, etc.

Local media adds content, moderation and insite presence.

A lot of communities can benefit from this.

~~~
aglavine
Events like cleaning trash, planting trees, sport events, improving schools.

