
Data from Behind Enemy Lines: How Russia May Have Used Twitter to Seize Crimea - rbanffy
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/data-from-behind-enemy-lines-how-russia-may-have-used-twitter-to-seize-crimea
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coolspot
1) Correlation doesn't mean casuation.

2) Twitter is not that popular in Russia/Ukraine at all. If they used social
media for military strategy, it was VK and youtube comments, not twitter.

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vanusa
_If Russian strategists were likely considering expansion beyond Crimea, they
would have been able to use social media information to assess, with a great
deal of precision and in real time, the reception that they would likely
receive,” Driscoll and his co-author wrote._

 _Our conjecture is ..._

Note the speculative angle. They don't offer any evidence that the Russians
did any kind of serious analysis of what was on Twitter at the time. Or
whether it influenced their decision making.

They only assert that they "may have".

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ummonk
If governments use Twitter as another real time source of public opinion data
to ensure they only take actions that are popular with people, why is that a
bad thing?

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rbanffy
Once you learn this is being done, it's easy to exploit and to make perceived
public opinion deviate from real perceptions of the public

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lawnchair_larry
This is completely absurd.

