
The Yang Gang and Its Bots - mbellotti
https://medium.com/@bellmar/the-yang-gang-and-its-bots-493dbd482f4b
======
raz32dust
The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them
being closely connected and cliquey. She makes that inference very quickly,
and from then on, they are just referred to as "bots". I am 100% sure there
are bots, but I am highly skeptical that Yang Gang is the worst offender here
or stands out in any way compared to other campaigns. In fact a quick check on
twitteraudit.com tells that he might be better than others, although I don't
know how good their fake follower detection works.

I have been following this campaign since a few months, and I can attest that
it has pulled in a large number of voters who were not politically inclined,
the members are very passionate, and also that Yang Gang is quite cliquey and
live in an echo chamber. Given those facts, I won't be surprised if those
accounts were mostly real people.

Full disclosure: I like Yang.

~~~
grumple
> The author presents no evidence of these accounts being bots other than them
> being closely connected and cliquey.

Multiple accounts with the same name, image, and profile, coupled with radical
changes in the types of content posted, and also with superhuman (clearly
automated) posting rates? What more evidence do you need?

~~~
raz32dust
I didn't say there weren't any bots. But the article portrays Yang's followers
as somehow being more full of bots than others. There is no evidence for that.

------
godelski
This is an interesting post if you also follow the subreddit for Yang[0].

There are a lot of people there that created Twitter accounts just to follow
Yang and participate in those polls about who is more popular. So when the
author mentions the creation of new accounts when Yang started, it actually
doesn't surprise me. The campaign is very technocentric after all. Also, these
people (a lot of them "true believers" types) do post A LOT on Twitter and get
involved in any mention of Yang (go check any YouTube video about Yang). You
have to "yang" everyone that you can. It is a really weird community to be
honest. But one where they are actively telling one another to create social
media accounts to promote Yang. What this post really tells me is that it is
hard to distinguish real people from bots. Here's a post even about YouTube
comments[1].

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/esycun/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/comments/esycun/the_daily_show_reposted_their_getting_to_know/)

~~~
RyJones
I had no position on Yang.

After a couple very negative experiences with the Yang Gang, where anything
less than instant adulation must mean you're anti-Yang, I'm anti-Yang.

~~~
coenhyde
That's unfortunate. Yang himself isn't very dogmatic / ideological. But his
supporters are very passionate about his candidacy. So i can see your bad
experiences happening. I support Yang; not sure if i would call myself Yang
Gang...

For me personally, Yang is the first political candidate who sees and reasons
about the world in a similar way to myself. He's a systems thinker. Everything
in society is connected and to correctly address issues you have to understand
how one component will influence another. That is very exciting for me!

He has a lot of policies, i don't agree with all of them but i'm a lot more
aligned with him than any other candidate. Left or right.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang
subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang. Yang is still my 2nd though,
because unlike Yang Gang folks, I don't base my support on the followers of a
candidate cause that's just lunacy. I've chimed in on a few to set the record

A. we're not all that bad.

B. You can't blame us for what gets banned by mods of a reddit when they use
bots to do so.

C. Many of us would support Yang if he were on top or higher than Bernie in
polls. But we want a chance at winning, and Bernie has a strong grassroots.

D. Whether the online real/fake people on reddit/twitter are 'toxic' in your
opinion doesn't even matter isn't relative because THEY aren't Bernie. They
could even be bots or trolls. Listen to the candidate and make your decision
from that, whether they're a good or bad person.

~~~
Grue3
>I've seen so many ...."Bernie's people are horrible" posts on the Yang
subreddit which has turned me off the yang gang

Well, Bernie's subreddit literally bans every single person who makes a post
containing the word "Yang". They even remove him from the poll results.
Certainly doesn't give any socialist dictatorship vibes (that, and his support
of Venezuela).

~~~
godelski
Come on. People will get upset at you for speaking like this on the Yang
subreddit, expect the same here. It doesn't matter if another group is more
toxic or not. It isn't a competition about who can be more toxic. We say
"Humanity First". If you really do support Yang, stand by that. You're talking
to another human and you're also representing Yang. Be kind. We're running a
campaign about unification, so expect to be called out if you're causing
division.

~~~
Grue3
I'm not American so I don't really support any candidate. I have my own
preferences, and neither is Yang my preferred candidate, nor is Bernie my most
disliked candidate.

------
proximitysauce
That's a lot of narrative overlaid on the data. The author even says this
about Democratic politician accounts:

> All of them had bot activity of some kind. Given enough time to collect the
> data, bot networks would eventually appear for all of them.

I think the analysis could be very interesting but they're injecting too much
personal spin on the motivations of everyone involved. Why is the teenager who
follows the Yang bots and MAGA bots "sad"? Is there a corollary teenager
following Democrat bots? Are they sad too?

I think it would be interesting to study bots and how they intersect with
media and politics in a less biased manner.

~~~
waisbrot
> Why is the teenager who follows the Yang bots and MAGA bots "sad"? Is there
> a corollary teenager following Democrat bots? Are they sad too?

Which party do you think Yang is running for?

Anyway, the article was clearly describing as "sad" that the teenager is
trying to build an online following but his "following" is just bots using him
to look less like bots.

~~~
godelski
One of Yang's pitches is that he is pulling from the MAGA group. Just scroll
down the subreddit [0] and you'll see tons of posts about MAGA/Republicans
switching sides for Yang. If anything I'd __expect__ a real person to be more
likely to be connected to both MAGA and Yang (compared to the average
democratic voter). But that also makes it difficult to tell real people from
bots, which is what this story is really about.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/](https://www.reddit.com/r/YangForPresidentHQ/)

~~~
lonelappde
Obviously a dark horse Democratic candidate would claim MAGA support, that's a
tactic to present as "electable".

~~~
bnjms
Sure but in this case it’s his adherents who are claiming to be right leaning
and former MAGA supporters.

It doesn’t look good to Democrats to see memes for Yang or back to Trump so I
cannot be cynical here.

edit: Because it's a bad look with Democrats to have a lot of right leaning
support I take the MAGA supporters at their word. Particularly because I'm a
Yang supporter and became politically disengaged after supporting Bush in my
first election cycle.

~~~
godelski
Just an FYI, a lot of people that voted Trump in 2016 were big Bernie
supporters. I personally know quite a few people that made this switch. Is it
a surprise that the same thing is happening again?

~~~
bnjms
A lot of people who voted for Trump are Bernie supporters now. It isn't
surprising that people who are anti-establishment would be for Bernie. I am
objecting to the casual dismissal by loneappde. It is meaningful that a large
part of the population, left and right leaning, is so anti-establishment and
flippant dismissal will become dangerous in another cycle or two.

Unfortunately I think I'm being mis-read and unfortunately I am blind to why.
...it happens

------
vegcel
I wonder how many people are more of the author's mistaken bots, like Mike
mentioned in the article?

If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd
have a lot of bot like behavior. Activities the author describes as bot-like
to me seem like activities a noob on twitter would engage in.

Twitter itself does a lot to self-create these node clusters, with a circle
jerk of recommended followers based on your activity. If you have a bunch of
twitter noobs, all liking and retweeting Yang and his surrogates, they will
inevitably get clustered together via twitter's own algorithms.

I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would
like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform to
promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

I say this as someone who converted an old twitter account from 2011 I used
when I was a teenager for spam purposes, to become a Yang account. I'm sure
I'm considered a bot by the author's software.

~~~
godelski
> If you were to join twitter for the purpose of campaigning, I imagine you'd
> have a lot of bot like behavior.

To add to this, that yang subreddit actively encourages people to create
Twitter accounts (if you don't already have one) to participate. It is
definitely an agenda that is pushed. Lots of new Twitter accounts that are pro
Yang is not surprising if you visit the subreddit. It also shouldn't be
surprising that these accounts would be associated with MAGA bots and
supporters. After all, Andrew is targeting the same demographic as Trump.
There's several posts a day on the yang subreddit about ex-Trump supporters
turning.

All of this makes me think that it is very hard to distinguish bots from real
people who are excited by the campaign.

So I fully agree with this

> I think it's a mistake to assume that politically disengaged folks who would
> like to stay anonymous online, and are only joining a social media platform
> to promote their candidate or two, would behave like "real" users.

~~~
DalekBaldwin
> To add to this, that yang subreddit actively encourages people to create
> Twitter accounts (if you don't already have one) to participate.

Not only that, Yang ran a couple of UBI-themed contests offering a chance to
win money for following and retweeting him. What better use is there for
acquiring an army of fake accounts?

------
save_ferris
It’s terrifying how cheap and easy it is to masquerade as hundreds of
thousands to millions of people on social media using automation, and how
little social media companies are doing to stop it.

Regardless of the numbers, the stress it’s placing on discourse is
devastating, and there seem to be few serious, market-driven solutions to this
problem.

The growth-at-all-costs mentality has put companies like Twitter in a position
where they must choose between profits and responsible community development
and moderation. It’s clear which path they’ve chosen.

~~~
ngokevin2
It's also terrifying that headlines and articles can be taken as valid. Smear
articles and misleading information are troubling as well in the upcoming
years.

~~~
backupcavalry
Oh, the irony of an account created specifically to defend Yang in the
discussion about bots created to defend Yang.

If you're truly looking to support him this probably isn't a good way to help
his case.

~~~
proximitysauce
An anonymous account is not the same thing as a bot. As acrimonious as the
current state of politics is, I wouldn't blame anyone for using a pseudonym
online to voice their opinion.

~~~
backupcavalry
Touche. But you'll have to pardon me for being distrustful of anyone that
walks in just to defend a politician of any kind (without hard proof, anyway).

~~~
fenomas
This is understandable, but nonetheless HN guidelines ask that you suspend
that distrust. Every legit account starts with a first comment, and it's
natural that a person's first comment would be on a topic they feel strongly
about.

------
olivermarks
Twitter in 2020 seems to be a seething mass of agenda driven automation. I am
a Tulsi Gabbard for president supporter and am aware that 'like' counts on pro
Gabbard posts appear to be regularly culled, presumably by Twitter themselves.
Gabbard's team have complained loudly about this on Twitter (@CullenYossarian
for example, Gabbard's press assistant). I recently started reusing Twitter,
partially to explore this election cycle and am struck by the number of
dissenting tweets appended to pro Gabbard posts (Russian asset etc etc) from
obviously recently created accounts with very low 'followers'. (These posters
almost never create an original post but retweet other posts 'as themselves'
on their main account). If you challenge a comment, asking for proof that
Gabbard is a Russian asset for example, the effect is similar to responding to
a robocall, with the account suddenly being manned by a human for a few hours.
There is typically a hail of abuse and denegration of the candidate, then the
poster falls silent again, presumably going off duty. Regardless of who you
are rooting for in the election I find this alarming. It is very difficult to
know how to go about investigating these networks and who the actors are.

------
aazaa
The fact that Yang's campaign is struggling should throw cold water on the
notion that this kind of thing poisons the political process.

It remains to be proven whether an armada of Twitter bots can change anyone's
mind about a candidate. In the absence of evidence, the claim should be
rejected and we should look for simpler explanations for political ills.

The more likely explanation, and the one loathed by those who still can't
accept that the US elected the current president, is that things like Twitter
bots and fake Facebook ads are just sideshows.

~~~
baddox
It seems like a pretty strange null hypothesis that people are entirely
unaffected by the social media they are exposed to. The fact that using
Twitter bots hasn't caused one candidate to become the most popular doesn't
seem like sufficient evidence. Perhaps he would be even less popular without
the Twitter bots. And perhaps many of the other candidates are doing the same
thing, but better or at a larger scale.

~~~
ipsum2
> It seems like a pretty strange null hypothesis that people are entirely
> unaffected by the social media they are exposed to.

Why? When people measure how ads perform, the null hypothesis is that the ad
has no effect on the behavior of the viewer. Bots are sort of like ads that
look like native content.

That being said, I don't think a single data point (Yang) is enough to be
conclusive, but it does change my beliefs a little bit on the effectiveness of
bots.

~~~
scarmig
Individual ads, sure. But an equivalent null hypothesis would be "social media
advertising has no effect on people," which would seem pretty strange.

~~~
retsibsi
Also, the null hypothesis is just a starting point from which you gather and
analyse the data that may disprove it. There's no reason that 'X has no effect
on Y' should have a privileged position in messy real-world epistemology; we
don't assume that nothing causes anything in the absence of conclusive proof,
we keep an open mind and make our best guess based on whatever information we
have.

------
busymom0
Slightly related - Twitter still hasn't done anything about those bot accounts
with fake crypto scams. Elon Musks tweets for example always have these fake
crypto scam tweets at the very top often using account names of popular
people. I think it's been going on for almost 2 years now if I remember right.
This should be such a simply thing to take care of but for some reason,
Twitter hasn't bothered.

~~~
thrwaway69
I would love to know how many people actually fell for that. People who own
bitcoin isn't your normal crowd but recent surges in the scams and hype, may
have created a lot of people who are oblivious as to what bitcoin technically
is but talk and broadcast it everywhere along with having invested a lot.

------
turtlecloud
How many startup people have actually read “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel?

Yang has gone from 0 to 1 and is going to see exponential growth as Iowa gets
closer. All these articles are people who have a distorted views of reality
and chalk up his support as bots in order to fit their world view. The most
likely reason from my observation is bias against Asian American men in
leadership positions.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yang has gone from 0 to 1

Yang hasn't gone anywhere, he's been bouncing around in the same range for
months with no systematic progress.

> and is going to see exponential growth as Iowa gets closer.

If he did something radical like doubling his support in Iowa in the, what, 10
days remaining, and the sources of support he gained were optimally
distributed for him to move up positions, that would still only get him to
fifth from his current sixth in Iowa, and he'd only be a little over half the
support of #4.

~~~
turtlecloud
According to the latest national Emerson poll today, Yang is in #4 with 8%
support.

The thing with exponential growth is that by the time you realize it, it is
too late

------
np_tedious
Has anyone considered that bot operators might be latching onto movements,
anything will do, simply to grow their audiences and networks?

Simplest explanation is probably that they don't care about election outcome,
they just want to leach off of whatever's hot at the moment.

------
leptoniscool
I'm surprised Twitter isn't doing more about political bots, since they've
banned political ad dollars.

On the other hand, if they banned an account and it turned out to be a real
person, they could get some first amendment lawsuits.

~~~
zachrose
> On the other hand, if they banned an account and it turned out to be a real
> person, they could get some first amendment lawsuits.

Access to post on Twitter is not a 1st Amendment right!

~~~
hadtodoit
Some Senator who's name I can't recall was arguing otherwise. He said
something to the affect of, if social media companies, or websites in general
want protection under the law from content generated by their users, then they
should not be able to dictate what their users can and cannot post barring
illegal content.

It's an interesting argument regardless of what you believe, but certainly
your first amendment rights don't currently extend to Twitter.

~~~
iudqnolq
Are you referring to platform/publisher?

If so, it has no legal basis for many reasons, including Twitter's first
amendment rights to choose what they show. See
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-
no...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-not-require-
platforms-be-neutral)

Also, isn't the whole reason we're on HN the moderation?

~~~
hadtodoit
He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing
an amendment.

I don't think that HN, nor the community at large does as much as say twitter
or reddit to stifle opposing points of view. Relegating extremist to their own
echo-chambers is a good way of proliferating their beliefs. Were their ideas
exposed to the world where they would have to defend them, they may be
dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may see the flaws
in their argument.

~~~
iudqnolq
> He wasn't arguing the current interpretation of the law as much as proposing
> an amendment

I wanted to point out it would require radical changes to our current laws and
maybe the Constitution. I wasn't sure if he was aware of that. (Stronger
versions of this argument, including ones deployed by members of Congress,
have said it described current law)

> Were their ideas exposed to the world where they would have to defend them,
> they may be dissuaded from holding such extreme beliefs, or a passerby may
> see the flaws in their argument.

This is a popular position in a popular argument, and it's been debated to
death better than we can. Here's an summary I found useful
[https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-
gl...](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-
comparisons)

One interesting study mentioned in that summation found that temporary
internet outages in Germany reduced hate crimes against refugees.

> This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime. We
> show that anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicts crimes against
> refugees in otherwise similar municipalities with higher social media usage.
> To establish causality, _we exploit exogenous variation in major Facebook
> and internet outages_ , which fully undo the correlation between social
> media and hate crime. We further find that the effect decreases with
> distracting news events; increases with user network interactions; and does
> not hold for posts unrelated to refugees. Our results suggest that social
> media can act as a propagation mechanism between online messages and violent
> crime.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3082972)

~~~
hadtodoit
With regards to the paper you posted, I don't think it does enough to escape
the fallacy of correlation/causation. It stands to reason that a news event
implicating refugees for a crime will attract anti-refugee sentiment, likewise
why would such sentiment spread to unrelated news posts? Facebook has already
been caught prioritizing controversial content in user news feeds to increase
interaction. Facebook will quickly learn a user that displays such views
interacts more with said content, and display more.

------
ilaksh
I'm a 42 year old Yang supporter. I never voted before and only used Twitter
for a week or so many years ago. A few Yang posts are the only things I have
ever retweeted. In particular when he was excluded from the debates I was
retweeting everything with #AmericaNeedsYang or whatever. I am not a bot. But
my activity then might have seemed bot-like.

Anyway if anyone hasn't 100% made up their mind on Yang maybe watch a few
YouTube videos of him.

~~~
godelski
This is an interesting comment from multiple directions. 1) because I could
see someone calling __this__ comment a bot comment, but you're much more
active here and so it seems like you aren't. 2) Because if you are real, it
really shows the idea (I suggested this in another comment too) that Yang
Gangers come off as bots. (I also found the statement about Yang accounts
being linked to MAGA accounts as evidence as funny).

~~~
proximitysauce
There's nothing bot like about this person's post. It's actually kind of a
nice tale of civic re-engagement. It _does_ make me more interested in hearing
what Yang has to say because it seems honest and like a statement from someone
who hasn't been doing political activism for years.

~~~
EGreg
This looks like a green handle bot supporting another bot. You may find my
statement pretty silly today but in about 5 years we will be in the uncanny
valley.

~~~
godelski
Up and coming HN post "How I used GPT-2 to join the Yang Gang". (clearly I am
a bot)

------
dfsegoat
Tangential thought: There is an biting element of dehumanization when you call
someone a “bot” (who is actually a real person). I see this term thrown around
a lot in political threads when the account in question is quite obviously
human.

In short, It’s become a term du jour for compromising and silencing those with
whom you disagree.

~~~
jshevek
Yes, this is a good and important point. There are many people who declare NPC
a vile, dehumanizing term...who hypocritically call everyone who disagrees
with them a bot.

------
systematical
The Yang Gang is very active online and offline.

Source: I'm Yang Gang

------
zweep
People exhibit such bot-like behavior in certain circumstances that the burden
of proof for calling something a bot is extremely high. If you saw sports fans
in a stadium you’d think they were bots authored by the team’s robotics
division — the same behaviors manifest in online discussions of politics. It's
like how CAPTCHAs today are virtually unsolvable for humans -- we meatbags are
more bot than the bots.

------
Communitivity
I encountered this myself after responding to someone's comment about the
Universal Basic Income (UBI) concept, and got spammed with negative replies. I
figured it was just ardent supporters, bots make sense though given the speed
of the responses. Sadly, I think this may be the new normal of politics in the
2020s.

~~~
speedplane
> after responding to someone's comment about the Universal Basic Income (UBI)
> concept, and got spammed with negative replies. I figured it was just ardent
> supporters, bots make sense though given the speed of the responses.

Ardent non-supporter of UBI here! Not a bot!!

The nefarious issue with UBI is that it threatens our existing social safety
nets. The social goal is not to give everyone a single basic income, it's to
give everyone a single basic standard of living.

It's far more fair and moral to give folks access to basic standards of human
decency (e.g., healthcare, education, housing, food, air), than writing them a
check and letting them fend on their own. The moral underpinning of social
safety nets is not to increase the total or average, but to increase the
lowest.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Bernie supporter here AND UBI supporter, (not Yang's version per se though). I
support a bigger more expansive UBI that would basically cover all food,
housing, and major monthly expenses. We still need education/healthcare though
as Bernie suggests. Which is why I support him.

I like the idea of ending the current welfare system because it makes the
recipient feel 'less' because they're on 'state assistance' vs everyone gets
3k/month + 500 per dependent per month.

We'd need a different tax system though, and need maybe VAT to offset it a
little. It would move everyone above poverty though so pretty much everyone
could afford at least some level of taxes. It would also give job mobility and
more ability to negotiate wages. Some would choose to stay home and join
esports leagues, or start an arts career or go back to school, or start a
business. Meaning less people would be required by labor, meaning
supply/demand would be in worker's favor -- which would drive up wages.

I think there's definitely a place for UBI on the table, AS LONG as single-
payer and free college ALSO exist - -and college debt forgiveness.

~~~
speedplane
> Bernie supporter here AND UBI supporter, (not Yang's version per se though).
> I support a bigger more expansive UBI that would basically cover all food,
> housing, and major monthly expenses.

I agree that those basics that make up common humanity should be covered. But
I differ on how to get there. UBI means writing a check to someone, and
letting them spend it how they wish. They can spend it on food and healthcare,
their startup, or alcohol and gambling.

But if the purpose is to set a minimum level human decency (food, housing,
healthcare), then we should provide that level of decency, rather than writing
a check and hoping people will use it wisely. If an entrepreneur takes their
UBI check and rather than buying healthcare, puts it into a startup that
eventually becomes big, that may be a better result for the overall economy,
but we've still failed that person in providing a minimum level of humanity.

The moral purpose behind UBI is not to just write checks, it's to allow humans
to retain their humanity. Providing solid public schools, healthcare, and
basic housing better provide that minimum level of dignity than sending a
person a check.

~~~
gremlinsinc
I also come at it from a technical standpoint. It's easier/cheaper to shut
down all welfare buildings and government programs and just cut a check. That
ends a lot of wasteful spending to pay for the thing. Also housing/food
differs dramatically across the country. How do you manage that? Mailing
multiple checks? Multiple EBT like cards? I mean it's really difficult to
think of a method other than just writing a check that's big enough to cover
most..

Who in America would not be better off with a guaranteed $36000/year income?
If they have a spouse and two kids they'd make around $50k...and that's BEFORE
they take up a full or part-time job.

~~~
Communitivity
I support UBI and social welfare program reform, but the two are separate
things. The programs are there for when people need help. The UBI is there to
minimize the number of people who need help.

All the solutions I see for UBI are short term. What I posted on Twitter was
the idea of addressing it in the long term:

For each of the 3919528 babies born in the USA in 2019 ((11.979 babies born
per 1000 people, in 2019; 327.2 million population), deposit $100k in a lower
risk growth mutual fund. , at a cost of $391 billion. Do this for 50 years.
When the first cohort of babies turns 50 they should have around $1m available
for retirement. So will each year's cohort after them for the next 50 years.
Much of that money will be passed on to a new generation, or go back to the
government if they die without issue (and that money goes into a mutual fund
whose interest goes to help pay for subsequent cohorts).

Yes, it won't touch the problem for 50 years (hence the need for social
program reform now too), and it requires both political parties to agree to
not dismantle it (like Soc Security was tampered with). But if so, the problem
is solved after 50 years, for at least 50 years and hopefully longer.

------
ngokevin
It deems accounts as bots if they post and retweet a lot and are newly
created? Being familiar with the Yang Gang, people are extremely passionate
almost to an addiction of supporting Yang. They follow his every move, his
surrogates words, and engage with any tiny bit of content they can. Many are
new accounts because few have ever followed politics and want to keep separate
from their main accounts.

Yang has one of the strongest audit scores with 95% of followers being real.
Contrasted with Bernie Sanders at only 69%.
[https://www.twitteraudit.com/andrewyang](https://www.twitteraudit.com/andrewyang)
|
[https://www.twitteraudit.com/berniesanders](https://www.twitteraudit.com/berniesanders)

While there may be a few bad actors, it is definitely not representative of
those that engage with Yang and his campaign. It shows up on the ground as
well where Yang's following shows up in biggest numbers.

At least in Iowa, there were hundreds and hundreds of volunteers that flew in
to canvass in the snow, outnumbering most campaign ground forces. In San
Francisco, weekly hangouts have been growing to 30 people, and volunteer
events turn out 15+ people regularly. I believe this is nationwide as well,
there aren't many campaigns that have been matching the grassroots volunteer
forces.

~~~
comnetxr
how do you know the passionate to the point of addiction Yang supporters are
real?

I think its likely that many are, but that there are also many passionate
supporters of the other candidates who just lurk on Twitter without posting
due to social norms about how often you should chime in and how forcefully.
The social norms around Yang supporters on twitter have changed by bots
posting often and loudly, breaking the bubble and giving permission to people
to do it too. If you then turn the bots off, the YangGang effect would last.
(I'm sure this applies to not just Yang...)

~~~
bnjms
Bots don’t meme.

Yet.

~~~
Communitivity
I've seen proof of concepts that could be strung together to do that, using a
combination of Generative Adversarial Networks, style transfer, and rule-based
semantic reasoner.

------
xrd
My favorite part was the link to the article where Newt Gingrich's Twitter
account with 1.6M followers was shown to be only 8% real people.

------
comnetxr
Someone should make a Twitter-like that verifies posters at various levels
based on humanness/geographic locale and other characteristics.

Then posters could limit conversations to those with >90% human score (with
score going up when twitter has more certainty that you are a human) located
in the US (for US political conversations), etc.

I'd certainly pay a few bucks to be verified and contribute much more often to
conversations than I do now, as now it just seems like screaming into the bot
void.

~~~
trhway
that would destroy the main principle of the Web2.x - "on Internet, nobody
knows you're a human"

------
tonydiv
If any journalists are writing about this in a serious capacity, contact me. I
will trade info :)

------
blackrock
What I don’t understand about Yang and his UBI push, is that he doesn’t
mention anything about the housing crisis.

It’s not really the people that have homes that are at risk. It’s the people
who are renters, and are under the whims of landlords raising the rents to
match expensive mortgages.

There’s no mention from him, about socializing the cost of housing. This is
the primary source of inequality.

I am not a fan of socializing anything, but it’s clear to see, that rampant
capitalism has run amok, and distorted the housing cost for everyone.

Is his he expecting that people will take the $12,000/year UBI, and move out
to podunk Iowa somewhere, and buy a small plot of land, and farm the earth and
raise chickens to be self subsistent?

Like, what happens after you receive this monthly UBI check?

Clearly, this isn’t enough to pay the rent. Will these people work part time
driving for Uber, or delivering for DoorDash?

~~~
godelski
> There’s no mention from him, about socializing the cost of housing. This is
> the primary source of inequality.

It isn't well mentioned on his website[0], but he has talked about it in more
details before (sorry, I forgot which videos he specifically addresses this
in. There are a lot and they are long). But the tldr is he wants to do better
zoning, encourage high rise apartments, and throw in government incentives for
affordable housing. If you post this question in the subreddit I know it'll
get answered quickly, with many links, and will likely be updated on the
website (that's the usual pattern).

> Is his he expecting that people will take the $12,000/year UBI, and move out
> to podunk Iowa somewhere, and buy a small plot of land, and farm the earth
> and raise chickens to be self subsistent?

In part UBI, but in part he wants the IRS to refund some moving costs[1]

> that rampant capitalism has run amok,

This is actually at the forefront of his campaign: "Human Centered
Capitalism"[2] That the rules need to be rewritten and we need to make the
economy human centric, not money first.

> Clearly, [UBI] isn’t enough to pay the rent. Will these people work part
> time driving for Uber, or delivering for DoorDash?

There's no way you can pass a living wage UBI in this political climate. But
$1k/mo does more than $15/hr (presuming hours are stagnant and you can get
full time work. Most states already pay above federal minimum) and it is
something that Republicans are on board with (because it simplifies welfare
and enables more choice). I know it isn't a complete win, but it is an
obtainable win. People are already asking how you pay for UBI, now imagine if
he doubled the amount. Let's not let perfection get in the way of good. Think
of it as a step in the right direction, not a full solution.

[0]
[https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/)

[1] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/get-america-
moving/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/get-america-moving/)

[2] [https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human-
capitalism/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/human-capitalism/)

------
DaniloDias
Pretty graphs. No data. Qualitative analysis. No source code.

------
naveen99
Yang supporters believe expats should also get the freedom dividend. It would
be funny if yang just declares a United States of earth and distributes the
freedom dividend to every human on the entire planet...

~~~
bnjms
Not really. Yang is unequivocal that expats should not receive the dividend
while they are abroad. And they deserve their part given we tax them as if
they were present.

~~~
speedplane
> Yang is unequivocal that expats should not receive the dividend while they
> are abroad.

What is the moral basis for this? Pretty much every other U.S. right and rule
is grounded on U.S. citizenship, not where you're currently residing. Basing
rights on where you live (rather than citizenship) also leads to some weird
results. If you deny expats some right because they don't live in the country,
then shouldn't you grant non-citizens who are indeed living in the country
those same rights? After all, the standard is where you live rather than
citizenship.

------
KhoomeiK
Kind of ironic that the candidate aiming to solve issues created by AI is
being propelled forward by AI-driven bots

~~~
ilaksh
I think that one article doesn't prove that Yang's campaign is driven by bots.

I'm a 42 year old programmer who has never voted before. I am voting for Yang
because his policies are superior and the other candidates have outdated
policies or worldviews.

I have contributed around $400 or $500 and if there is something we are
"trying to trend" I will retweet it (even though I never really used Twitter
before now).

By the way, Yang has received endorsements from people like Elon Musk, Sam
Altman, Dave Chappelle, Donald Glover, Jack Dorsey, Alexis Ohanian, James
Gunn.

Saying the campaign is driven by bots is an unsubstantiated smear.

~~~
jshevek
I am most definitely not a Yang support, I am critic, and yet I strongly agree
with your last sentence. Saying the campaign is driven by bots, based on the
'evidence' presented so far, is an unsubstantiated smear.

------
scottlocklin
Theorem: 100% of these articles talking about "bots" on twitter are bullshit.
None have any evidence, yet we're supposed to be impressed because ... muh
plots. Nobody has any idea how many "bots" are following Trump or Yang or
anybody else.

------
buboard
ah another russian asset is born. good job

------
thrower123
It's always bots and foreign influences when an organic populist movement that
doesn't fit the blessed agenda grows.

The machine is showing it's rust more and more, and the more it flails the
more credibility it loses.

