
Pro-gun Russian bots flood Twitter after parkland shooting - the_duck
https://www.wired.com/story/pro-gun-russian-bots-flood-twitter-after-parkland-shooting/
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alkonaut
I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian
botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I
think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is
president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia.

But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the
contrary, it would rather seem like some group in the US (Say a large gun
rights organization of some form) would _buy_ these services from the
russians. The Russian twitter troll factories don't work for free, and in this
case there doesn't seem to be a reason why Russia would pay for this?

Edit: another poster pointed out: there is one thing russia would gain from
and that's political division and instability. Next up: pay someone to have a
very public and very late abortion, for example.

~~~
sparrish
Certainly it's about sowing discord... but don't kid yourself, the US does the
exact same thing to Russia on any controversial issue there. And don't think
the US wasn't bringing its influence to bear during Russian elections. This is
all same-old-same-old that's been going on for years.

~~~
alkonaut
US elections are at least superficially free and fair. Imho leaders that don’t
hold fair elections also give up the expectation of other nations keeping out
of them.

So while there is certainly back-and-forth here, I can’t see any moral issues
with anyone meddling in Russian elections. It’s likely even necessary if the
current regime is to be changed (which I think will be harder than in 1990).

The US obviously also meddle with more or less acceptable means in countries
that _do_ have free and fair elections but that’s a different topic.

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stupidcar
Note that while the headline says the bots are "pro-gun", the article says the
bots flood Twitter with messages on _both_ sides of an issue like this. The
idea supposedly being to encourage political discord in general.

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thanatropism
Are we even sure they're Russian bots? If so, are we sure that they're hired
by the Kremlin and not the NRA or the Yanopopoulous Youth or something?

~~~
52-6F-62
From everything I've read, it sounds like there's reasonable certainty, but
that's admittedly anecdotal on my part and comes from mostly secondary
sources.

I've read a small selection of the IC reports and declassified info as well
that at least support the general tendency of the Kremlin to operate this way
as of late.

As an aside, this is a site set up that tracks known Kremlin Internet Research
Agency accounts and bots activity:

[https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/](https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/)

Also it's worth noting that the FBI is currently investigating Russian cash
flow into the NRA:

[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/national/articl...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/national/article195231139.html)

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trothamel
I always get a little skeptical about articles like this, and the motivation
behind them. Are there Russian bots - perhaps, but they tend to sow discord.
It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the anti-gun tweets are also bot
driven.

But at the same time, I have gun owning friends, and they tend to circle the
wagons when something like this happens. With 1 in 3 adults in the US owning a
firearm, it doesn't take very many of them for there to be a lot of tweets
against gun control.

To put their reaction in perspective, realize that since fame appears to be a
motive in these shootings, the easiest way to stop this would likely be to
pass a law to prevent the media from covering mass shootings, or at least the
names and life stories of the shooters. And I think a lot of reactions here
would be "we can't do that!", because of the first amendment.

That's how a lot of people feel about the second amendment.

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reustle
Are they absolutely sure it was Russia or are they going to quietly retract
that like last time?

~~~
lawlessone
what was last time?

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jacquesm
There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and
intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep
democracy functioning in a connected world.

It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right
along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the
downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to
weigh pretty heavily.

~~~
avs733
Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach
students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an
equivalent to teaching understanding.

Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely
objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by
facts that disprove their beliefs.

I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of all of this on the reification of STEM
education and the devaluing of liberal arts and humanities.

~~~
jacquesm
> (i.e., conservatives)

That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not _just_ conservatives that do this.

Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a
completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in
a relatively friendly setting.

The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and
if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones would have been
laid differently.

So now you get this weird mix of open societies connected in a very open
fashion to outright dictatorships with the additional asymmetries of English
being a pre-requisite for trade all over the world and thus a ready and cheap
to deploy workforce aided by bots to sow dissention and to drive a wedge
between folks in the remainder of the world.

What is sad - and that's why I picked out that fragment - is that once the
ball is rolling we will then happily take over beating on that wedge.

~~~
avs733
agreed, and to an extent apologies for the cheapshot, but there is an
underlying and important point.

Conservative ideology (holding 'traditional' values and being resistant to
change) is ideologically rooted in a non-critical conflation of societal
normativity and one's own subjective reality with a shared objective reality.
It doesn't mean they uniquely suffer from this problem but it does make them
much more susceptible to it. It also makes them, as a group, less prepared to
counter it.

Its the same reason the Nazi's were so much more effective than Occupy wall
street. In the later, internal dialogues and disagreement is tolerated and
even valued to a much larger extent. In the former, its seen as lacking in
purity and results in compliance, departure, or expulsion.

~~~
jacquesm
> ts the same reason the Nazi's were so much more effective than Occupy wall
> street. In the later, internal dialogues and disagreement is tolerated and
> even valued to a much larger extent. In the former, its seen as lacking in
> purity and results in compliance, departure, or expulsion.

There's a link to 'nice people finish last' in there somewhere.

~~~
avs733
There is a reason I avoided the value judgement and stuck specifically to the
culture of shared cognition.

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nugi
If I were a left wing group, trying to sow dislike of guns, this is exactly
what I would do. Fits with the trump/russian thing, and looks kooky to
explain. Why would russians care about our gun laws?

/tinfoil

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tpkj
David Satter, "The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms)

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bla2
I wish any news commentary about Twitter or Facebook or similar would include
a big disclaimer about the 1% rule and sampling bias.

------
myth_drannon
Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ? They need to
run that script again, put it as a cron job!

~~~
mcphage
> Didn't Twitter delete all the Russian bots like two weeks ago ?

Twitter has no interest in making it clear just how many of its “users” are
actually bots. Politically motivated bots even more so.

Moreover, they’ve shown no interest in making it more difficult to create new
bots. They probably had news accounts before Twitter even finished deleting
the old ones.

