
Enabling further research of information operations on Twitter - nafizh
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/enabling-further-research-of-information-operations-on-twitter.html
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minimaxir
Here's a good Twitter thread on preliminary findings from the dataset:
[https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1052545119826706433](https://twitter.com/benimmo/status/1052545119826706433)

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WAthrowaway
Perfect training data for my own botnet for the 2020 election

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ProAm
I dont understand why any social media company is beholden to the American
political system?

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thsowers
One could argue that social media companies are attempting to appear
responsible for fear that if they don't then govt might regulate them more

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ProAm
I just don't understand what they would regulate. Would they ban other
countries from using Twitter? Would they censor foreign tweets within the US
border? What is wrong or illegal with allowing foreigners to comment about our
election system?

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moorhosj
==I just don't understand what they would regulate.==

The first step to answering this question lies in understanding the data.

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ProAm
I just dont think it matters if a foreign person (or bot farm) tries to sway
an election? They aren't telling any more lies than the politicians, their
PACs and/or supporters are already spreading. They just don't happen to be in
the US, but we live in a global economy, with treaties, arms deals, pacts,
etc.... If someone is dumb enough to be swayed by what they read on Twitter it
doesn't matter who is sending the message. No one said the internet is a
source of truth or honesty, and in reality there isn't much of that in US
politics anyways, especially during an election campaign. This seems like
political fodder and grandstanding by all parties.

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matt4077
Contrary to popular opinion, politicians actually (used to) lie very rarely.
For non-elected officials, such as the WH press secretary, it was even rarer.

Yes, they'd deny comment, avoid the question, give a completely unrelated
answer, etc. But they avoided actual lying.

What was especially rare was lying to _gain_ something, as opposed to, for
example, getting out of a scandal. There are people now gearing up to give me
contrarian examples of politician X telling that story how they were shot at
in Belgrade, etc. But the simple fact that we remember these episodes proves
their extraordinary nature.

So I'd say the main problem with your comment, among many others, is this
cynical view that everything is as terrible as it can be, anyway. If that were
true, we'd have lost already and the US would be indistinguishable from, say,
Yemen.

Once you agree that there is something like a political culture, or at least
there could be, your other claim seems to be that the internet just doesn't
matter. Because people shouldn't use it for information, or because it just is
a space seperate from "the real world" in your mind.

But just as nobody is ever influenced by advertising and yet the practice
continues, everyone thinks it's a stupid idea to get your news from Twitter
but it just happens to be one of many channels that has an impact on people's
opinions.

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ProAm
> So I'd say the main problem with your comment, among many others, is this
> cynical view that everything is as terrible as it can be, anyway. If that
> were true, we'd have lost already and the US would be indistinguishable
> from, say, Yemen.

I think there is a lot to be said about the Dog and Pony show we see during
campaign season to what politicians actually do and accomplish once in office.
Whether they are outright lies or just knowingly false promises or attempts to
slander an opponents images, it's definitely a show that rarely has anything
to do with what they will do if elected. Cynical? Probably yes, but it's also
based on a lifetime of watching what occurs in this country every few years.
So whether its the 'home team' sending out these messages of what will change,
or how bad X person is, etc.. or a foreign entity anyone who believes what
they see, hear or read during a campaign cycle is a person not in touch with
reality. But I still believe that any attempts to regulate this is just
political grandstanding after all it's the internet, everyone has a voice.

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moorhosj
==But I still believe that any attempts to regulate this is just political
grandstanding after all it's the internet, everyone has a voice.==

I'll ignore the fact that many mediums (print, radio, tv) have been regulated
and ask this: Is a bot part of everyone? If I control 5 bots, do I now get 5
voices instead of just one?

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ProAm
Yes, with citizens united if you work for a company you already get 2 voices.
If people are so swayed with what the consume on the internet we are already
doomed.

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moorhosj
==If people are so swayed with what the consume on the internet we are already
doomed.==

The counter to this would be: If people aren't swayed with what they consume
on the internet then Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snap, Twitter, Pinterest and
more would have market caps of about $0. The primary revenue stream for each
of these companies is advertising on the internet.

Since large corporations pay these companies significant dollars to advertise
on their platforms, we can assume that their analysis shows some type of
return on that investment. With that in mind, maybe there is a middle ground
between your fatalism and the standard political grandstanding.

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ProAm
> we can assume that their analysis shows some type of return on that
> investment.

I wouldn't assume anything there.

> With that in mind, maybe there is a middle ground between your fatalism and
> the standard political grandstanding.

I'm sure there is but I still dont see why the government should be required
to regulate SOCIAL media companies. It's social media for a reason.

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moorhosj
==I wouldn't assume anything there.==

If you are going to dismiss it, then you should bring some evidence. Failing
that, it is safe to assume that if profit-seeking corporations continue to
spend billions of dollars a year for advertising, there is some return on
investment. If there wasn't, the market would adjust.

== It's social media for a reason. ==

I don't understand what this means. They added the word social, so it is no
longer media?

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ProAm
> If you are going to dismiss it, then you should bring some evidence.

There is plenty of evidence that supports both sides of the claim. It's
pointless to discuss because it will not stop the market.

> I don't understand what this means. They added the word social, so it is no
> longer media?

It's media in the essence that it's a means of communication, and media alone,
especially social media, shouldn't be regulated by the government on private
platforms. The government has no reasonable reason to stop people from voicing
their opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics on social
discussion platforms.

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moorhosj
==There is plenty of evidence that supports both sides of the claim.==

Please share your evidence.

==The government has no reasonable reason to stop people from voicing their
opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics on social discussion
platforms.==

Bots are not people, which renders the point moot. Even if bots were granted
rights, they are committing fraud by assuming fake identities and attempting
to sway people's actions for gain. Fraud is a crime, crimes are regulated by
the government.

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ProAm
> Please share your evidence.

You can google on your own, I will not be doing. Nor replying further to this
conversation thread.

> Bots are not people, which renders the point moot.

Exactly so there is no need to regulate information or opinion coming out of a
essentially a robot. They are not committing fraud as for social media has
never been regarded as a system of truth there is no law that says I must tell
the truth when posting on social media. Nor has social media every been
restricted to one account per person.

This has been a fun conversation but I am done speaking on it as for nothing
we discuss will change anything or either's opinion.

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moorhosj
I'll continue to assume you have no evidence as you continue to not produce
any.

==Exactly so there is no need to regulate information or opinion coming out of
a essentially a robot.==

Two comments ago it couldn't be regulated because it would "stop people from
voicing their opinions, or expressing satire, or discussing politics"; now you
say they are just robots. Which is it, people or robots?

Your stance is equivalent to believing Samuel Clemens couldn't be held liable
for something that "Mark Twain" did/said. If you build a bot and that bot
commits fraud, you have committed fraud.

==This has been a fun conversation but I am done speaking on it as for nothing
we discuss will change anything or either's opinion. ==

You are speaking for yourself, not me.

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PowerfulWizard
I wonder how long until we see 2nd gen propaganda twitter trolling. If
aggressive twitter propaganda that is in favor of candidate X has the effect
of make candidate X look bad, and anyone can do it since they're all fake
anyway, I don't think it will take long to be used in a false flag sense.

Edit: even in situation where the person(s) responsible might not be in favor
of either side, for example if someone were doing it in both direction i.e. in
Clinton vs. Bernie primary just to corrode the relationship and weaken the
winner.

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olefoo
This has already been done. cf. The "Bernie Bros" accounts that were harassing
democrat women.

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rc_kas
Are there "likes" in the dataset? Sometimes I think the likes and their effect
on trending tweets is way more damaging than tweets themselves.

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minimaxir
Yes, the dataset has quotes/reply/likes/retweet counts.

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21
It will be interesting to see the left-wing/right-wing proportion. Ie: do they
shill and troll both sides to increase division and reciprocal hate.

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jdoliner
I'm pretty confident you'll find plenty of both and lots of stuff that's
ambiguously in between. I'm sure you'll also get different answers about which
stuff is "left" and which stuff is "right" based on who you're talking to.
Groups and people who are really good at propaganda understand that it's
really not about left vs. right propaganda, it's about controlling the
narrative. I think the best example you can find of this is Andrew Breitbart,
everyone knows about the "news" outlet he founded which bears his name,
Breitbart News. Most don't know about the other news outlet he founded (or
rather that he founded it): The Huffington Post. Andrew understood better than
anyone at the time how to control the narrative by being on both sides of it.

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baybal2
>better than anyone at the time

Really? The trick is... no less than 2k years old, no Dzerzhinski was around
king Herod's time

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yasp
How do they know which accounts were in fact created by the IRA / Iran?

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malvosenior
Also, why don't they include other propaganda bad actors like Correct The
Record?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record)

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yasp
Also what about propaganda created by the US under the Smith-Mundt
Modernization Act?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2013#Smith-
Mundt_Modernization_Act_of_2012)

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tootahe45
I have a feeling paid-for domestic influence campaigns are a lot more
important at this point. What about CTR accounts and the bots they used to
mass-upvote their opinions? Reddit is what I really want to see some
transparency from.

