
Detecting Russian Bots on Reddit - Yuval_Halevi
https://www.briannorlander.com/projects/reddit-bot-classifier/
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nscalf
I found the frequency and intensity of crypto currency involvement, across
many communities, very interesting and enlightening in this post. Beyond just
creating political turmoil, there's a case to investigate further just how
much the Russians were involved in building and collapse a massive economy.

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spaceheretostay
Incredible analysis. I wish there was more! In my experience over the last few
months on r/politics, the bots are extremely easy to detect just by reading
the new feeds (especially in megathreads, they are _everywhere_ ).

For example, the most common elements are:

\- repeated copy+paste comments (every 5 minutes or so) that follow the
pattern: "I'm literally shaking and crying, I'm a democrat and so lost!
Everything is over! Trump is innocent and I'm literally crying". Various
accounts will comment various interpretations of this every few minutes.

\- "lololol trump is innocent, where is your apology stupid libs" Intentional
lowercase, no care for grammar, and direct insults to "the left". Again, these
will repeat from the same accounts and others every few minutes

\- "now that the report shows exoneration and the president will be indicted
you libs lose!" No understanding of the words' meanings. Using 'indicted' to
mean the opposite of what it means without knowing, etc.

\- Most of the comments will be deleted after being called out, or will be
deleted within 30 minutes regardless

\- "the report says no more charges will be filed, maga!" Again this is just a
lie, total fabrication with no basis in reality.

\- The bots will all align around a few "talking points" where they all use
the same words and phrasing. These can last just a few days or sometimes
you'll see the same ones for months. The "talking points" often have nothing
to do with the news of the day and seem to be meant as distraction or other
disinformation

\- The common theme among all of them is that they _spread lies, use
coordinated disinformation campaigns, and aim to confuse and distract from
reality_.

The reality, of course, is the Russia is attacking the United States, our
elections in 2016 were compromised and broken completely, and that we now have
an illegitimate government that enables the attacks from Russia to continue.

Democracy is under attack. The Russian bots on reddit are _easy to spot_ and
hilarious to deal with, until you realize how much damage they are actively
causing. From my eye, it seems like the attacks have dramatically ramped up
recently - but I don't have the hard data to show it. Just my experience
calling out Russian bots on reddit in the r/politics megathreads.

~~~
deogeo
> The common theme among all of them is that they spread lies, use coordinated
> disinformation campaigns, and aim to confuse and distract from reality.

Judging from the examples you gave, I disagree with this conclusion. It looks
more like they're trying to make liberals and conservatives look bad to each
other, by playing up stereotypes. The primary aim seems to be to _divide_.

~~~
spaceheretostay
Okay, but my summaries don't do it justice. Unfortunately for those not there
for the events, it is difficult to communicate what it is like. Imagine the
human time wasted when dozens of people reply "oh honey don't get so upset,
it's okay, that's not what the report says, here's a link" etc. The number of
human-hours wasted with good-intentioned people trying to make the bots feel
better is a sad sad sad thought ....so much time wasted.

They also talk to each other, creating super confusion about who is real and
who is not. Maybe those responses are written by bots too, to make us think
some are real?

The sheer quantity of lies, especially lies that have nothing to do with the
topic at all, leads me to believe the aim is a lot more than "to divide". The
aim is also to disinform and to waste time of good people, who could be doing
more important things but now feel they have to stop the spread of lies.

I apologize for my sample being incomplete and the summaries not sufficient.
You really have to be there in the trenches seeing it happen. Check the next
big news megathreads and you'll see it.

100s of comments per minute, many of them fraudulent and full of lies. You can
go there and pick apart the details yourself to come to your own conclusions
about it.

But you have to go there live - they delete their comments so rapidly that
future study of the events is very difficult.

